The Bread of Life (III)
This is a transcript. It may contain some inaccuracies.
So, here we are. We go back to this encounter that Jesus has with a multitude that met Him the next day. The day before, He fed them bread and fish. You remember how He performed this miracle, multiplying the loaves of bread and the fish, and they ate and filled their tummies until they were fully satisfied. They found Him the next day, they sought Him, they wanted Him to be king, they wanted to make Him king, they wanted more bread, they wanted bread for life—free food for life.
So they made their way and found Him in the synagogue there in Capernaum, and they asked Him for more bread. And Jesus, knowing all things, knowing their hearts, goes into the sermon to really separate the genuine from the counterfeit. To draw the real disciple and to push away those who were in it for the wrong reasons, those who were going after Him for the wrong reasons. They came to Him, and in verse 31, they told Him, we want more, we want more of the same, but if You are who You say You are, well, perform another sign, do one greater than the one that Moses performed.
They quote this passage from the Old Testament, "‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’” (verse 31); this passage from Psalm 78 or Exodus 16, and Jesus takes this text and He exposites it, word for word. He tells them, by the way, the giver of this bread is not Moses, it is God. He, He, that is, not Moses—God, He tells them in the sermon. And then He tells them concerning the identity of the bread, the bread of life: "I am the bread of life.” I am the true bread. Then He tells them concerning the recipients, the "them," and He tells them exactly who the recipients of this bread are. The origin is from heaven, referring to Himself, of course. And He tells them finally, how it is that they are to embrace this bread, and it is by faith, by coming all the way to Him.
Last Lord's Day, we looked only at verse 37: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out." He tells them that the object to which you come is Jesus; is Me He tells them. You “come to Me” — the one who comes to Me. He is the object of the sinner's coming, in the uniqueness of His person, in the perfection of His works.
Secondly, He tells them concerning the necessity of coming. He tells them, you must come, you must come. By coming, I don't mean walk an aisle. Coming to Jesus is not something you do with your feet, it's not something you do with your hands, you raise a hand and walk an aisle and sign a card. Believing is the activity of the soul, the spirit, the inner person. It's really rolling the weight of your soul upon Christ, self-commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. You must come. He says, you must come. No one can come on your behalf, no one can come by proxy. You must come. You can come right where you are. You must come.
And if you do come, the third point we learn from this text, or we learned last week, is that there is a certain welcome. He will receive you, He will embrace you, and not only that, He will keep you. And what's the reason for both the reception and the keeping? Well, that's found in the next portion that we will look at this morning, Lord willing, verses 38 to 40.
And oh, what a shame to wrench verse 37 from its context, as we've seen last week in many other respects, but in this as well. Why is it that all who come are received and are kept? Well, here's our Lord's answer, verse 38: "For” — that's a word of connection, for, for, “All that the Father gives Me,” — He says — “will come to Me," — verse 37— “and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.” For this is why, this is the reason (v.38-40): “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me. Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."
Well, you and I are going to unpack these verses, and they're loaded with truths. To unpack these verses, we're going to do so under three headings, and the first one is this: I want us to consider together the astounding fact announced by our Lord. The astounding fact announced by our Lord, and that is the first part of verse 38. Look at it, verse 38: "For I have come down from heaven." What an amazing statement! What an astounding statement made by our Lord! He says, "I have come down from heaven.” “I have come down from heaven."
If you look upon Me, you will never understand who I am if you don't look back beyond the manger, right? Back beyond the angel who came to Elizabeth and to Mary and announced to Mary that, though she had no sexual relations with any man, in her womb there would be conceived a male child, and that male child would be none other than God's Messiah, who would sit on the throne of David. And now this One, whom she brought forth and laid in that manger, in His early thirties, He stands and looks out upon this multitude, mixed multitudes. He says, if you do not understand that I did not have My beginnings in the manger, the manger scene of Bethlehem,you have no clue who I really am and what I am doing here on earth and why I have come.
He gives this astounding fact: "I have come down from heaven." And He repeats that, by the way: "I have come down from heaven." And what did He mean by those words? That takes us back to Christmas, beloved. What did He mean by those words? What He meant to convey was that, standing before these unbelieving, predominantly Jewish people, He was personally conscious that He had a personal existence that predates Bethlehem and goes back into heaven itself. And He uses this terminology frequently in the Gospel of John.
So we need to keep this in mind, that this is no accidental statement by our Lord. We find it, for instance, look with me, verse 33 of this chapter, "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Go down to verse 62 again of this chapter, He says, "What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?" And several other times in the Gospel of John, He says similar words that really underscore this astounding statement, this astounding fact announced by our Lord.
Now, it was particularly shocking to those who heard Him that day. If you look with me at verse 41, no sooner does He mention those words, and what follows out from them is what? Look at the words: "Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I've come down from heaven’?’" They understood what He was claiming. They understood it.
You see, for all of us, our beginning was the time when we were conceived in our mother's wombs, all of us. And most of us were born in a hospital, somewhere in a hospital. And so we could say, I've come from such and such a hospital, from such and such a town, at such and such a date. I had a beginning in this world. But our Lord was personally conscious that He had origins that predated His birthday, predated that first Christmas. He had different origins: "For I have come down from heaven" (verse 38).
Well, what does John tell us that helps us understand without any question whatsoever what Jesus meant? All we have to do is just go back right to the beginning of the Gospel of John. Go back with me there and look at this again to refresh our memory. This is absolutely astounding: "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). “In the beginning was the Word” the very language with which the Old Testament begins, remember? "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). But before He created, God is set before us as the eternally existent God: "In the beginning, God."
John begins with the same language: "In the beginning." And then he tells us that this God introduced in the very opening words of our Bibles, was not simply a God who was one in His person, He was the one true and living God. But, "In the beginning was the Word,” — John tells us— “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." And then, here is John's birth narrative, you remember that? Squeezed into the few words of verse 14 of chapter 1: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
There's John's birth account. The eternal Word, the uncaused God of gods, who was God the Father's agent in the creation of all that is, that Word, the ‘Logos,’ became flesh. This eternal Word takes to Himself a true human soul, a true human body in Mary's womb, in that mysterious act of the Holy Spirit, who comes upon the womb of that young maiden. Conceived in her womb is One who is truly eternal, unchangeable, immutable God, who now takes to Himself a true, real, undiminished, undiluted humanity. "The Word became flesh."
Paul speaks of it in Philippians 2, you remember? If you were to turn there, you will see where he's urging believers to have a spirit of humility, and he says this in verse 5 and following: "Have this way of thinking in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped” or selfishly retained to be like God but now these amazing words, verse 7: "but emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men." Emptied by taking. Emptied by taking.
You see, if I were to hold a glass of water, a glass filled with water, and if I were to empty that glass of water, I empty it by relinquishing something in it. Pour it over. I empty it. I relinquish something in it. I empty by pouring. I empty by putting its contents somewhere else, whether I drink it or put it in another bowl or just pour it out on the ground. But Paul says He emptied by taking. He emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave.
All that He had ever been as the eternal Word, He cannot cease to be, for "the Word was God," and God is immutable. He is unchangeable. God can no more cease to be God than He can cease to be. And so, when John says, "the Word became flesh," it's the Word in the fullness of His divine nature who takes something He never had before. He emptied Himself by taking. He takes flesh to Himself. He empties Himself of what we would call the trappings of the glory, the features of His divine presence, the glory of His divine presence with the Father and with the Spirit. But in terms of His essential nature, He loses absolutely nothing in the incarnation.
He took on something He never had. "The Word became flesh," taking into union with Himself true, essential, real, bona fide human nature, and all that is involved in human nature, sin excepted, for sin is an ugly, grotesque intrusion into human nature. There was no sin in our first father, Adam. You remember, he was made in the perfect likeness and image of God. Sin is an ugly intruder. An ugly intruder. And the eternal Word takes flesh to Himself—a human mind, a human soul, a human body—in this present evil, fallen world. So Paul can say to us in Romans 8:3, He takes to Himself "the likeness of sinful flesh."
"The likeness of sinful flesh." No sin in Him, He's pure, undefiled, but He takes to Himself “the likeness of sinful flesh,” susceptible to death and to the limitations of this world. He gets as close to us as He can possibly come in taking to Himself our humanity. And when these people, the mixed multitude of Jews, understand this astounding announcement, "I have come down from heaven," I have a personal existence long before I was ever born into the world like you around Me were born into the world; when they understood that, they were quite upset by those words.
