John 6:43-59 Sermon (8)

John 6:43-59

An Offensive Salvation

Read John 6:41-59

Preach John 6:43-59

Intro -

A sailor was once left in charge of the helm, with directions from the captain to keep his eye on a certain star, and steer the vessel directly towards it, which he promised faithfully to do. The captain went below, and fell asleep.

After awhile he awoke, went on deck, and found the vessel sailing in a course exactly opposite to that in which he had directed the helmsman to steer.

“What is the meaning of all this?!”

The sailor replied, “Captain, ye must pick me out another star, for I've sailed clear by that one!”

Transition - In our passage today, Jesus recognizes that the people are spiritually heading the wrong direction. And so He unpacks how HE BRINGS … “A Miraculous Salvation.”

“A Miraculous Salvation” vs. 43-46

You ask, How is Salvation so miraculous? It seems so natural and obvious the day I came to faith.

First we have the a definite problem - vs 44

Listen to the definitive problem.

John 6:44 (ESV)

44 No ONE can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…

That means everyone has a problem. You lack the ability to come to Jesus.

We cannot come to Christ and be saved unless God radically intervenes in our life.

You are lost - completely lost. The end game for you lostness is an eternity in hell.

Just punishment for you sin. And you have no ability on your own to respond.

I want you to consider how God works to save you.

A. God draws you, when you yourself cannot come to Him.

B. God revives your dead heart and gives you spiritual life.

C. God gives you, the individual, the gift of faith.

D. God gives you the desire & ability to exercise the faith.

D. Finally, you responds to Jesus in this faith.

E. And you are saved from sin to God.

There is a certainty in the text vs. 44 - “NO ONE can come to me UNLESS the Father draws Him.” So we wee the certainty of our brokenness.

Then we see a certain hope …this is a promise - “I WILL raise Him up on the last day.”

-The person who is saved will be so saved that their salvation will last and their will be the fruit of being given a new heavenly body when Jesus returns.

The sister verse to this is verse 37, Again - Listen to the specific certainty in this verse.

Jesus says, “ALL the Father gives me WILL come.” “I will NEVER cast out”

Here the glorious promise of Hebrews 8:10.

Hebrews 8:10 (ESV)

10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I WILL put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Illustration - Susan’s grandfather was the Patriarch of the family.

If He declared it - that’s the way it was going to happen.

-If He declared that family was going to meet for a Christmas dinner at 6pm, that was it.

-If the proper interpretation of a Bible passage was declared by Him, that was the final word.

-“So let it be written, so let it be done.”

-He wasn’t mean about it at all. He just had that kind of respect and presence.

-His word was final.

In a way that is eternally larger than anything human, What God says will come to pass, will come to pass.

If He says, someone will come to Him in salvation, that person will come.

Why? We covered this last week - God is Sovereign over the heart.

You are not saved because you had some kind of goodness in you.

You were full of sin and rebelliousness.

If you are a Christ follower God has performed a supernatural miracle in you.

He has done radical life changing surgery in you.

It’s my job as your pastor to remind you of the miracle work that God has done.

You say, Saving faith felt so easy. I simply believed.

That’s because God spoon fed salvation to you. He did the work. You just had to receive it.

Even then, He gave you the faith.

For many, salvation did seem easy, it did seem natural. It was obvious.

EXAMPLE - Let me give you an example - with the current abortion issue.

For many of you it is obviously clear that abortion is wrong and that life begins at conception. It is not even a question - so obvious.

But what is obvious to the Christ follower is not obvious to many who don’t know Jesus.

Instead, we see hatred and vitriol from those who want abortion to continue.

Why? Those who don’t know Jesus have a dead spiritual heart and blind spiritual eyes.

2 Corinthians 4:4 Says it this way...

2 Corinthians 4:4 “4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

-You understand the truth of Jesus, only because God drew you and revealed to you the truth...

- Only because God took off the spiritual blinders of sin from your eyes ...

Be reminded of John 6:44 (READ)

AND When you are drawn to Jesus you come to Him. It’s part of the promise of verse 44.

You may ask a very intelligent question?

If it is guaranteed that the one who is drawn to Jesus will come, does that mean that the Father forces, strong arms, or makes the person come to Him?

Illustration - Let me share with you a sensitive illustration.

For some, this illustration will be uncomfortable.

This illustration is very adult in nature.

After a couple is married, they go on their honeymoon, on their honeymoon they experience physical intimacy.

On the honeymoon there is special sleep wear that a young bride will wear to bed.

In the bedroom when a young groom sees his new bride, he has a choice.

Will I embrace my wife or will I reject her?

-When this young man sees his bride in all of her beauty there is only one decision to make.

He embraces her.

-Is he forced to embrace her? Not at all. He willingly and happily embraces her.

Similarly - When someone who is spiritually lost is found and looks upon the beauty of Christ, there may appear to be 2 choices given, but there is only one response...

To embrace Christ in full faith.

-The sinner is drawn into the love that God has for them.

Aren’t you thankful that God has revealed the beauty and glory of the Son to you?

Aren’t you thankful that the spiritual blinders have been removed from your eyes?

-If so, right now in your seat would say in your heart, “Thank you Jesus.

Don’t you want the unsaved that you personally know to see the beauty and glory of Jesus and fully trust in Him?

Don’t you wan your friends and family to share in this miraculous salvation.

Transition -

Transition 2 - First we have seen that salvation is an absolute miracle. Now we see that salvation happens in a moment in time.

Where Jesus describes the moment that someone has their sins forgiven.

The moment of belief.

We see in verse 47

A Faith filled Salvation, vs. 47

Read verse 47

Believe in what?

That Jesus is the Son of God who died and rose again to make a payment for your sin.

In your belief you must repent of your sin and surrender your entire life to Him as you King.

