Believing Means Coming To Jesus Series

Father in heaven, draw us to you. Please draw us to you just now so that we might worship you with all of our hearts. We’re done with mere knowledge and information, we long for Your Presence and Your Power. Lord we are drawing near to You just now, please draw near to us through Your Word and Your Spirit.

Let’s open our Bibles to John chapter 6 this morning. Once upon a time, there was a man who had two sons, and the younger son wanted to go out and experience the world, so he asked his father for his inheritance. That was a slap in the face to the father, because a child never gets an inheritance until the parents die, so he is saying to the father, “I wish you were dead, I want my money.” So the father gives his son the inheritance and the son leaves and goes out into the big world, full of excitement and dreams and cash. And he makes friends easily and he parties and he experiences all that the world has to offer.

And then his money runs out, and so do his friends, and he ends up taking care of pigs to try to earn a living. One day as he and the pigs are sharing their lunch together, it dawns on him that he has lost it all, that his life is miserable, and that even the servants in his father’s house have it better than he does. So he decides to return, hoping only to become one of the servants. He knows he has squandered his inheritance and he knows he has shamed the family name, and he knows he is unworthy to be a son anymore. So he comes slinking back, fearing the lecture he is going to get. In his mind he hears people asking, “you lost it all? How could you do that? How could you live like that? How can you even come back here knowing what you’ve done to the family name?” He already feels the shame of his behavior and now he feels the disapproving eyes of all those he is returning to, and he braces himself for their mocking comments.

But in the distance he sees a figure coming toward him. As it gets closer he sees that it is his father, and his father is running toward him, and his arms are open and his eyes have tears in them, and the father nearly knocks him over and embraces him and holds him and kisses him. At first the boy is speechless, wondering if the father maybe has the wrong boy, and he begins to recount his list of crimes, stating that he has sinned against heaven and his father, and that he is no longer worthy to be his son, but the father interrupts him by shouting to a servant: “Jeb, bring my son some clothes, the family ring, some sandals, oh and Jeb, call catering, we’re going to throw a homecoming party like we’ve never had before. You see my son, my son was dead and now he is alive, my son was lost and now he is found.”

And Jesus Christ says in John 6:37, “whoever who comes to me, I will never drive away.” Whoever! No matter what they’ve done, no matter where they’ve been, no matter what they’ve lost, if they come to me, like this son came to his father, I will receive them and love them, and meet their needs, and never drive them away. My sermon this morning is simply called “Come to Jesus.”

Well we’ve been in John chapter 6 for one month now, having seen Jesus miraculously feed some 20,000 people with a few loaves and fishes in verses 1-15, then seeing Jesus miraculously walk on the water in verses 16-24, and then last week we saw Jesus’ miraculous teaching where He declared that He is the Bread from heaven. He said that just like God reigned down bread out of heaven for the Israelites when they were in the wilderness, so Jesus is the True Bread Who comes down from heaven to give life to the world, and that all who believe in Him will live forever. We saw that true believing in Jesus is defined by feasting on Him. And so He connects what He did in feeding the multitude with the reason why He came, to give His own life to save and nourish all who believe. So that what He did and what He taught correspond perfectly.

And last week we said that Jesus defines true believing in 3 ways: the first is feasting on Jesus. True believing is not merely assenting to some facts about Jesus, it is feeding on Him and drinking Him in.