Scripture Introduction
We rarely think of Jesus as needing to persevere. Yet he faced greater rejection and more opportunities for discouragement than any of us could imagine—he was forsaken by the whole world, and even by God. It would be wise of us, therefore, to look to him for a theology for survival, for making it to the end. He provides just that in John 6.35-40. [Read. Pray.]
Introduction
After a lecture at a Bible conference, some pastors were discussing predestination versus free will. The conversation quickly turned into debate, however, and soon the argument grew so heated that sides were drawn and the group broke into two factions, each moving to different parts of the auditorium.
One man, not sure to which camp he belonged, stood for a moment in the aisle, trying to decide (theologically, but also very physically) which way to go. At last he made up his mind to join in with the predestination crowd. He went in their direction and sought to enter the circle they formed. Someone said to him: “Who sent you here?”
“Nobody sent me. I chose to come on my own!”
“You choose?” they practically shouted. “You can’t come in here of your own free will. You belong with them!”
He quickly walked toward the free-will side and tried to join in their conversation. But one of the group asked, “When did you decide to join us?”
“I didn’t decide, I was sent here,” he answered.
“Sent here!” they were horrified. “You can’t join us unless you choose to by your own free will.” And so he was excluded from both companies.
Maybe you feel that way about these debates. Some vehemently insist on predestination and sovereign election; others demand with equal vigor free-will and divine foreknowledge. Both solutions seem to deny your experience.
I am not so foolish this morning to imagine I could resolve to everyone’s satisfaction what many smarter and more winsome Christians have found inevitably elicits disagreement. What we can do together is allow Jesus to teach us both the content of the doctrine and the proper way to use this truth. My personal conviction is that the Bible teaches what is known as “Calvinism.” If you are unfamiliar with that term, that is fine—it is not necessary to know the word. It is simply a title to quickly identify a way of understanding passages like the one we are studying today.
I want to be clear about my position because I am aware that my beliefs are sometimes vilified quite adamantly. A quick internet search finds writers claiming that Calvinistic pastors: lie, disagree with God’s word, promote heresy, grossly insult Almighty God, are false, hellish, and cultic. I hope I am not all of these this morning, but neither do I want to be naïve about the strength of passion uncovered by this topic.
We might ask, “Is there any good to this endeavor? Maybe we should not even bring up such controversial topics. Doctrine divides, especially doctrines like predestination and election. Can anything good come from it?”
But these ideas are not something we made up. It is, after all, Jesus’ teaching which causes such consternation. Maybe we should ask, “How can we benefit while avoiding some of the conflict?” We do so by carefully observing the context. Look at verse 40: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Jesus speaks here of remaining faithful until the end. The doctrine of predestination and election is not primarily an evangelistic message, but one on perseverance. How do we stand against the world, the flesh and the devil? What repels despair when we are again overcome with sin? How do we remain in the faith until the end? Jesus teaches on perseverance and gives at least five benefits of believing him. First…
1. To Explain Varying Results, We Must Believe Jesus’ Teaching (John 6.35-38)
Never has a more effective communicator spoken; never did a more gentle and gracious man serve; never was there a more compassionate touch from a physician; never were the inner motives of the heart as correctly known and precisely ministered to; never has a prophet walked as closely with God and spoken such perfect and clear truth.
Michael Card sings of him:
“You and me we use so very many clumsy words. The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard. When the Father’s Wisdom wanted to communicated His love, He spoke it in one final perfect Word.
“And so the Father’s fondest thought took on flesh and bone. He spoke the living luminous Word, at once His will was done….”
“He spoke the Incarnation and then so was born the Son. His final word was Jesus; He needed no other one. Spoke flesh and blood so He could bleed and make a way divine, and so was born the baby who would die to make it mine.”
This is no ordinary man, but God’s Messiah, the Savior of the world. He offers life; but they reject him. He gives food and drink to delight forever our longings; but they refuse. Does this poor response suggest that Jesus’ mission is (in some sense) a failure? Jesus answers that question by reminding us that God’s saving purposes cannot be thwarted or frustrated.
