“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.
I had no choice, it wasn’t my plan, and it was even some years into my existence before I was old enough and cognizant enough to understand what anyone was telling me when they tried to explain that process.
Friends and family, people of this world, born into this world through human parents, each come to a place in their life when and where they begin to ask, ‘Why am I here?’ ‘Is there a purpose in my being born and living on this earth?’ ‘What is the meaning of life – what is the meaning of MY life!’
And we all know that some of the most heart-wrenching stories of failure and strife and unrest and violence and even war in the history of men have stemmed ultimately from Godless men and women seeking their own destiny, struggling against the powers of time and nature to grab what they can get in their insecurity and greed and emptiness, striving to be the masters of their own souls and in some cases the souls of others, because they were unable to find the answers to those questions. They didn’t understand, they went their own way, they squandered and were squandered, no lasting and eternal good could ever come from them (check Romans 3:10-18) and please believe me when I tell you today, child of the earth. Even you who are self-confident and successful and purposeful in your goals, and perhaps even spending your life sacrificially to help the downtrodden and defend the weak and feed the needy, yes, even you, will leave this world having accomplished nothing beyond the brief benefits of a few years to a few people and go into eternity alone and lost and empty if you are not one for whom Christ died and rose again.
The only lasting value any man woman or child will or can ever have is as a purchased vessel, surrendered to and used by the God and Creator of all for His glory and for His purpose.
You began to exist in the womb of a woman and began at that point to move toward whatever you would be.
But Jesus came down.
“No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man.” Jesus said to Nicodemus…
Now this is important, because if you claim to be a believer in Jesus Christ, if you are part of His church, if you hold that the Word of God is true, then you believe Christ existed eternally, co-existent with the Father and the Holy Spirit, three Persons in one eternal God-head, and according to a plan determined in the Holy counsel of the Triune God-head before creation, Christ, the second Person of the God-head by the will of the Father and by a pre-determined manner and time, came down to the earth, by the Holy Spirit was conceived in the womb of a virgin, was born into the world in the manner of all flesh, grew from a newborn infant to a child to a man, and while being fully Man and also fully Divine He perfectly accomplished all that the Father sent Him to do, culminating in the cross of Calvary, three days in the tomb, resurrection from the dead, and ascension back to Heaven from which He had come down.
There are many false religions in this world. There are many cults – a few of them we could call ‘mainline’ cults; that is, the larger and best known – and they all have their distinctive teachings to which people are drawn as they hear the lies that suit them best.
The one thing, or at least one of the main things, they all have in common though, is that Jesus had a beginning. If you were to research them you would find that they either have Him beginning in heaven or some other spiritual realm, or beginning on earth as a human baby and attaining to a god-like state through his strength of character and magnanimous deeds and so forth. They are all wrong.
How can they hold to these ridiculous notions, at the same time claiming to worship Him, when out of His own mouth and on so many occasions Jesus alluded to His own eternality by saying He came into this world for a pre-determined purpose and on mission from the Father’s Throne?
He is God, He was in the beginning with God, through Him all that has been made was made, and in the fullness of time He came down.
WHY DID JESUS COME DOWN?
So going finally back to our text verses, we ask, ‘why did Jesus come down?’ And we find that we don’t have to guess. He gave the answer.
He stated it this way. “…not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
Now what do you suppose He meant by beginning with ‘not to do My own will’?
The first question we might ask is, why would the will of Jesus differ from the will of the Father? And the answer would be that it would not as Second Person of the co-existent and eternal God-head.
In His humanity however, if He were to yield to the temptations of humanness, He might. For example, in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest and the sufferings that followed:
“And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” Matt 26:39
And we know that at the beginning of His earthly ministry He was led into the wilderness where He was tested in the Devil’s temptations to put His own comforts and worldly glory before the will and glory of the Father; temptations which He resisted with answers from Scripture until the Devil left Him there.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us:
“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” 4:15
And if we want to know the reason for those temptations He endured we go to Hebrews 2:18
“For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.”
Jesus identified Himself with mankind in every way apart from sin, so that He might be our faithful and merciful High Priest – which is stated in verse 17 of Hebrews 2.
Therefore in His humanity He had free will to choose, but He perfectly chose to do the will of the Father who sent Him and for that the Father expressed His good pleasure with the Son, and demonstrated that pleasure by raising Him from the dead.
WHAT IS THE FATHER’S WILL?
Who could make this stuff up? Who would EVER make this up? A God who becomes a Man while maintaining His Deity, yet yielding His will to One He calls Father, so that He might identify Himself with creatures who have become His enemies and therefore deserve death; but He does all of this so that He might rescue them? Who would make this up?
Who would conceive of a God, willing to divest Himself of the independent exercise of His own divine attributes and submit Himself fully to the trust of the Father, take on the weakness of human flesh, and let Himself be slapped, ridiculed, insulted, tortured, ripped to shreds, humiliated and nailed like a piece of meat to hang in the hot sun and die, in order to pay the penalty in full of sinful rebellion against Himself for those who did all of this to Him? Who would conceive of that?