And they were grumbling, saying, how can He say, “I have come down from heaven?” We know who His father is, we know who His mother is. I mean, everything we see is just plain, crass humanity. That's all we see. No halo hanging around His head, no peculiar glow upon His countenance, and yet He says, “I have come down from heaven." Here is the astounding fact announced by our Lord.
But then notice, in the second place, the purpose for which this astounding fact is explained by our Lord. The purpose explained. And that is the second part of verse 38. He not only announces the fact, but He explains the purpose for that fact. What was this purpose wrapped up in this amazing, astounding reality, that eternal God should take flesh to Himself? Was it only to make a compelling display of infinite power and create an inscrutable, impenetrable mystery that leaves people amazed?
When we try to wrap the fingers of our minds around this reality—that God takes human nature to Himself; and that not in a fully adult form as God gave human nature to Adam and Eve. Remember, God didn't put two helpless babies in the garden. He made two fully grown adult human beings. But with His Son, His one and only Son, He causes by the Holy Spirit the virgin to conceive in her womb so that deity takes on humanity in Mary's womb. Oh, the violence of the incarnation. The condescension of God. And He grows. God grows in His humanity day by day, fed by an umbilical cord until she brought forth her firstborn Son.
Why? And here the Lord Jesus stands to say to us, as it were, you want to know why? You want to know why I came? Do you want to know why there was a Bethlehem? Do you want to know why I came down from heaven? Let Me tell you why. And so He tells us. He tells us in this text, both negatively and positively. Look at the text: "For I’ve come down from heaven," —negative—"not to do My own will" — negative. “Not to do My own will.” I did not come down from heaven because I conceived some self-centered purpose for the incarnation. I did not come down from heaven to accomplish something that was My own agenda, My own scheme.
And that disposition, that attitude came, you remember, you remember well, I trust, came to its critical expression in the wrestling of Gethsemane, right? A short time after He spoke these words, when you remember He said three times, "Not My will but Thine be done." “I have come down from heaven” —negatively— “not to do My own will, but…” positively, here it is, "I’ve come down from heaven… to do the will of Him who sent Me." I’ve come down from heaven to earth with one great passion, one great passion, and that was fully to accomplish the will. And look at the text, in this instance, He does not say the will of My Father, but "of Him who sent Me." And that was His Father, of course, but He wanted the Jews around Him to know that He regarded the Father distinctly as the sender of the Son.
Sending the Son was a distinct and clear mission to accomplish. Verse 38, "For I’ve come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." I like to think, and I believe I’m on good grounds, I like to think of it this way — what were the last words Jesus spoke to the Father when, as the ‘Logos’, the eternal Word, He left heaven to come to earth in the incarnation while still being in heaven? There’s the mystery. Don’t try to crack that mystery. Jesus was here in the body on earth and at the same time co-enthroned there with the Father in His divine nature. He is the Son of Man who is yet in heaven while on earth because He doesn’t relinquish divine nature, which has ubiquity, we say in theological terms, just another word for omnipresence.
He is everywhere present. He was everywhere present as the eternal Word, and He relinquishes nothing of the essential properties and characteristics of being God while taking to Himself true humanity. Having taken that humanity, having committed Himself to taking it, what were His last words when He left, in that sense, the Father's presence to come to earth, to join Himself to our humanity?
Turn with me to Hebrews 10. Look at the words in Hebrews 10. The writer says in verse 5, "Therefore”— Hebrews 10:5 — "Therefore, when He comes into the world," stop right there. Do you see the parallel mentality with John's statement of what our Lord said? "I have come down from heaven." "Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, 'Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for Me; In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure.’ Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come, in the scroll of the book it is written of Me, to do Your will, O God.’'"
There are the words of Jesus when He leaves the Father's presence, coming to us by way of Mary's womb. He says, I come to do one thing—to do the will of My Father. So we have the purpose of this astounding fact: "For I have come down from heaven" (John 6:38), stated negatively, "not to do My own will," stated positively, "but the will of Him who sent Me." And in those words, our Lord is telling these Jews standing around Him that if you think of Me apart from My Father, you do not understand Me at all. I and My Father are one in purpose, one in commission, one in commitment, and therefore you cannot really know the Father and love the Father unless you embrace the Son, unless you embrace Me, the Bread of Life, for the Father has sent Me.
I came to do His will. I've come down to do the will of the Father. He says in other places, the things that I hear with the Father, I speak. The things that I see with the Father, those things are the things that I do. So there is the purpose for the astounding fact explained by our Lord. But then we come to verses 39 and 40, where we have the purpose for the astounding fact expanded or amplified by our Lord. Here we see the purpose expanded and amplified by our Lord. The purpose is "not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me."
Now notice verse 39 begins with the words, "Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day." Now notice basically the same words again. There's a lot of repetition, by the way, in the sermon. Our Lord repeats many of the truths again and again. Verse 40, "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."
So then, we have set before us these words of our Lord. The purpose for this astounding fact, "for I have come down from heaven,” not merely explained generically, "not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me," but explained and amplified specifically in two areas that our Lord underscores. Clearly, He says, this is the will. I came down to do the will of My Father. Do you know what the will of My Father is? Well, I'll tell you. Number one, verse 39, "Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day."
Well, how do we summarize that? How can we summarize that? Well, we can summarize it this way, perhaps. Jesus said in this expanded, amplified explanation of the purpose of His coming to this earth, He said this, He said that He is committed to effect and complete a final salvation of all of the elect of God without a single exception. He is committed to effect the complete and final salvation of all of the elect of God without a single exception. That's what He's saying.
This is like Romans 8, right? I have come down from heaven to do the will of the Father. “Now this is the will of Him who sent Me," —verse 39, now watch this, — "that of —‘pas,’ all, all, all without exception, — all that He has given Me I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day." I've come down from heaven to do the will of My Father, and the Father's will for Me is that I would effect the complete salvation of every single last one of the elect ones. The Father has given Me a people as a gift and charged Me with doing everything necessary to procure and to apply salvation from beginning to end. "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion," right?
And what our Lord does to show that is to take us all the way, this is interesting, to the end. He takes us all the way to the end. Notice, He doesn't talk about the beginning in regeneration, justification, adoption, the initial definitive and progressive sanctification. He takes us all the way to the end. And what is the consummation of our redemption, purchased by the life and death and resurrection and ascension and intercession of Jesus? It's resurrection day. Resurrection day. Not death day, but resurrection day, when the last part of our salvation will be powerfully applied either at the rapture or the end time.
You can read about that in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 and elsewhere, when these bodies that have been overcome by that last enemy that is death—then when He comes at the rapture, then the dead in Christ are raised first, and we who are alive and remain until the coming of our Lord are transformed in an instant, as Paul says, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet" and then we shall be fully glorified, perfected spirits inhabiting deathless bodies, a completely accomplished redemption to the praise of His glory. And you know what's amazing? Every, every last vestige of sin is driven from us forever.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine not sinning? You know, we sin for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and in between snacks. Can you imagine? This is the will of My Father, that I would impart to every single one of the elect of God this complete salvation without a single exception. Isn't that what the text says? We're simply expositing the text. "Now this is the will of Him” — verse 39 — “who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me, I lose nothing” but should not only die for them, pay the penalty of their sin, live the holy life they cannot but should live, and as their representative Head, I will live it in their place and in their behalf, that they might be credited with My perfect righteousness.
I'll remove all the barriers legally and personally in the mind and heart of the Father, that He'll be able to adopt them as His children, and I will put My Spirit within them, and I will place them in the way of holiness and sanctification. I will supply them with grace to be holy men and women. I will preserve the seed of faith in them in the face of all the obstacles, and I will bring them to persevering completion of their earthly race. And when their bodies go into the ground, I'll watch over their dust because it's still united to Me, and in the day of My coming, I will raise up every single last one of them. I will lose nothing.
I will lose nothing. But then He goes on in verse 40, using similar language, and He tells us a second thing about the will of the Father: "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." You see how both of those verses are bracketed by very similar language at the beginning and end? "This is the Father's will," and "I will raise him up on the last day" – they're like bookends.
So what is the second great purpose of Jesus coming down out of Heaven? It is this: the sure, the certain conferral and present enjoyment of eternal life to all who believe without exception. The certain conferral and present enjoyment of eternal life to all who believe without exception. He has come down to do the will of the Father. And what is the will of the Father? That all of His elect should certainly be saved with ultimate salvation, without exception. But the Father has another strand in His will, and it's this: that all who behold, who see, who behold and believe in the Son should have, as a present possession, eternal life and be raised at the last day.