D. A. Carson (Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, p. 290): “Jesus’ confidence does not rest in the potential for positive response amongst well-meaning people. Far from it: his confidence is in his Father to bring to pass the Father’s redemptive purposes: All that the Father gives me will come to me. Jesus’ confidence in the success of his mission is frankly predestinarian.”
What disappointing results discourage you this morning? Something about the church? Your work? Efforts at evangelism, or fixing your kids, or changing your parents? Helen and I often remind each other: “You can’t get people to do what you want them to.” Results are poor motivators.
In fact, looking to other’s responses often discourages us more. Just this week, Pat Robertson reported on CBN a church in California where members are healing people. They tell of the church’s prayer chain pleading with God over a baby born with a heart defect. “Then the doctor—an unbeliever—suddenly shouted as he was doing an echocardiogram on the baby’s heart, ‘Would you look at that!’ Amy Goodall watched with the doctor as the hole in her baby’s heart disappeared on the echocardiogram. She said, ‘Look at that! This heart, it’s healing right here in front of me.’” http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/190055.aspx
Now hundreds of desperate churches will send their pastors and leaders to Bethel Church to learn the secret of miraculous healings. Is that the key to perseverance—discover how to get better results from God?
Jesus did everything correctly, but the people reject him. So where does he apply for confidence and hope when the results are not great? “All the Father gives me will come to me…. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Success does not depend on a response from people but upon the work and will of God.
How does this relate to us? Two key principles.
First, we must commit ourselves to doing God’s will. Even the apostle Paul said to the church in Corinth, “It is not important how you judge me, or even how I judge myself. What matters is the Lord’s judgment.” Get off the roller coaster of measuring yourself by other’s responses. You cannot make people do what you want—not your family, not your boss, not your spouse, not even the people you die for. Relax, God is in charge. Be faithful and trust a sovereign God.
Second, however, we must guard ourselves against using this theology as an excuse for self-serving ends. It is easy for me to brag that I am seeking the approval of God instead of the trying to be a people-pleasers, when all the while I am really seeking my own pleasure. Jesus perseveres, not by being selfish and not by seeking the applause of men, but by committing himself to the will of God and by remaining confident that the Father’s will, will be done. Let us believe Jesus so that our hope and joy is not tossed to and fro on the waves of people’s response.
2. To Encourage Active Faith, We Must Believe Jesus’ Teaching (John 6.35,37b)
The story is told of an old German farmer by the name of Klein, an ungodly and coarse man. He lived across the street from the town’s Lutheran church, but he never went in. He did not believe the gospel; he thought such stories were for other people. One spring day, with the windows open, the children’s Sunday School class sang the hymn that goes: “Saved by grace alone! This is all my plea: Jesus died for all mankind, and Jesus died for me.”
Mr. Klein could hear the children singing fairly clearly through the open window. But when they came to the line, “Jesus died for all mankind,” he thought they sang: “Jesus died for old man Klein.” The hope that Jesus died for him personally sank into his heart, he went right over to the church, began attending services, and was eventually converted and baptized as a believer.
“Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.” Even if you are a great sinner, come to Jesus. Even if you have failed God a thousand days in a thousand ways, come to Jesus. If you have resisted his call or rebelled against his kindness, come to Jesus. If you are old, come to Jesus. If you are a child, come to Jesus. He will not cast you out.
Note well, while speaking clearly of God’s predestining election, Jesus encourages active faith by calling you to believe. The Bible does not teach that we are robots lacking responsibility. And in spite of the harsh criticisms of Calvinism, John Calvin himself did not teach such.
John Calvin: “Whoever indulges in curious inquiries about eternal predestination…desires to be saved contrary to the purpose of God. The election of God is in itself hidden and secret; the Lord manifests it by calling, that is, when he bestows on us this blessing of calling us. They are madmen, therefore, who seek their own salvation or that of others in the whirlpool of predestination, not keeping the way of salvation which is exhibited to them…. When God has effectually called us to faith in Christ, let this have as much weight with us as if he had engraven his seal to ratify his decree concerning our salvation…. To every man, therefore, his faith is a sufficient attestation of the eternal predestination of God, so that it would be a shocking sacrilege to carry the inquiry farther; for that man offers an aggravated insult to the Holy Spirit, who refuses to assent to his simple testimony.”
