He Came to His Own

We're continuing our series in the Gospel of John, which is has been fantastic so far, and so I'm excited to continue that this morning as we look at verses 9 through 13.

First, a little story.

The uh some some years ago in another season of Undercover Boss on TV, um, a CEO of a company, as the plot usually goes, um, visited Checkers, one of his franchise restaurants.

And there, when he went there, he underwent some training in the kitchen, and he was alarmed by what he discovered because um the working conditions weren't great.

But but what was worse was the the regional manager that he had, or the store manager he had just hired days before was like badgering the employees and actually ended up threatening to beat up one of the employees like in his presence.

And he'd marched the guy outside, he broke character, and he fired him on the spot, right?

Which is not typically the way those episodes go.

Usually they kind of build up to the end and then the big reveal, and everyone's like, oh, I can't believe I said that in front of the CEO.

This episode was different because he manifests himself, he identified himself beforehand.

As we come to John chapter 1, verses 9 through 13, we see something a little bit similar.

John 1:9–13

We have Jesus, the CEO, the owner, the creator of the universe, so to speak, entering into space and time and identifying himself and making himself known to the people on earth.

But in a twist that even reality TV can't come up with.

When Jesus revealed his identity, when he pulled off his mustache and took off his shades, so to speak, he was accused of being an imposter.

He was accused of being a blasphemer, he was scorned, he was despised, and he was murdered.

The word on the street is that he rose again, he's gonna come again, he's gonna set things right in the store.

But unfortunately, we won't be able to see that till the final season.

All right, enough of the TV ads.

So in John chapter 1, verses 9 through 13, we need to realize that this actually happens about halfway through a very specific and and uh uh um introduction that John is giving to his to his gospel.

John 1:9–13

It's called John's Prologue.

It's a fancy, well and carefully structured introduction.

It actually takes the form of arguably a poem because of the way the phrases are uh arranged and the vocabulary that he repeats throughout.

If you think about the introduction to John, verses 1 through 18, it helps me to think about maybe a Pink Floyd song, you know, that goes on for eight to ten minutes.

If you think about, there are eight clusters, eight stanzas in John's introduction, like a Pink Floyd song, eight different clusters of verses with uh some theological riffs here and there that leave you feeling anything but comfortably numb.

Which was one of Pink Floyd's albums.

All right, never mind.

John's intro is meant to acquaint us with Jesus.

Before he gets into the stories of like what Jesus did on earth, he speaks really, it seems like abstractly.

He begins in chapter 1, verse 1, talking about in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

The Lagos, what in the world is that?

I mean, if you tell me about a guy turning water into wine in chapter 2, I get that.

But it begins very abstractly talking about who this one was that eventually turned water into wine.

It's important to know that when John wrote about this Lagos, this word of God, that was with God, that was God, that created all things, the Greeks had already been for three centuries celebrating what they considered the Lagos, the unifying principle of all the universe.

There was a poem written to Zeus, who was thought to be the sky god, the thunder god, who ruled over all the pantheon of Greek gods from Mount Olympus.

And in this song to Zeus, written long before John wrote his gospel, it said this: the universal word, the Lagos that flows through all in the light celestial.

The one word whose voice, alas, the wicked spurn.

They were writing poetry to the Lagos before John even wrote his gospel.

Ancient Greek philosophers, starting with Heraclitus, who was the first one to ever speak about a Lagos, going on to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, would write about this Lagos in order to describe the ultimate reality that lies behind what we see and feel and taste and touch and smell.

What is the unifying principle of the universe that makes it universe?

One word, so to speak.

What is that thing that gives life and meaning to our world?

And the philosophers of Greece called it the Lagos.

Now, critics of Christianity would point this out and say, see, those early Christians were just kind of making up stuff and borrowing ideas from pagan Greek mythology.

They're not even original.

Missing the whole point about why John does this.

In John chapter 1, John is elevating Christ above Zeus, the greatest Greek God, right?

John 1 · chapter mention

They were saying that Zeus, the God of gods, the King of kings, the Lord of Lords, was the true God.

And John is saying, no, no, no.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word is with God, the Word was God, and he is Jesus Christ.

He was elevating Jesus Christ as the unifying principle that gives life and meaning to the world.

