Drawn to Christ

Intro

John 6:41–43 Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves.”

After Jesus’ lengthy discussions with the people in our study last week, where he proclaimed to them his identity as the bread of life, the Jews are now quick to grumble against him and try to disprove him. Their rationale? How could this mere man claim to be one that gives life? Isn’t he just the son of Joseph? They know his parents, so in their minds they must know Jesus too, right? We kind of get like this today to. Some kids you meet and in a complementary (or maybe concerning) way, you tell them how much they remind you of their parents. Or maybe it’s the opposite, and we look at a child and wonder what happened that that kid came from those people. What we see with the Jews here is that they have a particular expectation of what could take place because of what they knew and understood about Jesus based on who His parents were, but are severely misguided because they were here linking Him to the wrong father. They must know Him because they know Jospeh, but as Jesus tells them several times during His ministry, they would know Him if they knew His Father. The Jews had developed their own expectations, and Jesus didn’t fit the bill for them, yet Jesus was the necessary piece to the puzzle and they were missing him because they kept relying only on their own understanding. Jesus was leading them to eternal life, but they weren’t able to see it according to their own effort - only God would lead them to see.

Not By Accident

Now to our main focus, here on verse 44. As we consider our own salvation, I want us to be encouraged in our own salvation, and encouraged to go and share the gospel with others. Let’s start with the first few words here in verse 44…

John 6:44 No one can come to Me unless…

Let’s make it plain - none of us are here by accident. We talked about this a bit in our Genesis study last year, that nothing in this world exists because randomness found it’s way into order, but because all things came into being in order as God ordained it. We were each designed by God before our birth, and at birth made perfect for the purposes to which God would call us in accordance with His will. In these first few words, Jesus is echoing this very thing - nothing happens by accident. “No one cane come to Me unless…” there is something that has to happen for someone to come to Jesus, and we will get to what has to happen in a second, but let’s understand first that coming to Jesus does not happen by accident. You will not stumble through your life and then suddenly have this salvific revelation on your own. No one can come to Jesus unless…

Playing Card Trick I’ve got a deck of cards with me, and I know I’ve used them before, but we will talk about something slightly different. Anyone know any magic tricks that you can do with cards? I know a few, though I am out of practice with most. There is one that I can do that every time I’ve done it for someone they’ve never known how it’s done. The gist of the trick is a take the deck and I repeatedly cut it. When the other person says stop, I stop, then I show them the top two cards - those are their cards to remember. I don’t look at them, and I truly have no idea what cards they ended up with. I put them back on top. Of course, they’d be pretty easy to find there, so I’ve got to lose them, so I divide the deck into four piles. Well, now I know that the cards are at the bottom of piles 1 and 2, so I shuffle each pile. But then I still have the deck narrowed down halfway to be able to find the cards a little easier. To lose it more, I take piles 1 and 3 and shuffle them together, then the same with 2 and 4. Now each card is shuffled into half the deck. They’re going to be hard to find. So I take one pile, flip it upside down, then shuffled it with the other. I’m not just going to accidentally stumble are these cards, right? That would be pretty impossible to do, especially if it’s just an accident. Well, it’s not an accident, but is all by design. After shuffling the cards together, I fan them out onto the table and you can see that everything is the same color except for one card, the first of their two cards. Flip them all over and every card is the other color except for one card, their other card. Let me be clear - I am not talented enough to make this happen by accident - no magician that has ever done any trick ever has done it by accident. The trick requires work that you don’t see happening to create the illusion that it is magic. I won’t spoil that secret. If you want to try and figure it out later, let me know and I’ll do the trick for you.

All of this to say - our salvation didn’t happen by accident and we didn’t just stumble our way to it - a work took place that we couldn’t see and designed it. Let’s look at a couple Scripture verses:

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

We have been saved not because of anything that we did, but because God gave us salvation as a gift. Paul says it plainly here - if we could do it on our own, we would simply boast in our own efforts. We are saved because God saved us, not because we managed our way on our own, because we won’t get their by accident. Let’s look at another passage.

2 Corinthians 3:14–16 But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Those who are not saved, prior to salvation, have a veil over their eyes. They cannot see and understand so long as that veil is there. For those here that weren’t raised in the church but came to know Christ later in life, you might have a better idea of what this feels like. You can compare your view of Scripture today against your understanding before you came to know Christ and easily see the difference. But did you lift that veil off yourself? Paul would tell us know. He says that “it is removed in Christ” and that “the veil is taken away”. We’re not getting rid of it on our own and figuring out all the mysteries in life because we willed ourself to understand it, but because God opened our eyes to see. So this whole salvation thing didn’t just happen by accident, but by design. And that brings us into the rest of this verse.

By Design

John 6:44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.

And here’s the condition. No one is going to get to Jesus on their own UNLESS the Father draws him. We’re not going to make it on our own. We’re not going to reach Him by accident, or stumble upon Him on our way to something else. Rather, we will be drawn to Him. There two words, common in the faith today, that help us to understand this: Election and Predestination.