You see the beautiful balance in the words of our Lord? The first expanded explanation focuses on the sovereignty of God. The Father has chosen a people; He has given them to the Son. The Son says, I will effect and apply My salvation to every single last one of them without exception. But here's the second part of His expanded explanation. You see, the element of man's responsibility comes to us in the state of our own sin and blindness and ignorance. We know nothing of the role of God's elect. We have no real right to pry into the role of God's elect. And so our Lord Jesus says, here's the Father's will, that in the accomplishment of salvation for My own, I stand before all men—these Jews, but also all men, and say this: This is the will of My Father, that every one of you who beholds Me, who sees Me and believes in Me, shall have eternal life, and I will raise you up on the last day.
If ever Jesus preached what we call the free offer of the gospel, it's here. It's right here in this text this morning. So the Lord Jesus says, as we sit here today, do you see Me? Do you behold Me? ‘Theoreo’ is the Greek verb used here. A different word is used from the word in verse 36, ‘horao,’ but there's no real fundamental difference; they're basically synonyms. Verse 36: our Lord said, "But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe." I've been in your presence, I've performed miracles, I've declared who I am and why I've come. “You have seen Me, and yet you do not believe.” And here our Lord says in verse 40, "This is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him" not just mere seeing, this is beyond seeing, this is seeing with faith. What is our Lord saying? Our Lord is saying that if you are to have eternal life two things must be true. Two things must be true.
You must behold the Son. You must behold the Son. You must see Him as He is revealed in the Scriptures, set forth in the preaching of the Word. In other words you must get serious about considering who Christ is, what Christ has come to do. No one is saved who deliberately says I've got no time to think of these things. I’ve got other things to do. My life is filled with different things. I don’t have time to ponder Christ. To ponder the things of Christ. My life is filled up with fun and games and pursuit of riches and gals and guys and whatever else is filling up my life. I’ve got no time for this. You can mark it down, you can go on living like this and you will go straight to hell, according to Scripture.
He says, but whoever sees me, whoever beholds Me, whoever beholds the Son; you come to the place where you say, I’m something more than my appetites, my body to be clothed, my hair to be cut, my friends to be entertained etc., etc. I have a never dying soul. And I must attend to the concerns of my soul and I know enough of the Scripture to know that Christ has been sent for the likes of sinners like me. And you begin to take seriously the Christ of Scriptures. And you behold Him but you not only behold Him, you believe upon Him. You entrust yourself to Him.
Now here is the problem. Here’s the problem some perhaps even here today have. Maybe you are sitting here today and you say to yourself, the concept of believing upon Him, it really, I’m having a hard time with it; It eludes me. It eludes me because I’ve been brought up in a Christian home and a Christian church and I was sent to a Christian school and I don’t know anything I have heard that I blatantly, flat out deny. I believe it all, yet I know I’m not a Christian. What’s wrong with me?
This chapter is one of the most precious chapters for people that are exactly in that dilemma. Because in this chapter Jesus, who gives constant emphasis to the need for faith in Him, He gives two beautiful images of what faith is and how faith acts; saving faith. And I want to spend a few minutes tracing out those two images together. Look with me at the text. I want us to see that faith is central. Faith is central. You find it in verses 28-29. Look at that, go back,“Therefore they said to Him, ‘what should we do so that we may work the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘this is the work of God, that you,’” —what? — “‘believe in Him whom He has sent.’” Jesus, give us a list of things to do; and He says there is only one thing you ought to do and it no work at all, it is faith, believe.
Here our Lord said this is the central issue, you must believe on the One the Father sent. Again He gives the same emphasis in vs 35, look at it, “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.’” And in our passage vs 40, “everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." But what are those two images of faith that the Lord gives again and again in this context?
Number one, you already know them, we've come across them already, but I want to emphasize them here today. Number one, coming to Him. And the second image is eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Coming to Him and eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Now, tighten your seatbelt and look at several passages that very, very clearly set this before us.
Number one, coming to Him. That's the first image, coming to Him. Well, let's stay in this chapter. Verse 37, "All that the Father gives Me will” —what? — “come,” — come, come— “to Me.” Verse 35, go back to verse 35, “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me’’’ — here it is, “comes to Me” — “‘will never hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.’" Faith is coming to Christ, "and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out" (verse 37b). Verse 44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." Verse 45, "It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me." Coming to Christ—keep that in mind. Coming to Christ. Coming to Christ.
Now, what happens? Think with me, what happens when you come to a person? What happens when you come to a person? Well, you make a movement of your person towards that person, and when you do, the whole you moves to the whole them, right? If I were to say to one of the brothers sitting behind the media desk, and let's say, you know, Nathan is sitting there, and if I were to say, Nathan, I'm coming to you, and I step aside from behind the pulpit, what's happening? I, in the whole of my person, am making a motion towards Nathan and the whole of his person. Jesus says, do you know what faith is? It's the whole of you moving towards a whole Christ. That's what faith is. The whole of you moving to a whole Christ.
So the chapter ends with the people, look at it now in contrast, turning away in unbelief. And how is it described? Notice the language in contradistinction, in contrast. Verse 66, "As a result of this, many of His disciples went away and were not walking with Him anymore." That's unbelief. It's moving away from Christ, turning away from Christ to whatever else you move. You move from Christ. And when you turn to Christ, you turn away from something to Christ, to something else. That's how the Thessalonians were described in 1 Thessalonians 1—they turned away from idols, they turned to the living God. That's always what happens with faith. There's a turning from and a turning to.
So our text tells us that if we would know God's salvation, we must behold, we must see and believe the One who is sent. And what is believing? It's coming to Christ. Your whole person moving to Him, coming as you are. Just as I am, coming as you are in your guilt, in your lostness, in your blindness, in your deadness, and yet nonetheless coming to Him for life, for forgiveness, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, to have power to live to the praise of His glory. You move towards Christ.
But then there's another way faith is illustrated and set before us in this passage, and it's called eating and drinking of His flesh and of His blood. And we've come across this before, but we are repeating it because our Lord repeats it. Obviously, it is important for us to get it. Look at verse 50, "This is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die." "I am the living bread” —verse 51— “that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and also the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh."
Go to verse 53, "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.'" Now watch verse 54, "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." The exact same thing from verse 40, "Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."
So if you were to look at this, verse 54, verse 40, one of two things is true. Either you've got three ways of salvation—one is believing, one is coming, one is eating and drinking, or they are all one and the same. Well, they're all one and the same. What is believing? It's coming to Christ. It's eating and drinking of the flesh and the blood of Christ.
That is, what do we do when we eat? What do we do when we drink? When you take that glass of water and you drink it, you take something that's external, objective to you, and by drinking, you assimilate it and you make it part of you. It becomes part of you. The water now is part of you. Once you drink the water, no longer are the water and you two separate, distinct entities. And when you eat, the same thing happens.
As we saw last Lord's Day, you have food, here's food, objective to you, bread, let's say; you take it, you masticate it, you chew it, you swallow it. The bread now goes through the digestive processes and becomes part of you. You and the bread are one. You and the water are one. What does it mean to believe? It means far more than simply tipping your mental hat to the facts of the Bible, tipping your mental hat to the facts concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. It's beyond that. It's eating and drinking His flesh and blood, which means I assimilate to myself not just Christ as incarnate, but Christ as crucified for sinners; Christ as dying in the place of sinners, who He is and what He's done, His person and His works.
That's why Paul could say in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me." I eat His flesh. I drink His blood. I live by a crucified Christ. He is my life. He is not external to me. He's not external to me. Someone to whom I tipped my mental hat ten years ago, and in so doing, I'm all fixed up forever. He goes on His way, I go on my way, no, no, no, no. Once I drink the water, once I eat the bread, the water and the bread and I are one. That's it.
That's what the Bible sets as the central truth of salvation. You know what the Bible calls it, really? Union with Christ. Union with Christ. That's what we're talking about. That's what it means to believe. A union effected from God's standpoint by the indwelling Spirit and from our standpoint by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Why did He come down from heaven? The general statement: not to do My own will, but to do the will of the Father. And what is the will of the Father? He gives us two aspects of that will. The one points us to the sovereign purpose and certain accomplishment by our Lord Jesus. Verse 39, "This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me, I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day." But the second is the will of the Father, that everyone sitting in this place who beholds through the preaching, the reading of the Word, beholds the Lord Jesus Christ and believes upon Him should have here and now eternal life and the assurance one day of being raised on the last day to be with the Lord forever.
I just simply exposited the text, but I'd like to leave us with some application this morning. And I want to leave us with three closing applications very briefly.
