"Jesus Explains His Appearing"

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. 38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 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. 40 “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”

This is approximately the midway point of the earthly ministry of Jesus, chronologically speaking. It is nearing the end of a year of great favor that Jesus had with the people, and the real animosity of the religious leaders is about to begin, culminating in rejection of Him by the nation.

It is not an insigificant thing to take note of, that although Jesus has already been teaching and healing and performing other miracles, this confrontation and His discourse on the Bread of Life comes on the heels of His miraculously feeding the five thousand and then walking on the sea of Galilee. In short, the more publicly known and witnessed the works that prove His Deity, the more openly Jesus is rejected.

In verses 17 and 18 of chapter 5 the Apostle records:

“But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” 18 For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”

Then in the discourse that follows wherein Jesus reveals His identity in His teaching, He tells them this:

“But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me. 37 “And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. 38 “You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. 39 “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40 and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” Jn 5:36-40

Do you hear what He was saying to them? The works that He was doing, which they were witnessing, were the very works that the Father sent Him to do. How could any man do them otherwise? Even Nicodemus, in an earlier meeting, admitted to Jesus that he and his fellow Pharisees had acknowledged amongst themselves that God must be with a man in order for Him to do the works Jesus was doing.

Then Jesus says that the Father has testified of Him. When? When did the Father testify? Well, at His birth through the angels for one, then at His baptism there was the voice from Heaven testifying of His pleasure with His Son. So Jesus isn’t speaking poetically here; He isn’t speaking metaphorically. He is saying, My Father spoke from heaven to testify to who I am but you couldn’t hear it because you’re spiritually deaf. You don’t have His word abiding in you, yet you search that same word in vain looking for Me, and you don’t find Me, yet it is these very Scriptures that testify of Me, and you continue to reject life.

Now here is the point I’m driving at in this too-long introduction.

Numerous times – go through and count them in your own Bible study – Jesus speaks of Himself as having been sent. He speaks of having come from the Father. He speaks of doing the things that the Father sent Him to do.

If someone sends someone else from one location to another, does that not imply previous deliberation between the two; and doesn’t it indicate that they have previously agreed on this mission and its objectives?

My friends, listen to verse 38 of John 6 once more. “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

JESUS CAME DOWN

Jesus came down. He came from Heaven, and He in His humanity was well-aware that He came down and why He came down, and from Whom He came.

No one else in all the history of mankind has been able to make that claim with any degree of sanity about them.

What can you and I say? Two human beings, a man and a woman, joined in sexual union and procreated and I am the result.