Sermon Tone Analysis

“The Balance of Salvation Part I”

 

John 1:36-43

 

      This evening if we can capture a title out of the narrative, perhaps the title might be the balance of salvation.

Salvation is both an historic fact, and historic event that happens in time and at the same time an eternal choice that happened before time began.

Often in Scripture we read about the human side of salvation, the idea that whoever wants to come to Christ may, and that is true.

For Jesus said, "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out."

But more often in Scripture we read of the divine side, elect before the world began.

"All that the Father gives to Me shall come to Me," is the other side of the verse I just quoted, John 6:37.

And so, salvation is a beautiful balance between the will of God and the will of man.

Salvation is the will of God in action, bringing about a response from the will of man.

Now salvation is a divine act.

Salvation demanded a divine initiative.

Man could not design to die himself for his own sin, God had to do that.

The love that initiated salvation came from God.

The grace, the mercy, the forgiveness, all of that was divine.

And so, salvation in the truest sense is a divine act yet it demands a human response.

Salvation is the work of God and at the same time it is the activity of man as he responds to the work of God in his heart.

And we cannot understand it from a purely divine standpoint, we can't grasp divine truth, we can't hold on to the sovereignty of God in our small little brains, it's too great a thought for us.

And so God has reduced it to simplicity.

We simply understand that we are saved by the sovereign act of God, we are also saved by the act of our will.

We don't attempt to justify the two; we accept them because they are biblical.

Maybe I can illustrate this and I hope you won't mind if I do this.

Tom, would you just raise your right hand for me for a second?

Now whose will caused Tom to raise his hand?

His will, he didn't have to raise his hand, I hold no threat over him.

Not only his will, my will.

He exercised his will in response to my will and apart from my will he wouldn't have raised his hand.

And that is exactly in a very mundane sense what salvation is.

It is my will responding to the will of God.

And that's the two sides of salvation.

That's the balance.

And I do not of my own will seek God, says Paul, until God has sought me.

Augustine said, "We should never seek Christ unless God had already found us."

And so salvation is my will in response to the will of God.

And so, Scripture presents two sides to salvation, the balance between the seeking soul and the seeking Savior.

And we shall see it as we examine our text for in verses 38 to 42 we have the seeking soul and in verses 43 to 51, the seeking Savior.

The human side is in verses 38 to 42, although the divine is there the human side is emphasized.

And the divine side is emphasized in 43 to 51 although the human is there, it is the divine that is emphasized.

Now, we are entering the public ministry of Jesus Christ.

And as we enter it we see Him in our section four this morning calling out two groups of disciples.

These are the first two groups of disciples that He ever called and there are six in all.

And we'll meet them in a moment as we go through the text.

But I want you to get the picture of where we are now.

Remember that the Apostle John is writing this gospel.

And that his purpose is to present Christ as the Son of God.

So everybody that John can find who will testify that Christ is God, John will use him to do that.

So when John talks about somebody being...becoming a Christian and believing in Christ, he doesn't just say, "Well, So-and-so believed in Christ," and then goes to the next thing.

No.

He takes that person and says, "No So-and-so said Christ is God," see, because he wants everybody that he can get to testify that Christ is God.

That's his point in this book, to get us to see that Christ is the Son of God, indeed God in a body.

So he gathers together this first group of disciples and before John the Apostle leaves them he has them testify as to who Christ is.

So he's adding witnesses upon witnesses to build a case to prove that Christ is the Son of God.

And so, we see the first group of disciples that Jesus picks out.

And they are really just the first of many countless millions who have come down through history, even to today.

And every disciple that Christ calls out becomes a witness, becomes a living declaration that Christ is God.

And whether he issues it out of his mouth or not, that's another story.

He is a witness by the very fact of his salvation.

Now we've already met one witness, we've met John the Baptist who gave his witness, right?

He said, "Behold the Lamb of God who take away the sin of the world."

When he met Christ he witnessed to who He was.

Now we are about to meet the next two disciples of Christ and we see them introduced in verse 35.

We'll back up to verse 35 and meet them.

"Again the next day John stood and two of his disciples," two of the disciples of John the Baptist, remember who had built a little following for himself, not because he desired to but because people attached themselves to him as a prophet of God.

Two of his disciples are there with John.

And John looked on Jesus as He was walking about there in that place in Bethany and he said to these disciples, "Behold, the Lamb of God."  Now we told you last week what he meant by that.

He was saying, "What are you doing hanging around me, there is the Lamb of God, there is the Christ, there is the Savior of the world.

Why are you staying here?"

And, of course, in verse 37 the two disciples heard him speak and followed Jesus.

He said there is the Lamb of God and they went after Jesus Christ.

And there were the first two disciples.

Now they're not named yet, they shall be named.

Well one of them is named in a minute, the other one we know because it's the same one who never names himself, that's John.

So it's John and Andrew, these first two who were disciples of John the Baptist.

And John says, "There is the Messiah, go after Him."

So at the end of verse 37 they move toward Christ and the whole picture changes.

John the Baptist fades from the scene and we begin the narrative of the ministry of Christ at verse 38.

Now as we begin our narrative we're going to see the two sides of salvation; the balance of salvation, the seeking soul and the seeking Savior.

Notice the seeking soul in verses 38 to 42. 

      Now here are these two disciples having left John the Baptist, starting after Jesus Christ.

In verse 38 we read this, "Then Jesus turned and saw them following and saith unto them," stop right there.

Now here we are introduced to the seeking soul.

We have heard nothing about the Father drawing them, yet Jesus says no man comes unto Me except the Father draw him.

Nobody comes to Jesus Christ unless he's been convicted by the Holy Spirit of his sin.

We don't even hear about that.

Did it happen?

Certainly it happened, the Father drew them.

Certainly they were convicted of their sin and knew they needed a Messiah.

They knew all of that.

They knew they weren't righteous and they wanted the righteousness that Messiah could provide.

They knew all that; that had already happened.

But John wants us to see the human side of salvation, the seeking soul.

And so we see these two following Christ.

Now maybe they were shy.

I mean, after all, if this was Messiah, He would be the greatest person in the universe next to God; them perhaps not understanding that He was God at that point.

And they wouldn't sort of walk up to Him and just start a conversation, maybe they were afraid and shy.

Maybe they just couldn't believe the wonder of who He was.

I don't know what the reason was but they just kind of followed along.

And then Jesus did something, He turned around to face them.

And He said something to them.

And what He was doing was opening the door to their salvation, in effect.