Application number one: Consider in these words of Jesus a solid assurance, a solid assurance and consolation to all true believers, child of God. Consider in these words solid assurance and consolation to every true believer. Oh, child of God, child of God, the One who came is God out of heaven, and He has power to do everything He's committed to do.
This is why we must cling tenaciously. This is a hill to die on. We must cling tenaciously to the biblical doctrine of the nature of the person of Jesus Christ. He is true God and true man, two distinct natures in one person forever, because Jesus is able to do what He does because He is who He is. That's why. If He were not who He is, He could not do what He says He came to do. He must be as much man as though He were not God and as much God as though He were not man.
I love how the shorter catechism beautifully puts it, asking the question, who is the Redeemer of God's elect? Answer: "The only Redeemer of God's elect is our Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever." That's our Savior. That's our Savior. And when you and I, child of God, beloved, when we feel our weakness in our impoverished state, to know that we have the fact that God has laid help upon One who is mighty, who carries on His work with all of the energy and power of the undiminished, undiluted deity—that's who our Helper is.
And as we come tempted, tossed, bloodied, bruised, bleeding in the fight, grieved, the writer to the Hebrews says: "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things like we are, yet without sin. Therefore” —in the light of that reality, therefore, — “let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace…” —not judgment, it's a throne of grace— “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:15-16.
One of our kind, one of our kind is at the right hand of the Father. One who is identified with us, and I reverently say, bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh—the God-man. And dear child of God, He has taken upon His shoulders the responsibility of keeping you in the way of holiness and obedience. "To Him who is able to” — what? — “keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless" - that's the One. He's taken upon His shoulders the responsibility of keeping you in the way of holiness and obedience.
And when that time comes, for it is appointed unto man once to die, and when that time comes, when loved ones lay your remains in the earth, He's taken upon Himself the responsibility to make sure that He's gonna take your body out of the grave. Gravesites, when a child of God dies in the Lord, that box is lowered to the earth at the gravesite, I want to go over to the edge and say, you're not gonna be there forever. Jesus is coming, and He's gonna raise this brother, this sister on that day, resplendent, as Paul says, with a body like unto the body of His glory, whereby He is able to subdue everything unto Himself.
Child of God, be encouraged. The best is yet to come. The will of the Father is what Jesus came to do. And He said the will of the Father is that you would not be lost, that having entrusted yourself to Him, He is committed to keep you, to preserve you, even when your spirit is in His presence. “For to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord.” "I desire to depart and be with Christ," Paul said. But, but, but, He doesn't forget your rotting dust and my rotting dust. His eye is upon you, and He longs for the day when He will have all that He died to redeem and see fully the anguish of His soul. And then, and then, and then He will be satisfied. He's not satisfied just to have your perfected spirit in heaven, because He didn't just die to give you a perfected spirit. He died to give you a perfected body as well.
And there is a sense in which He has, and I say this very reverently, there is a sense in which He has a holy restlessness until He looks at you and says, ah, that's what I lived and died for, to have that grotesque, marred, scarred, twisted image-bearer of God looking just like Me, to the glory of the Father. And when He's accomplished all of that,1 Corinthians 15 says He's gonna turn the kingdom back to the Father so that God may be all in all. Hallelujah.
What a word of comfort for the true child of God. When you lay your loved ones in the earth, this is what you should be comforted with. Dear child of God, what a wonderful salvation is ours.
But then, the second word of application. Consider in these words that we've studied, a word of hopeful encouragement to troubled sinners. A word of hopeful encouragement to troubled sinners. A word of hopeful encouragement to troubled sinners. You may be here today aware of your sin and bondage, afraid of death, afraid of growing old, and you're gonna get there quicker than you think. As Job says, the years pass swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and in your sober moments, you say, yes, I know, I'm gonna get old, I'm gonna die. And you look at the incarnation, and you look at Jesus' words of explanation, "I have come down from heaven” —to do— “the will of Him who sent Me.” “This is the will… that everyone”—notice the individuality—”who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life."
Let me ask you this morning, my dear sinner friend, troubled, have you been beholding the Son in the preaching of the Word, in the Scriptures read? Now believe upon Him. Believe upon Him. Cast yourself upon Him. Roll the weight of your soul upon Him. Come to Him by the movement of your heart and will and affections. Go to Christ and say, Lord Jesus, be to me everything You said You would be to needy, desperate sinners, because that's what I bring to You. I bring to You, O Lord, my sinnerhood. I bring to You my unadorned, unqualified sinnerhood. Lord Jesus, I come just as I am.
You know what He says to you? "Him that comes to Me” — him that comes to Me — “I will never"— double negative - no, never — “cast out." And He'll take you. And He'll take you all the way to the end. He says, I'll receive you, yes. And I'll keep you, yes. And I've got news for you. I will never, never, ever relinquish you. Once you've come, you're Mine, you're Mine, you're Mine. And I'll keep you.
My dear sinner friend, maybe you're troubled with, I don't know, am I elect or non-elect? May I humbly, lovingly tell you that's none of your business? Your business is to own your sinnerhood and behold the Savior and believe. Eat His flesh, drink His blood. Say, Lord Jesus, crucified for sinners, I take You to be my Savior, my atoning sacrifice, my sovereign, risen Lord and Master. I embrace You, and Your promise is that I would have eternal life and I'd be raised up on that last day.
Oh, my troubled sinner friend, you need not leave this room troubled. You can leave this place rejoicing, rejoicing in a perfect Savior who invites you to Himself.
I have a final word of application. Thirdly, consider in these words a word of sober warning to every careless, every arrogant sinner. Jesus spoke those words in the presence of careless, stubborn, arrogant, unbelieving sinners. Look at their words in verses 41 and 42, they're “grumbling about Him, because He said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” "‘Is this not Jesus,’" —they said— "‘the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I've come down from heaven'?’"
They just heard these words: the one who sees and beholds and believes in the Son will have eternal life, and rather than saying, did we hear Him rightly? He says if we see Him and if we take in who He is and what He said and believe, we'll have eternal life. That's news too good to be true. That's not their reaction. Their arrogant, cynical, unbelieving disposition says, wait a minute, wait a minute—come down from heaven? No, no, no, no, no. He had His beginning back then some odd 30 years ago. Joseph is His father, Mary's His mother. We know too much about Him. Cynical, stubborn, arrogant, unbelieving.
And Jesus tells them their true condition unashamedly. As we will see next time, Lord willing, in verse 44, that all who behold and believe have been drawn. And Jesus goes to the root of their rotten pride, and He says, you are spiritually impotent. He goes on to say in verse 45, you are spiritually ignorant. He says, the reason you're not coming to Me is that you've not heard and learned from the Father. You think you know the Scriptures in your arrogance. Scripture comes out of your ears, but you don't know them really. You don't know them at all. You've not been taught of the Father. You're simply impotent, and you're simply ignorant.
And then He goes on to say in verse 53, you are not only spiritually impotent and ignorant, but you are spiritually dead. “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." My friend, in your unbelief and arrogance and pride, you've put yourself up here. You think you're somebody. You think you're in control. You think you're the master of your own destiny. No, no, no, no. To use biblical language, you're a little worm of the dust, someone who cannot draw your next breath unless God, the sovereign God, gives it to you.
Paul said, "He gives to all life and breath and all things." God can decide to say, the next breath is your last one. Understand this. God can decide to say, the next breath is your last one. What are you gonna do? And what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do when the death rattle is in your throat? What are you gonna do? Raise your fist and say, no, God, You must give me more breaths. I demand it? My arrogant, proud, unbelieving sinner, face what you really are—impotent, ignorant, dead, utterly dependent, even for your next breath.
And yet, Jesus' words are for you today. "This is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life." Christ is offering life to impotent, ignorant, dead sinners. What an amazing offer. And in His name, only in His name, I stand before you this morning, offering you that same life in His name. If you're that needy, desperate sinner, come to Him. Give your life to Him. Eat His flesh and drink His blood.
Let's pray:
Our Father, oh, our Father, how we thank You and praise You for these wonderful words of our Lord Jesus. We thank You for gathering us together as Your people, that we might consider those words, and we pray that You would make those words, words of life and encouragement to Your people. That we would press on with a renewed and deepened confidence in spite of our remaining sin, in spite of our waywardness, in spite of our dim and dark minds, that we are being kept by Your power, and that we shall be raised at the last day.
What a great encouragement for us, Your people. And Father, we pray that You help those desperate sinners who may be sitting here this morning in our midst, who have been reflecting on their dire state, desperate, dire state. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, we plead, bring them home to Christ today.