And THIS was the Father’s will? YES! YES!
“He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. 6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? 9 His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. 10 But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. 11 As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities.” Isa 53:3-11
This was the Father’s will – His death. This was the Father’s will – His life. This was the Father’s will, that His Son by His life and death and resurrection would with His blood purchase all the Father would redeem back to Himself, and that none would be lost.
This is the Father’s will, said Jesus, “…that everyone who believes the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” (6:40)
John 17:12
“While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.”
John 18:9
“…to fulfill the word which He spoke, “Of those whom You have given Me I lost not one.”
WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR OUR UNDERSTANDING AND HOPE?
If you were observant you may have noticed that I jumped into our text verses at verse 38, seemingly neglecting verse 37. Here is why I waited.
This is the basis for our understanding of what Jesus is teaching and proclaiming in these verses; it is the basis for our hope.
“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” 6:37
All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me.
Friend you need to understand and believe today the truth that the Bible teaches. God chooses. God elects. Don’t let this doctrine of predestination be a stumbling block to you in your faith and in your obedience to the truth of God’s Word.
The Father gives those He has chosen and the Son will Himself raise them up on the last day.
If salvation was universal there would be no reason for Jesus to specify that there are those the Father has given Him. He would simply say ‘all’.
If it was true that men made the choice to follow God and to believe in His Son, Jesus would have said ‘all who choose to believe’, not ‘all the Father gives’.
Listen. Do you remember the account of the risen Christ calling out to His disciples from the sea shore after they in their despondency over His death had gone back to fishing?
They had fished all night but had caught nothing. Experienced fishermen, who knew the sea and knew their nets, who knew the habits of fish and the best places and times to cast, had caught nothing.
Then in the morning Jesus called to them from the shore. They didn’t realize it was He. But He said to them,
“Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch.” So they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. Jn 21:6
Now I ask you; was there a wall going down from the bottom of their boat to the bottom of the sea? Of course not.
Their boat floated on the surface of the water and sea life was free to pass back and forth under and all around it – yet they had caught nothing.
But Jesus, whose voice even the winds and waves obey, gives them the seemingly absurd command to cast their nets on the right side of the boat, and so doing, they snare a catch that can hardly be hauled aboard.
What does this mean? It means that the Ruler of all nature is the One who selects, and it is my firm conviction that each fish that ended up in that net was called there by Him.
We’re not told that every fish in the sea swam to the net. We’re not told that a certain number of fish were caught in the net. We’re told that Jesus first indicated His awareness that they had caught nothing, then gave a command and the result was that their nets were full.
Now I’m not going off on some new and strange teaching in this. I’m simply pointing out to you that it is men who fish all night, but it is Jesus who fills the net.
In verse 44 of this chapter we’re studying He declares very plainly,
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”
None of us knows who is chosen to fill the net and who is passed by. That is why we can fish all night and catch nothing. We can only continue to cast our nets – and if I was teaching a sermon on missions I would probably go on to expound the necessity of listening to the Lord’s leading and casting our evangelistic ‘nets’ at His direction.
But it is the Father who draws and gives to the Son and the Son loses none of those given to Him by the Father. He fills the net by the power that calmed the storm; that called Lazarus to the mouth of the tomb, that said ‘Let there be light’ and the light was.
Lastly, I want you to see the second half of verse 37.
“…and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out”
Whether you are a Spirit-filled believer in Jesus Christ or you have never come to Him in repentance from sin and faith for your salvation, this is what you need to hear today.
All who are His are given Him by the Father, and it is only by the grace and the power of God that any do come. But having drawn them, and having given them life, and having established them as sons and daughters in righteousness, secure before His Throne, He makes the solemn promise that they will never be cast away. They will never be rejected. They will never be forsaken by Him.
This is what the songwriter was rejoicing over when he penned the words,
“How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
“The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake!”
HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION - John Rippon 1787
How did Jesus explain His appearing? Why did He come down to the world?
Because the Father’s will was that the Son bear all the wrath of God against sin in His body on the cross, so that the Father, just and the One who justifies, might give to the Son His reward, His chosen ones, of whom the Son has not, will not lose even one.
You are not His by your choice and you do not remain His by your merit. It is He who saves, He who preserves, He who promises never to send away any who come to Him believing.
Are you one called to the net? You’ll only know that when you’ve turned from self and sin to faith in the true and living God, and believed in the Son whom He sent.
When you have, you will know, and you will never be rejected by Him who purchased you with His blood and resurrected you by His resurrection.
“Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” Jn 17:24
“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.”
He came down, to raise you up. He appeared in flesh that you might appear with Him in glorious light. He was rejected of men so that you might, in Him, never be cast away. He came to do the Father’s will so that through your salvation the Father would be glorified.
And He always does the Father’s will.
John 17:5-10
