I Came To Do The Father's Will Series

SERIES: WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT WHY HE CAME

“I CAME TO DO THE FATHER’S WILL”

JOHN 6:37-40

INTRODUCTION

Today we finish our Christmas series. It’s not been the typical Christmas series where we look at the traditional scenes about Jesus’ birth – Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the angels, the wise men. It’s a series called “What Jesus Said About Why He Came.” During the Christmas season, we celebrate “God with us” – when God came to earth as a man. That God-man’s name is Jesus and during His time here on earth, He made several declarations concerning why He came. During this series we’ve been looking at those statements and how they affect our lives. Today’s statement: “I Came to Do the Father’s Will.”

A man was bitten by a dog and went to see his doctor. The doctor checks the wound, takes some samples, disinfects the wound, and sends the man back out to the waiting room to wait for the results of the rabies test.

The doctor comes out to the waiting room some time later to speak to another patient and notices that the man bitten by the dog is furiously writing on a piece of paper. The doctor walks over to him and says, “I doubt that your problem is all that serious. In any case, there’s no need to make out a will.” The man says, “I’m not making out a will. I’m making a list of people I want to bite.”

What is a “will”? A will, in this sense, is our choices or determinations concerning what happens to our material possessions when we die. Jesus claimed that He came to earth to do the will of His Father. Jesus meant that He was here to follow the Father’s choice or determinations. He didn’t seek to please himself but to please the Father. Jesus’ obedience to the Father’s will has provided us not only with an example to follow but also with blessings beyond measure. Let’s look together the implications of Jesus’ statement and how it empowers us to live according to the Father’s will.

Jn. 6:37-40 – “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive

away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is

the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will

raise him up at the last day.”

PLAN

In the broader scope of this passage, Jesus is speaking to a group of people who sought Him out after He had fed them with a miracle using only five small loaves of barley bread and two small fish. Those who camped out following that meal woke up the next morning and discovered that Jesus and His disciples had gone to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. They went to look for Him because they wanted breakfast. They wanted more bread.

Jesus tells them about the Bread of Life – referring to Himself. This bread would be a bread which would feed spiritual hunger. In Matthew 5:6, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

The people became confused because their vision was on earthly, material things. Jesus clarifies His teaching. First, Jesus reminds them that this teaching is not new or contrary to what they had already been taught. Then Jesus tells them that He is actively involved in doing what the Father wanted Him to do. Jesus basically said, “I exist not to bring glory to myself but to Him who sent me.”

Earlier in the Gospel of John, Chapter 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well and convinces her that He is the one who can change her life. While she’s gone back into the town to bring others to meet the “Promised One”, the disciples return from going after food. As they pass the food around, they encourage Jesus to eat. Jesus tells that that He has food to eat that they don’t understand. The disciples get a little upset because they think someone else has brought Him food. But Jesus says in Jn. 4:34 – “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.”

Jesus claimed throughout His earthly ministry that His authority, His basis for what He did and said came from Heaven and not from earth. In Jn. 5:30, Jesus says, “…I seek not to please myself but Him who sent me.” Then in vs. 43, He says, “I have come in my Father’s name.” Jesus came with God’s plan. He came to do the Father’s choices, determinations, and decisions.