And oh Lord, oh Lord, for the careless, the arrogant, unbelieving sinner. Oh, Lord, we plead with You, humble them. Oh, God, humble them, for You resist the proud, but give grace to the humble. Seal, then, Your word to the prophet of each and every one of us. This we ask in Christ's name and for His glory, amen.
So they made their way and found Him in the synagogue there in Capernaum, and they asked Him for more bread. And Jesus, knowing all things, knowing their hearts, goes into the sermon to really separate the genuine from the counterfeit. To draw the real disciple and to push away those who were in it for the wrong reasons, those who were going after Him for the wrong reasons. They came to Him, and in verse 31, they told Him, we want more, we want more of the same, but if You are who You say You are, well, perform another sign, do one greater than the one that Moses performed.
They quote this passage from the Old Testament, "‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’” (verse 31); this passage from Psalm 78 or Exodus 16, and Jesus takes this text and He exposites it, word for word. He tells them, by the way, the giver of this bread is not Moses, it is God. He, He, that is, not Moses—God, He tells them in the sermon. And then He tells them concerning the identity of the bread, the bread of life: "I am the bread of life.” I am the true bread. Then He tells them concerning the recipients, the "them," and He tells them exactly who the recipients of this bread are. The origin is from heaven, referring to Himself, of course. And He tells them finally, how it is that they are to embrace this bread, and it is by faith, by coming all the way to Him.
Last Lord's Day, we looked only at verse 37: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out." He tells them that the object to which you come is Jesus; is Me He tells them. You “come to Me” — the one who comes to Me. He is the object of the sinner's coming, in the uniqueness of His person, in the perfection of His works.
Secondly, He tells them concerning the necessity of coming. He tells them, you must come, you must come. By coming, I don't mean walk an aisle. Coming to Jesus is not something you do with your feet, it's not something you do with your hands, you raise a hand and walk an aisle and sign a card. Believing is the activity of the soul, the spirit, the inner person. It's really rolling the weight of your soul upon Christ, self-commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. You must come. He says, you must come. No one can come on your behalf, no one can come by proxy. You must come. You can come right where you are. You must come.
And if you do come, the third point we learn from this text, or we learned last week, is that there is a certain welcome. He will receive you, He will embrace you, and not only that, He will keep you. And what's the reason for both the reception and the keeping? Well, that's found in the next portion that we will look at this morning, Lord willing, verses 38 to 40.
And oh, what a shame to wrench verse 37 from its context, as we've seen last week in many other respects, but in this as well. Why is it that all who come are received and are kept? Well, here's our Lord's answer, verse 38: "For” — that's a word of connection, for, for, “All that the Father gives Me,” — He says — “will come to Me," — verse 37— “and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.” For this is why, this is the reason (v.38-40): “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me. Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."
Well, you and I are going to unpack these verses, and they're loaded with truths. To unpack these verses, we're going to do so under three headings, and the first one is this: I want us to consider together the astounding fact announced by our Lord. The astounding fact announced by our Lord, and that is the first part of verse 38. Look at it, verse 38: "For I have come down from heaven." What an amazing statement! What an astounding statement made by our Lord! He says, "I have come down from heaven.” “I have come down from heaven."
If you look upon Me, you will never understand who I am if you don't look back beyond the manger, right? Back beyond the angel who came to Elizabeth and to Mary and announced to Mary that, though she had no sexual relations with any man, in her womb there would be conceived a male child, and that male child would be none other than God's Messiah, who would sit on the throne of David. And now this One, whom she brought forth and laid in that manger, in His early thirties, He stands and looks out upon this multitude, mixed multitudes. He says, if you do not understand that I did not have My beginnings in the manger, the manger scene of Bethlehem,you have no clue who I really am and what I am doing here on earth and why I have come.
He gives this astounding fact: "I have come down from heaven." And He repeats that, by the way: "I have come down from heaven." And what did He mean by those words? That takes us back to Christmas, beloved. What did He mean by those words? What He meant to convey was that, standing before these unbelieving, predominantly Jewish people, He was personally conscious that He had a personal existence that predates Bethlehem and goes back into heaven itself. And He uses this terminology frequently in the Gospel of John.
So we need to keep this in mind, that this is no accidental statement by our Lord. We find it, for instance, look with me, verse 33 of this chapter, "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Go down to verse 62 again of this chapter, He says, "What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?" And several other times in the Gospel of John, He says similar words that really underscore this astounding statement, this astounding fact announced by our Lord.
Now, it was particularly shocking to those who heard Him that day. If you look with me at verse 41, no sooner does He mention those words, and what follows out from them is what? Look at the words: "Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I've come down from heaven’?’" They understood what He was claiming. They understood it.
You see, for all of us, our beginning was the time when we were conceived in our mother's wombs, all of us. And most of us were born in a hospital, somewhere in a hospital. And so we could say, I've come from such and such a hospital, from such and such a town, at such and such a date. I had a beginning in this world. But our Lord was personally conscious that He had origins that predated His birthday, predated that first Christmas. He had different origins: "For I have come down from heaven" (verse 38).
Well, what does John tell us that helps us understand without any question whatsoever what Jesus meant? All we have to do is just go back right to the beginning of the Gospel of John. Go back with me there and look at this again to refresh our memory. This is absolutely astounding: "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). “In the beginning was the Word” the very language with which the Old Testament begins, remember? "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). But before He created, God is set before us as the eternally existent God: "In the beginning, God."
John begins with the same language: "In the beginning." And then he tells us that this God introduced in the very opening words of our Bibles, was not simply a God who was one in His person, He was the one true and living God. But, "In the beginning was the Word,” — John tells us— “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." And then, here is John's birth narrative, you remember that? Squeezed into the few words of verse 14 of chapter 1: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
There's John's birth account. The eternal Word, the uncaused God of gods, who was God the Father's agent in the creation of all that is, that Word, the ‘Logos,’ became flesh. This eternal Word takes to Himself a true human soul, a true human body in Mary's womb, in that mysterious act of the Holy Spirit, who comes upon the womb of that young maiden. Conceived in her womb is One who is truly eternal, unchangeable, immutable God, who now takes to Himself a true, real, undiminished, undiluted humanity. "The Word became flesh."
Paul speaks of it in Philippians 2, you remember? If you were to turn there, you will see where he's urging believers to have a spirit of humility, and he says this in verse 5 and following: "Have this way of thinking in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped” or selfishly retained to be like God but now these amazing words, verse 7: "but emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men." Emptied by taking. Emptied by taking.
You see, if I were to hold a glass of water, a glass filled with water, and if I were to empty that glass of water, I empty it by relinquishing something in it. Pour it over. I empty it. I relinquish something in it. I empty by pouring. I empty by putting its contents somewhere else, whether I drink it or put it in another bowl or just pour it out on the ground. But Paul says He emptied by taking. He emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave.
All that He had ever been as the eternal Word, He cannot cease to be, for "the Word was God," and God is immutable. He is unchangeable. God can no more cease to be God than He can cease to be. And so, when John says, "the Word became flesh," it's the Word in the fullness of His divine nature who takes something He never had before. He emptied Himself by taking. He takes flesh to Himself. He empties Himself of what we would call the trappings of the glory, the features of His divine presence, the glory of His divine presence with the Father and with the Spirit. But in terms of His essential nature, He loses absolutely nothing in the incarnation.
He took on something He never had. "The Word became flesh," taking into union with Himself true, essential, real, bona fide human nature, and all that is involved in human nature, sin excepted, for sin is an ugly, grotesque intrusion into human nature. There was no sin in our first father, Adam. You remember, he was made in the perfect likeness and image of God. Sin is an ugly intruder. An ugly intruder. And the eternal Word takes flesh to Himself—a human mind, a human soul, a human body—in this present evil, fallen world. So Paul can say to us in Romans 8:3, He takes to Himself "the likeness of sinful flesh."
"The likeness of sinful flesh." No sin in Him, He's pure, undefiled, but He takes to Himself “the likeness of sinful flesh,” susceptible to death and to the limitations of this world. He gets as close to us as He can possibly come in taking to Himself our humanity. And when these people, the mixed multitude of Jews, understand this astounding announcement, "I have come down from heaven," I have a personal existence long before I was ever born into the world like you around Me were born into the world; when they understood that, they were quite upset by those words.
And they were grumbling, saying, how can He say, “I have come down from heaven?” We know who His father is, we know who His mother is. I mean, everything we see is just plain, crass humanity. That's all we see. No halo hanging around His head, no peculiar glow upon His countenance, and yet He says, “I have come down from heaven." Here is the astounding fact announced by our Lord.