This great Salvation comes the very moment you turn to God and fully trust Jesus.

The very moment of belief is when an individual is saved from their slavery to sin.

The very moment of belief is when the shackles of Satan come off and you are no longer His slave.

The very moment of belief is when your sin is no longer held against you.

The very moment of belief is when you are taken from the road that leads to an eternity in hell and placed on the road that leads to the joyous eternity of worshiping your Savior.

Pause

In traditional Baptist circles people use the verb-age, “I walked down the isle and got saved.”

Or, I met with the pastor and prayed to received Jesus.

No you didn’t - You were saved sitting in your pew before you ever stood up to walk down the isle, because you came to belief in your pew or at home before you came to church.

In the pastor’s study you did not get saved when you said a prayer. Prayer doesn’t save you. You came to belief when the minister shared the Gospel with you.

The walking down the isle, or saying a prayer, raising your hand at a revival, writing a date of salvation in your Bible - are simply outward signs of what already happened in your heart.

Let’s take 1 minute to be clear.

Only trusting in the work of Christ saves you.

Nothing that we do saves us.

Our own works and righteousness before God is no better than filthy rags.

-Baptism, The Lord’s Supper, and going to church has sent a lot of people to hell.

-How?

-Because people trusted in these works to save them.

After you die, If God were to ask you, Why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say?

-If it is anything different than, I have trusted in what Jesus has done for me on the cross … you will not be going to heaven. You will be cast into the Lake Of Fire.

ILLUSTRATION - I normally don’t share what is said to me in private, but this is so positive I have to make an exception.

Dot Willmuth once gave me the most simple, beautiful, and direct explanation of the Gospel i have ever heard.

In her membership interview I asked her, Dot what is the Gospel? Tell me how you know you are saved.

She said 4 simple words.

“Jesus is my righteousness.”

She fully trusted that what Jesus did on the cross was what brought her right standing before God.

Conclusion -

Let me ask you this question - Have you fully trusted that Jesus is your Savior?

Have you given your life to Him?

Jesus has promised this to you my friend.

—Reread vs. 47, Jesus said, “...”

Transition - Then in our passage Jesus says one of the most offensive things you could tell a Jewish person.

He gives them a grotesque invitation to follow Him in faith.

Within this we see ...

An Intimate Salvation, vs. 48-59

Jesus told the people that He was their spiritual manna.

Then several million Hebrews who escaped the slavery of Egypt found themselves in the wilderness and they needed to eat.

God daily supplied their Bread.

Every morning when they woke up there was Manna laying on the ground that they would collect.

It was like picking up honey sweetened Rice Krispies.

They would make bread and cakes from this manna.

Jesus points to himself and says His body is spiritual manna, it is the bread from heaven.

-This is strange.

-The Jews didn’t understand how Jesus could give them flesh to eat.

-But Jesus was using figurative language.

-He was saying. Take me into the deepest part of you. Have faith in me. I will fill your soul.

Then Jesus goes off the rails. He crosses a spiritual and cultural line in what He says.

Read -verse 53-56,

He says Feed on my flesh and drink my blood.

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood. These people will deeply commune with Him in the most intimate ways. They will abide with Him.

Those who do this will abide in me and I in them.

If someone came up to you today and told you to “eat their flesh and drink their blood”, you would think, “This guy is really weird, He needs medication, and I’m going to leave right now. ” You would leave this weirdo.

But would be the end of it. You’d tell you friends and family what happened.

The Old Testament Jewish people were not allowed to eat the blood of animals, they had to hang and drain a sheep after it was dispatched, but before it was butchered.

On top of that, there was a list of unclean animals that were considered an offense to eat .

Pig and shrimp were on that list of things they couldn’t eat.

That’s ok. That’s more for me.

To a Jew, the thought of eating an unclean animal - was spiritually offensive and disgusting.

Now eating an unclean animal that had not been bled out was even worse.

To add to that - people who worshiped demons in Bible times - would drink the blood of animals as part of their demonic sacrifice.

When Jesus said, Eat his flesh and drink his blood, some would have imagined the gore of a demon possessed person with a leg bone half eaten, with bloody meat hanging off, blood on their clothes and face & a goblet of blood to drink.

Something we would see in a horror film.

Outside of cursing God, this was one of the most spiritually offensive grotesque things you could ever say to a Jewish person.

-The culture of Jesus day did not at all understand His words.

-He was offensive to them.

2 Corinthians 2:15–16 (ESV)

15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life...

Illustration - When you drive by a marsh you notice that it smells.

The organic rotting soil smells offensive.

That rotting soil is breaking down and providing nutrients to the water, in that water are many small organisms and plants that are feeding on those nutrients. What is feeding on the small organisms? Baby shrimp, oysters, mussels, freshly hatched minnows. Baby Redfish, baby grouper, snapper … what we eventually eat.

We eat great seafood because there is a marsh.

Many have no use for the marsh simply because it smells terrible.

But the marsh is a place of great life.

The unbeliever views the Gospel like many view the marsh.

They think the Gospel and the Gospel follower is a waste, worthless.

The Gospel stinks to them.

To our spiritual life, To God, - The Gospel and the believer is the fragrance of life.

To God, the Christ Follower is the one with the greatest life.

To feast on the flesh and blood of Jesus is to take Him into your deepest places (your soul) by faith.

To believe and to keep on believing.

Close

Christ Follower - Will you today praise Jesus because He has saved you and called you to such a close intimate relationship?

Christ Follower - Will you tighten your grip of faith on Jesus?

If you have not trusted in Jesus, will you fully trust Him right now, to save you from your sin?

Will you tell the Lord, I fully trust you, save me from my sin. I give all of my life to you.

Verse 57, says this.

Pray