Election

I am not sure if you are familiar with John MacArthur. He is a baptist pastor who has been pastoring his church, Grace Community Church, in California for nearly 60 years, and he is also the chancellor of Masters Seminary. I think their church can help us to grasp a good understanding of election.

We teach that election is the sovereign act of God by which, before the foundation of the world, He unconditionally chose in Christ all those whom He would ever graciously regenerate, save, and sanctify.

We teach that sovereign election does not contradict or negate the responsibility of man to repent and trust Christ as Savior and Lord. Nevertheless, since sovereign grace includes the means of receiving the gift of salvation as well as the gift itself, sovereign election will result in what God determines. All whom the Father has elected He will effectually call to Himself. All whom the Father effectually calls to Himself will come in faith. And all who come in faith the Father will receive.

Predestination

Predestination zooms out a bit more. While election focuses directly in on salvation, predestination focuses on the full sovereignty of God in all things for all time. Both of these terms work together to highlight the ultimate sovereignty of God. He is always in control, and in the context of our passage today, it is God who is sovereign to draw us into Christ so that we might know eternal life through Him. Let’s look at a couple quick passages.

Ephesians 1:4–5 Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.

He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. He predestined us to adoption according to His will. We are here today, as believers were before us, saved by the grace of God through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, because before the foundation of the world He chose for us to be here. We are here according to His will.

Romans 8:28–30 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

God causes all things to work together. He foreknew and predestined those whom He would conform to the image of His Son. Notice that, over and over again, He, He, He, He, He. We haven’t done a thing. The only thing we’ve lended to the story is our need for salvation, and God not only provided it for us, but set us apart to receive it, drawing us to Christ.

Now, this may raise some questions for us. Why did God choose us? What about others? What does it mean that He didn’t choose some? Best answer I can give you is, simply, I don’t know. The sovereignty of God is not something that we are going to comprehend. But what I do know is all throughout history, God has chosen people through which His message of goodness, grace and mercy would be taken to a world that needs to hear it. He started with the Israelites and continues today with His church. So while we are here today and we don’t know who He has chosen or who He will choose, what we do know with confidence is that He chose us and tasked us with a mission to share the truth, because it might just be through us that God has ordained another to be drawn in. God still does the work, but as His chosen He calls us to be faithful to the mission. This is an encouragement to the church - we are secure. Jesus won’t cast us out, and no one can snatch us from His hand. We are secure in Him because of Him.

Let’s go ahead and close out the text.

John 6:45–46 “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father.”

Jesus is telling the people plainly that anyone that actually heard and understood what God was teaching His people would come to Jesus because they would be able to identify who He is. Jesus references Isaiah 54 when He talks about what the prophets said, and reveals that the prophecy is once again about Him.

Josh Moody In other words, his direct, personal, present, human teaching of them is the fulfillment of God’s promise of direct, personal, divine teaching of them as prophesied in the Old Testament.

He is here teaching the people about God so that they would understand and then come to Him. As far as His qualifications to teach go - He’s the only one who has actually seen the Father! Next, Jesus essentially goes on to repeat everything He had just told them - something He often needs to do with people that just don’t understand.

John 6:47–51 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. “I am the bread of life. “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

Belief in Jesus results in eternal life, and that life is given through the bread, His flesh, given for us. Not like the manna out of heaven that nourished the Israelites, but did not prevent them from dying, but the true bread from heaven that results in eternal life for anyone who eats it. Now I won’t labor on this too much because we talked about this a lot last week, but Jesus is urging the people to believe in him and receive eternal life, and to believe that this life is the gift of the Father, and they can only come to Him if the Father draws them. He is greater even than that miraculous gift of manna, which didn’t give eternal life, but is now the bread of heaven, so that if someone eats of him - trusts in him - they will have eternal life given to them.

John 6:52–58 Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. “This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”

In Catholicism in particular, this passage leads them to transubstantiation - that the bread and the cup we take during communion become the literal body and blood of Jesus, but that is not what this passage is saying. Jesus is offering a metaphor to the Jewish people, albeit a fairly gross one to them, not speaking literally of the people eating flesh and drinking blood, which was forbidden. Perhaps it is a little bit of the shock and awe approach, because they weren’t getting it before without this metaphor.

Colin Kruse

John: An Introduction and Commentary iv. Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse (6:25–59)

To understand properly what Jesus was saying in highly metaphorical language, readers must remember that he said the same thing in more straightforward terms in 6:40: ‘everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’. Placing these two verses side by side, it is clear that eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood is a metaphor for believing in him. Continuing the metaphor, Jesus said, For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. When this metaphor is unpacked, it means that Jesus is the source of true satisfaction; belief in him who gave his life for the world is the only way to satisfy human hunger and thirst for God.

It’s all about belief in Jesus. It’s all about trusting in Jesus. But we are never going to stumble upon this belief and trust on our own. It is the Father who guides us, calls us, draws us, saves us, secures us, carries us, holds us, sustains us, protects us, and gives us to His Son, Jesus Christ, to be raised by Him on the last day and enter into eternal life with Him. What a gift to be chosen and a gift to be called to go out with the good news of this message to a world that needs to hear it.