But then notice, in the second place, the purpose for which this astounding fact is explained by our Lord. The purpose explained. And that is the second part of verse 38. He not only announces the fact, but He explains the purpose for that fact. What was this purpose wrapped up in this amazing, astounding reality, that eternal God should take flesh to Himself? Was it only to make a compelling display of infinite power and create an inscrutable, impenetrable mystery that leaves people amazed?
When we try to wrap the fingers of our minds around this reality—that God takes human nature to Himself; and that not in a fully adult form as God gave human nature to Adam and Eve. Remember, God didn't put two helpless babies in the garden. He made two fully grown adult human beings. But with His Son, His one and only Son, He causes by the Holy Spirit the virgin to conceive in her womb so that deity takes on humanity in Mary's womb. Oh, the violence of the incarnation. The condescension of God. And He grows. God grows in His humanity day by day, fed by an umbilical cord until she brought forth her firstborn Son.
Why? And here the Lord Jesus stands to say to us, as it were, you want to know why? You want to know why I came? Do you want to know why there was a Bethlehem? Do you want to know why I came down from heaven? Let Me tell you why. And so He tells us. He tells us in this text, both negatively and positively. Look at the text: "For I’ve come down from heaven," —negative—"not to do My own will" — negative. “Not to do My own will.” I did not come down from heaven because I conceived some self-centered purpose for the incarnation. I did not come down from heaven to accomplish something that was My own agenda, My own scheme.
And that disposition, that attitude came, you remember, you remember well, I trust, came to its critical expression in the wrestling of Gethsemane, right? A short time after He spoke these words, when you remember He said three times, "Not My will but Thine be done." “I have come down from heaven” —negatively— “not to do My own will, but…” positively, here it is, "I’ve come down from heaven… to do the will of Him who sent Me." I’ve come down from heaven to earth with one great passion, one great passion, and that was fully to accomplish the will. And look at the text, in this instance, He does not say the will of My Father, but "of Him who sent Me." And that was His Father, of course, but He wanted the Jews around Him to know that He regarded the Father distinctly as the sender of the Son.
Sending the Son was a distinct and clear mission to accomplish. Verse 38, "For I’ve come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." I like to think, and I believe I’m on good grounds, I like to think of it this way — what were the last words Jesus spoke to the Father when, as the ‘Logos’, the eternal Word, He left heaven to come to earth in the incarnation while still being in heaven? There’s the mystery. Don’t try to crack that mystery. Jesus was here in the body on earth and at the same time co-enthroned there with the Father in His divine nature. He is the Son of Man who is yet in heaven while on earth because He doesn’t relinquish divine nature, which has ubiquity, we say in theological terms, just another word for omnipresence.
He is everywhere present. He was everywhere present as the eternal Word, and He relinquishes nothing of the essential properties and characteristics of being God while taking to Himself true humanity. Having taken that humanity, having committed Himself to taking it, what were His last words when He left, in that sense, the Father's presence to come to earth, to join Himself to our humanity?
Turn with me to Hebrews 10. Look at the words in Hebrews 10. The writer says in verse 5, "Therefore”— Hebrews 10:5 — "Therefore, when He comes into the world," stop right there. Do you see the parallel mentality with John's statement of what our Lord said? "I have come down from heaven." "Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, 'Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for Me; In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure.’ Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come, in the scroll of the book it is written of Me, to do Your will, O God.’'"
There are the words of Jesus when He leaves the Father's presence, coming to us by way of Mary's womb. He says, I come to do one thing—to do the will of My Father. So we have the purpose of this astounding fact: "For I have come down from heaven" (John 6:38), stated negatively, "not to do My own will," stated positively, "but the will of Him who sent Me." And in those words, our Lord is telling these Jews standing around Him that if you think of Me apart from My Father, you do not understand Me at all. I and My Father are one in purpose, one in commission, one in commitment, and therefore you cannot really know the Father and love the Father unless you embrace the Son, unless you embrace Me, the Bread of Life, for the Father has sent Me.
I came to do His will. I've come down to do the will of the Father. He says in other places, the things that I hear with the Father, I speak. The things that I see with the Father, those things are the things that I do. So there is the purpose for the astounding fact explained by our Lord. But then we come to verses 39 and 40, where we have the purpose for the astounding fact expanded or amplified by our Lord. Here we see the purpose expanded and amplified by our Lord. The purpose is "not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me."
Now notice verse 39 begins with the words, "Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day." Now notice basically the same words again. There's a lot of repetition, by the way, in the sermon. Our Lord repeats many of the truths again and again. Verse 40, "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."
So then, we have set before us these words of our Lord. The purpose for this astounding fact, "for I have come down from heaven,” not merely explained generically, "not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me," but explained and amplified specifically in two areas that our Lord underscores. Clearly, He says, this is the will. I came down to do the will of My Father. Do you know what the will of My Father is? Well, I'll tell you. Number one, verse 39, "Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day."
Well, how do we summarize that? How can we summarize that? Well, we can summarize it this way, perhaps. Jesus said in this expanded, amplified explanation of the purpose of His coming to this earth, He said this, He said that He is committed to effect and complete a final salvation of all of the elect of God without a single exception. He is committed to effect the complete and final salvation of all of the elect of God without a single exception. That's what He's saying.
This is like Romans 8, right? I have come down from heaven to do the will of the Father. “Now this is the will of Him who sent Me," —verse 39, now watch this, — "that of —‘pas,’ all, all, all without exception, — all that He has given Me I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day." I've come down from heaven to do the will of My Father, and the Father's will for Me is that I would effect the complete salvation of every single last one of the elect ones. The Father has given Me a people as a gift and charged Me with doing everything necessary to procure and to apply salvation from beginning to end. "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion," right?
And what our Lord does to show that is to take us all the way, this is interesting, to the end. He takes us all the way to the end. Notice, He doesn't talk about the beginning in regeneration, justification, adoption, the initial definitive and progressive sanctification. He takes us all the way to the end. And what is the consummation of our redemption, purchased by the life and death and resurrection and ascension and intercession of Jesus? It's resurrection day. Resurrection day. Not death day, but resurrection day, when the last part of our salvation will be powerfully applied either at the rapture or the end time.
You can read about that in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 and elsewhere, when these bodies that have been overcome by that last enemy that is death—then when He comes at the rapture, then the dead in Christ are raised first, and we who are alive and remain until the coming of our Lord are transformed in an instant, as Paul says, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet" and then we shall be fully glorified, perfected spirits inhabiting deathless bodies, a completely accomplished redemption to the praise of His glory. And you know what's amazing? Every, every last vestige of sin is driven from us forever.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine not sinning? You know, we sin for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and in between snacks. Can you imagine? This is the will of My Father, that I would impart to every single one of the elect of God this complete salvation without a single exception. Isn't that what the text says? We're simply expositing the text. "Now this is the will of Him” — verse 39 — “who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me, I lose nothing” but should not only die for them, pay the penalty of their sin, live the holy life they cannot but should live, and as their representative Head, I will live it in their place and in their behalf, that they might be credited with My perfect righteousness.
I'll remove all the barriers legally and personally in the mind and heart of the Father, that He'll be able to adopt them as His children, and I will put My Spirit within them, and I will place them in the way of holiness and sanctification. I will supply them with grace to be holy men and women. I will preserve the seed of faith in them in the face of all the obstacles, and I will bring them to persevering completion of their earthly race. And when their bodies go into the ground, I'll watch over their dust because it's still united to Me, and in the day of My coming, I will raise up every single last one of them. I will lose nothing.
I will lose nothing. But then He goes on in verse 40, using similar language, and He tells us a second thing about the will of the Father: "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." You see how both of those verses are bracketed by very similar language at the beginning and end? "This is the Father's will," and "I will raise him up on the last day" – they're like bookends.
So what is the second great purpose of Jesus coming down out of Heaven? It is this: the sure, the certain conferral and present enjoyment of eternal life to all who believe without exception. The certain conferral and present enjoyment of eternal life to all who believe without exception. He has come down to do the will of the Father. And what is the will of the Father? That all of His elect should certainly be saved with ultimate salvation, without exception. But the Father has another strand in His will, and it's this: that all who behold, who see, who behold and believe in the Son should have, as a present possession, eternal life and be raised at the last day.