He was showing that Jesus Christ is the true creator, the true life giver, life sustainer, and ruler over all.

So when we come to our passage of verses 9 through 13, the major theme of this is not his identification of who Jesus was, but rather he's going to tell us what happened when this eternal Lagos became flesh and entered into his world.

How was he received?

You would think that the creator of all things, the true light that illuminates all humans and gives makes knowledge possible and gives meaning to the world.

You'd think he would be received with open arms, but our text has something else in mind.

This is our main idea.

That our creator was a stranger in the cosmos he created.

Verses 9 and 10 drip with irony as we think about this thought.

The true light, verse 9, which gives light to everyone.

He's not the false light, he's the true light.

Not only that, but he's the one who makes knowledge possible.

He was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made through him.

That means he owned the place, and yet the world did not know him.

What irony.

John presents Jesus as the true light, which gives light to everyone.

In John's gospel throughout, he's very preoccupied with the idea of knowledge, of truth, of knowing exactly what is behind the scenes of everything and what we see.

We find this in a number of ways.

Number one, he writes about the word knowledge or knowing or known some 140 times.

He writes about the idea of light and darkness, which he speaks of in terms of knowledge and ignorance, some 31 times together.

He speaks of truth or true nearly 50 times.

And then in uh John chapter 19, when Jesus stands before Pilate, and Pilate says, What is truth?

John 19 · chapter mention

Oh, the irony.

He's literally looking the true light of the world in the face, questioning if there even is truth.

John very strategically places his stories in the Bible to show that Christ is the source of light.

Which corresponds, thankfully, with our own pursuits in life.

Because all of us here in humans throughout all of human history have longed to know.

It's the reason why degrees like philosophy that can't get you a job actually still are matriculating people into their programs.

Because we want to know.

We want to understand the world.

What is that unifying principle?

Who is God if there is a God?

That's why world religions exist.

We long to know the ultimate reality.

Who are we?

What is our world like?

Science itself makes this its very pursuit.

The word science actually means the word knowledge, to know.

Science takes observations, it develops into hypotheses that sort of come up with these guesses as to why and how things work or where they come from or what the processes are.

And if those processes and those observations and the hypotheses are verifiable and they actually hold water over time, they're turned into theories.

It's not just a guess, it's like, well, we think this is actually how it works.

Those theories over time, if they continue to be verifiable and they they stand the test of time and test uh throughout the world in different conditions, then they eventually become scientific laws, like the law of gravity.

Very few people are gonna say, yeah, the law of gravity doesn't really exist.

We're gonna have a party later, we're gonna prove it doesn't exist, we're gonna jump off a building.

The law of gravity would defy them as they try to defy gravity.

Our instinctual pursuit of knowledge even leads us to call ourselves Homo sapiens, man the wise, because we can think.

And not only can we think, we can think about our thoughts.

And we can hypothesize and we can think about ourselves thinking about our thoughts.

And this is something animals don't seem to do.

Animals, which are largely irrational, largely uh instinctual, they sort of just seem to always take into consideration what's in front of their nose.

Maybe at best, they can um they can sort of uh uh store up nuts or something for the winter, but they're always just digging for nuts like a squirrel or something, right?

Humans, we can sit back and we can say, actually, you know what, let's think about this a little bit.

And that's why we, even though we're not the fastest, not the strongest, not the meanest, we rule the world, right?

Get that right, animals.

In fact, there's there's some mice running around here that if they had our brains and their capabilities, they would rule the world.

Just saying.

Wasn't there a show called like Pinky in the Brain?

That's basically the idea of the show.

All right.

Jesus is that true light which entered the world.

This is something that the psalmist David already spoke of in Psalm 36, verse 9.

Psalms 36:9

He said, For with you, God is the fountain of life.

There's no life without God.

And then he says this, in your light do we see light.

In what you reveal God, we have knowledge.

In what you show us, we therefore have an understanding of the way things really are in our world.

But when you come to the New Testament, it's not just God generically or even Jehovah in particular, it's Jesus Christ, who is said in Colossians chapter 2 and verse 3, possesses all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

He is the eternal Lagos, the life and light giver.

And thus to receive and believe in Jesus is to come into possession of, to have access at least to true knowledge about God, about ourselves and about our world.

Now, again, critics of Christianity would like to uphold faith and reason as sort of polar opposites.