Believe Jesus! Come to him by faith!
3. To Comfort Struggling Believers, We Must Believe Jesus’ Teaching (John 6.39)
If you owned sheep, you would worry about many things, not the least of which are wolves and wild dogs. But a faithful shepherd must guard the sheep from more than hungry predators. On July 8, 2005, the Associated Press reported on a sheep problem in Istanbul, Turkey. “First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched nearly 1,500 others follow, each leaping off the same cliff…. In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white pile. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher, cushioning the fall, the daily newspaper Aksam reported…. The loss was in excess of US$100,000.”
Someone explained the doctrine of election by saying: “The Lord is always voting for a man, and the Devil is always voting against him. Then the man himself votes, and that breaks the tie! So vote with God.”
My problem is that my heart votes against God. Sin and doubt and selfishness and evil thoughts and pride and anger—and all the rest—were not eradicated when I came to faith in Jesus. They remain with me and cause me to resist God and submit to the Devil.
How wonderful to know that my hope of persevering is not based on my perseverance, but upon Jesus’ preservation. He will lose nothing! Find your comfort in the effectiveness of the good shepherd—none of his sheep are lost.
4. To Humble Prideful Passions, We Must Believe Jesus’ Teaching (John 6.37a, 39a)
If these were the only two sentences in the paragraph, we would be forced to conclude that salvation is a mechanical process governed only by the strict determinism of God’s will. Such is clearly not the case. Note well, however, that Jesus is in no way ashamed of the sovereign work of God in giving a chosen people to His Son to save.
A wise, elderly woman in the congregation, hearing the preacher struggle to explain predestination, said: “Ah, I have long settled that point. For if God had not chosen me before I was born, I am sure he would have seen nothing in me to have chosen me afterward.” She has fingered the problem. The harshness of God’s electing grace is not that God chooses who will be saved; it is the realization that we would never chose him.
C. S. Lewis paints this well in The Last Battle. The lion, Aslan, the Christ-figure, has defeated his enemies, among which is a group of unhappy dwarves who have been held captive in a dirty, dark stable. Rather than treat them as enemies, Aslan surrounds them with green grass, blue sky, and fresh air. But the dwarves, so intent on self-preservation, huddle in a little circle as though still imprisoned.
“Aslan…will you do something for these dwarfs?” someone asked. “Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you what I can do, and what I cannot do.” Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the dwarfs’ knees: pies…pigeons…trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you would find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at. Never thought we’d come to this.”
“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
God dwells with the contrite and lifts the lowly. The truth of election humbles our pride because it reveals out blindness to beauty and the foolishness of our rejection of deep joy and lasting pleasure.
5. To Enable Persevering Faith, We Must Believe Jesus’ Teaching (John 6.40)
In Philippians 1.6, Paul writes: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Paul suffered a great deal; many opposed him; fellow believers turned on him; he was criticized, beaten, jailed and stoned. Where did he find strength to continue? He knew God never gives up on what he has begun. Faith bears fruit on the day of resurrection.
6. Conclusion
When the Golden Gate Bridge was being built in 1936 over San Francisco Bay, construction got behind schedule because several workers died when they fell from the scaffolding. Engineers and administrators could find no solution and delays were increasing. Finally, someone suggested a gigantic net be hung under the bridge to catch any who fell. In spite of the enormous cost, the net was installed.
After that, everything changed. The worker or two who fell into the net were saved. Soon, all the lost time was regained as the workers placed their faith in the net.
God’s choosing who will be saved is a net which gives faith in Christ the courage to flourish. When we fear falling, when we fear failure, when we fear losing love and acceptance—we hold back, we slow down, we withdraw, we place less trust in both God and other people. Eventually, we grow proud, hard and hurt. Though we try to measure up, we fail and we fall and we die.
But when our faith is in the net of the Father’s perfect choice and Christ’s preserving love, we perform better because we think nothing of our performance. We rejoice in doing God’s good works because we no longer must keep track of our good works. We love both God and our neighbor because we trust that God has first love us. We delight to believe Jesus and do the Father’s will, because we know that it is the Father’s will that Jesus raise us up on the last day. You think about that.