You see the beautiful balance in the words of our Lord? The first expanded explanation focuses on the sovereignty of God. The Father has chosen a people; He has given them to the Son. The Son says, I will effect and apply My salvation to every single last one of them without exception. But here's the second part of His expanded explanation. You see, the element of man's responsibility comes to us in the state of our own sin and blindness and ignorance. We know nothing of the role of God's elect. We have no real right to pry into the role of God's elect. And so our Lord Jesus says, here's the Father's will, that in the accomplishment of salvation for My own, I stand before all men—these Jews, but also all men, and say this: This is the will of My Father, that every one of you who beholds Me, who sees Me and believes in Me, shall have eternal life, and I will raise you up on the last day.
If ever Jesus preached what we call the free offer of the gospel, it's here. It's right here in this text this morning. So the Lord Jesus says, as we sit here today, do you see Me? Do you behold Me? ‘Theoreo’ is the Greek verb used here. A different word is used from the word in verse 36, ‘horao,’ but there's no real fundamental difference; they're basically synonyms. Verse 36: our Lord said, "But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe." I've been in your presence, I've performed miracles, I've declared who I am and why I've come. “You have seen Me, and yet you do not believe.” And here our Lord says in verse 40, "This is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him" not just mere seeing, this is beyond seeing, this is seeing with faith. What is our Lord saying? Our Lord is saying that if you are to have eternal life two things must be true. Two things must be true.
You must behold the Son. You must behold the Son. You must see Him as He is revealed in the Scriptures, set forth in the preaching of the Word. In other words you must get serious about considering who Christ is, what Christ has come to do. No one is saved who deliberately says I've got no time to think of these things. I’ve got other things to do. My life is filled with different things. I don’t have time to ponder Christ. To ponder the things of Christ. My life is filled up with fun and games and pursuit of riches and gals and guys and whatever else is filling up my life. I’ve got no time for this. You can mark it down, you can go on living like this and you will go straight to hell, according to Scripture.
He says, but whoever sees me, whoever beholds Me, whoever beholds the Son; you come to the place where you say, I’m something more than my appetites, my body to be clothed, my hair to be cut, my friends to be entertained etc., etc. I have a never dying soul. And I must attend to the concerns of my soul and I know enough of the Scripture to know that Christ has been sent for the likes of sinners like me. And you begin to take seriously the Christ of Scriptures. And you behold Him but you not only behold Him, you believe upon Him. You entrust yourself to Him.
Now here is the problem. Here’s the problem some perhaps even here today have. Maybe you are sitting here today and you say to yourself, the concept of believing upon Him, it really, I’m having a hard time with it; It eludes me. It eludes me because I’ve been brought up in a Christian home and a Christian church and I was sent to a Christian school and I don’t know anything I have heard that I blatantly, flat out deny. I believe it all, yet I know I’m not a Christian. What’s wrong with me?
This chapter is one of the most precious chapters for people that are exactly in that dilemma. Because in this chapter Jesus, who gives constant emphasis to the need for faith in Him, He gives two beautiful images of what faith is and how faith acts; saving faith. And I want to spend a few minutes tracing out those two images together. Look with me at the text. I want us to see that faith is central. Faith is central. You find it in verses 28-29. Look at that, go back,“Therefore they said to Him, ‘what should we do so that we may work the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘this is the work of God, that you,’” —what? — “‘believe in Him whom He has sent.’” Jesus, give us a list of things to do; and He says there is only one thing you ought to do and it no work at all, it is faith, believe.
Here our Lord said this is the central issue, you must believe on the One the Father sent. Again He gives the same emphasis in vs 35, look at it, “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.’” And in our passage vs 40, “everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." But what are those two images of faith that the Lord gives again and again in this context?
Number one, you already know them, we've come across them already, but I want to emphasize them here today. Number one, coming to Him. And the second image is eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Coming to Him and eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Now, tighten your seatbelt and look at several passages that very, very clearly set this before us.
Number one, coming to Him. That's the first image, coming to Him. Well, let's stay in this chapter. Verse 37, "All that the Father gives Me will” —what? — “come,” — come, come— “to Me.” Verse 35, go back to verse 35, “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me’’’ — here it is, “comes to Me” — “‘will never hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.’" Faith is coming to Christ, "and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out" (verse 37b). Verse 44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." Verse 45, "It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me." Coming to Christ—keep that in mind. Coming to Christ. Coming to Christ.
Now, what happens? Think with me, what happens when you come to a person? What happens when you come to a person? Well, you make a movement of your person towards that person, and when you do, the whole you moves to the whole them, right? If I were to say to one of the brothers sitting behind the media desk, and let's say, you know, Nathan is sitting there, and if I were to say, Nathan, I'm coming to you, and I step aside from behind the pulpit, what's happening? I, in the whole of my person, am making a motion towards Nathan and the whole of his person. Jesus says, do you know what faith is? It's the whole of you moving towards a whole Christ. That's what faith is. The whole of you moving to a whole Christ.
So the chapter ends with the people, look at it now in contrast, turning away in unbelief. And how is it described? Notice the language in contradistinction, in contrast. Verse 66, "As a result of this, many of His disciples went away and were not walking with Him anymore." That's unbelief. It's moving away from Christ, turning away from Christ to whatever else you move. You move from Christ. And when you turn to Christ, you turn away from something to Christ, to something else. That's how the Thessalonians were described in 1 Thessalonians 1—they turned away from idols, they turned to the living God. That's always what happens with faith. There's a turning from and a turning to.
So our text tells us that if we would know God's salvation, we must behold, we must see and believe the One who is sent. And what is believing? It's coming to Christ. Your whole person moving to Him, coming as you are. Just as I am, coming as you are in your guilt, in your lostness, in your blindness, in your deadness, and yet nonetheless coming to Him for life, for forgiveness, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, to have power to live to the praise of His glory. You move towards Christ.
But then there's another way faith is illustrated and set before us in this passage, and it's called eating and drinking of His flesh and of His blood. And we've come across this before, but we are repeating it because our Lord repeats it. Obviously, it is important for us to get it. Look at verse 50, "This is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die." "I am the living bread” —verse 51— “that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and also the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh."
Go to verse 53, "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.'" Now watch verse 54, "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." The exact same thing from verse 40, "Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day."
So if you were to look at this, verse 54, verse 40, one of two things is true. Either you've got three ways of salvation—one is believing, one is coming, one is eating and drinking, or they are all one and the same. Well, they're all one and the same. What is believing? It's coming to Christ. It's eating and drinking of the flesh and the blood of Christ.
That is, what do we do when we eat? What do we do when we drink? When you take that glass of water and you drink it, you take something that's external, objective to you, and by drinking, you assimilate it and you make it part of you. It becomes part of you. The water now is part of you. Once you drink the water, no longer are the water and you two separate, distinct entities. And when you eat, the same thing happens.
As we saw last Lord's Day, you have food, here's food, objective to you, bread, let's say; you take it, you masticate it, you chew it, you swallow it. The bread now goes through the digestive processes and becomes part of you. You and the bread are one. You and the water are one. What does it mean to believe? It means far more than simply tipping your mental hat to the facts of the Bible, tipping your mental hat to the facts concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. It's beyond that. It's eating and drinking His flesh and blood, which means I assimilate to myself not just Christ as incarnate, but Christ as crucified for sinners; Christ as dying in the place of sinners, who He is and what He's done, His person and His works.
That's why Paul could say in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me." I eat His flesh. I drink His blood. I live by a crucified Christ. He is my life. He is not external to me. He's not external to me. Someone to whom I tipped my mental hat ten years ago, and in so doing, I'm all fixed up forever. He goes on His way, I go on my way, no, no, no, no. Once I drink the water, once I eat the bread, the water and the bread and I are one. That's it.
That's what the Bible sets as the central truth of salvation. You know what the Bible calls it, really? Union with Christ. Union with Christ. That's what we're talking about. That's what it means to believe. A union effected from God's standpoint by the indwelling Spirit and from our standpoint by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Why did He come down from heaven? The general statement: not to do My own will, but to do the will of the Father. And what is the will of the Father? He gives us two aspects of that will. The one points us to the sovereign purpose and certain accomplishment by our Lord Jesus. Verse 39, "This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me, I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day." But the second is the will of the Father, that everyone sitting in this place who beholds through the preaching, the reading of the Word, beholds the Lord Jesus Christ and believes upon Him should have here and now eternal life and the assurance one day of being raised on the last day to be with the Lord forever.
I just simply exposited the text, but I'd like to leave us with some application this morning. And I want to leave us with three closing applications very briefly.
Application number one: Consider in these words of Jesus a solid assurance, a solid assurance and consolation to all true believers, child of God. Consider in these words solid assurance and consolation to every true believer. Oh, child of God, child of God, the One who came is God out of heaven, and He has power to do everything He's committed to do.
This is why we must cling tenaciously. This is a hill to die on. We must cling tenaciously to the biblical doctrine of the nature of the person of Jesus Christ. He is true God and true man, two distinct natures in one person forever, because Jesus is able to do what He does because He is who He is. That's why. If He were not who He is, He could not do what He says He came to do. He must be as much man as though He were not God and as much God as though He were not man.
I love how the shorter catechism beautifully puts it, asking the question, who is the Redeemer of God's elect? Answer: "The only Redeemer of God's elect is our Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever." That's our Savior. That's our Savior. And when you and I, child of God, beloved, when we feel our weakness in our impoverished state, to know that we have the fact that God has laid help upon One who is mighty, who carries on His work with all of the energy and power of the undiminished, undiluted deity—that's who our Helper is.
And as we come tempted, tossed, bloodied, bruised, bleeding in the fight, grieved, the writer to the Hebrews says: "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things like we are, yet without sin. Therefore” —in the light of that reality, therefore, — “let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace…” —not judgment, it's a throne of grace— “so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:15-16.
One of our kind, one of our kind is at the right hand of the Father. One who is identified with us, and I reverently say, bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh—the God-man. And dear child of God, He has taken upon His shoulders the responsibility of keeping you in the way of holiness and obedience. "To Him who is able to” — what? — “keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless" - that's the One. He's taken upon His shoulders the responsibility of keeping you in the way of holiness and obedience.
And when that time comes, for it is appointed unto man once to die, and when that time comes, when loved ones lay your remains in the earth, He's taken upon Himself the responsibility to make sure that He's gonna take your body out of the grave. Gravesites, when a child of God dies in the Lord, that box is lowered to the earth at the gravesite, I want to go over to the edge and say, you're not gonna be there forever. Jesus is coming, and He's gonna raise this brother, this sister on that day, resplendent, as Paul says, with a body like unto the body of His glory, whereby He is able to subdue everything unto Himself.
Child of God, be encouraged. The best is yet to come. The will of the Father is what Jesus came to do. And He said the will of the Father is that you would not be lost, that having entrusted yourself to Him, He is committed to keep you, to preserve you, even when your spirit is in His presence. “For to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord.” "I desire to depart and be with Christ," Paul said. But, but, but, He doesn't forget your rotting dust and my rotting dust. His eye is upon you, and He longs for the day when He will have all that He died to redeem and see fully the anguish of His soul. And then, and then, and then He will be satisfied. He's not satisfied just to have your perfected spirit in heaven, because He didn't just die to give you a perfected spirit. He died to give you a perfected body as well.
And there is a sense in which He has, and I say this very reverently, there is a sense in which He has a holy restlessness until He looks at you and says, ah, that's what I lived and died for, to have that grotesque, marred, scarred, twisted image-bearer of God looking just like Me, to the glory of the Father. And when He's accomplished all of that,1 Corinthians 15 says He's gonna turn the kingdom back to the Father so that God may be all in all. Hallelujah.
What a word of comfort for the true child of God. When you lay your loved ones in the earth, this is what you should be comforted with. Dear child of God, what a wonderful salvation is ours.
But then, the second word of application. Consider in these words that we've studied, a word of hopeful encouragement to troubled sinners. A word of hopeful encouragement to troubled sinners. A word of hopeful encouragement to troubled sinners. You may be here today aware of your sin and bondage, afraid of death, afraid of growing old, and you're gonna get there quicker than you think. As Job says, the years pass swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and in your sober moments, you say, yes, I know, I'm gonna get old, I'm gonna die. And you look at the incarnation, and you look at Jesus' words of explanation, "I have come down from heaven” —to do— “the will of Him who sent Me.” “This is the will… that everyone”—notice the individuality—”who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life."
Let me ask you this morning, my dear sinner friend, troubled, have you been beholding the Son in the preaching of the Word, in the Scriptures read? Now believe upon Him. Believe upon Him. Cast yourself upon Him. Roll the weight of your soul upon Him. Come to Him by the movement of your heart and will and affections. Go to Christ and say, Lord Jesus, be to me everything You said You would be to needy, desperate sinners, because that's what I bring to You. I bring to You, O Lord, my sinnerhood. I bring to You my unadorned, unqualified sinnerhood. Lord Jesus, I come just as I am.
You know what He says to you? "Him that comes to Me” — him that comes to Me — “I will never"— double negative - no, never — “cast out." And He'll take you. And He'll take you all the way to the end. He says, I'll receive you, yes. And I'll keep you, yes. And I've got news for you. I will never, never, ever relinquish you. Once you've come, you're Mine, you're Mine, you're Mine. And I'll keep you.
My dear sinner friend, maybe you're troubled with, I don't know, am I elect or non-elect? May I humbly, lovingly tell you that's none of your business? Your business is to own your sinnerhood and behold the Savior and believe. Eat His flesh, drink His blood. Say, Lord Jesus, crucified for sinners, I take You to be my Savior, my atoning sacrifice, my sovereign, risen Lord and Master. I embrace You, and Your promise is that I would have eternal life and I'd be raised up on that last day.
Oh, my troubled sinner friend, you need not leave this room troubled. You can leave this place rejoicing, rejoicing in a perfect Savior who invites you to Himself.
I have a final word of application. Thirdly, consider in these words a word of sober warning to every careless, every arrogant sinner. Jesus spoke those words in the presence of careless, stubborn, arrogant, unbelieving sinners. Look at their words in verses 41 and 42, they're “grumbling about Him, because He said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” "‘Is this not Jesus,’" —they said— "‘the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I've come down from heaven'?’"
They just heard these words: the one who sees and beholds and believes in the Son will have eternal life, and rather than saying, did we hear Him rightly? He says if we see Him and if we take in who He is and what He said and believe, we'll have eternal life. That's news too good to be true. That's not their reaction. Their arrogant, cynical, unbelieving disposition says, wait a minute, wait a minute—come down from heaven? No, no, no, no, no. He had His beginning back then some odd 30 years ago. Joseph is His father, Mary's His mother. We know too much about Him. Cynical, stubborn, arrogant, unbelieving.
And Jesus tells them their true condition unashamedly. As we will see next time, Lord willing, in verse 44, that all who behold and believe have been drawn. And Jesus goes to the root of their rotten pride, and He says, you are spiritually impotent. He goes on to say in verse 45, you are spiritually ignorant. He says, the reason you're not coming to Me is that you've not heard and learned from the Father. You think you know the Scriptures in your arrogance. Scripture comes out of your ears, but you don't know them really. You don't know them at all. You've not been taught of the Father. You're simply impotent, and you're simply ignorant.
And then He goes on to say in verse 53, you are not only spiritually impotent and ignorant, but you are spiritually dead. “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." My friend, in your unbelief and arrogance and pride, you've put yourself up here. You think you're somebody. You think you're in control. You think you're the master of your own destiny. No, no, no, no. To use biblical language, you're a little worm of the dust, someone who cannot draw your next breath unless God, the sovereign God, gives it to you.
Paul said, "He gives to all life and breath and all things." God can decide to say, the next breath is your last one. Understand this. God can decide to say, the next breath is your last one. What are you gonna do? And what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do when the death rattle is in your throat? What are you gonna do? Raise your fist and say, no, God, You must give me more breaths. I demand it? My arrogant, proud, unbelieving sinner, face what you really are—impotent, ignorant, dead, utterly dependent, even for your next breath.
And yet, Jesus' words are for you today. "This is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life." Christ is offering life to impotent, ignorant, dead sinners. What an amazing offer. And in His name, only in His name, I stand before you this morning, offering you that same life in His name. If you're that needy, desperate sinner, come to Him. Give your life to Him. Eat His flesh and drink His blood.
Let's pray:
Our Father, oh, our Father, how we thank You and praise You for these wonderful words of our Lord Jesus. We thank You for gathering us together as Your people, that we might consider those words, and we pray that You would make those words, words of life and encouragement to Your people. That we would press on with a renewed and deepened confidence in spite of our remaining sin, in spite of our waywardness, in spite of our dim and dark minds, that we are being kept by Your power, and that we shall be raised at the last day.
What a great encouragement for us, Your people. And Father, we pray that You help those desperate sinners who may be sitting here this morning in our midst, who have been reflecting on their dire state, desperate, dire state. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, we plead, bring them home to Christ today.
And oh Lord, oh Lord, for the careless, the arrogant, unbelieving sinner. Oh, Lord, we plead with You, humble them. Oh, God, humble them, for You resist the proud, but give grace to the humble. Seal, then, Your word to the prophet of each and every one of us. This we ask in Christ's name and for His glory, amen.
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