And you can either have reasons for something, or you can have faith, as if they're incompatible, as if faith itself is diametrically opposed to having reasons for it.

If I had reasons, I wouldn't believe.

I would just know.

That's what's often said.

But biblically speaking, faith is not simply leaping into the dark, it is stepping into the light, it is receiving divine revelation.

When God, the greatest mind in the universe, says, Yeah, this is the way things are, it's like X, Y, and Z.

By faith we receive what He knows as now our knowledge.

Faith is not a pie in the sky wish or gut feeling, it is us receiving divine revelation.

But more than that, faith is more than just receiving revelation, it is itself an openness to that revelation.

Without faith, you don't even want to know the truth.

Faith, we're told in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 2, is actually a precondition for knowledge.

Hebrews 11:2

That without faith, you don't want to know the truth, and when you hear it, you wouldn't recognize it.

Hebrews 11, verse 2 says, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God.

Hebrews 11:2

The Lagos.

By faith, not we believe, but by faith we understand.

Faith in God is a prerequisite to actually receiving revelation from God.

In the words of the 11th century Christian philosopher and theologian Anselm of Canterbury, he said this.

He went so far as to say, I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe.

Rather, I believe in order that I may understand.

He recognized that faith is what prepares me to receive divine revelation, and it is that which receives that divine revelation.

Apart from faith, we run from knowledge as presented to us by God in Christ.

This is why it's so tragic that Christians, that Christ himself came into the world and was rejected.

He's our only hope of getting out of here alive.

And they stared him in the face and they said, imposter, liar, blasphemer, and they killed him.

Consider an illustration.

Suppose that there are these two scientists who uh have never seen a construction crane before.

So they go to this construction site and they see this towering crane and they see all the cables and they see the stacked uh pyramid and they see the tracks, and they watch it for a while, and they both observe and they see it move around.

They can even get their physics calculators out and they can calculate the the uh the leverage and the um uh trigonomic trigonometric uh vectors and forces and angles, and they can even get really close and they can test the metal of it and the hydraulic fluid and the rubber, and they know a lot about that crane.

But let's say one of those scientists actually looks up and he sees a box on the top of this thing, like 300 feet up in the air, and he's pretty sure he sees a human up there.

And he waves and the human waves back, and then the human drops some blueprints, a copy of the blueprints down to the ground, and he picks them up, and there's the blueprints showing exactly what's being built, except it shows the completed structure, and it even has a little summary there of how this building project is going to be used whenever it's done.

Now, the other scientist didn't see the crane operator.

And in fact, he didn't feel like we need a crane operator.

The fact is, we know how this crane works.

We know that when that wheel turns, the cable gets shorter and it picks up things and then something pivots, and we know how this works.

We don't need some crane operator.

In fact, whenever the blueprints say what the billy is going to be used for later, he kind of mocks at that and says, What, you think we have to have a meaning and a purpose behind everything?

Isn't it enough to just know about the crane?

He disbelieves that a crane operator even exists.

He even claims that the blueprints are not authentic, but they're actually just a political power play by the civic elite trying to convince us that there's a purpose to this whole project.

In his view, the crane is likely eternal.

I didn't see it get here, so it's probably been here forever.

It's most likely the product of random forces in a mysterious universe, and it operates based on physical laws that randomly took shape against all odds, maybe eons ago after a big bang.

That's his worldview.

That's how he sees things.

He's quite satisfied knowing all the ways this crane works, yet not really understanding what's going on.

That's exactly how biblical faith works, in a way.

Both observers can study the same processes, they can know the mechanics of things, they can even analyze the same blueprints, but one is receptive to what is available, and the other thinks it's foolish to even look into that.

One believes you can't possibly know, you can't possibly know there's someone up there.

When one guy says, I see him, I see him right there.

And in this analogy of faith, the person with faith is able to see something that the other can't, and therefore they receive, and they actually have a truer knowledge, a fuller knowledge of the whole picture than the unbeliever.

I think we see this in our day and time.

We can have some extremely smart people studying at the molecular or the cosmic level everything, and they're tying every cause and effect to some little cause and effect before it, but then they stop short of saying, There's actually a designer to this.

There's actually a meaning or a purpose behind this.

And you foolish people of faith think you have to have a purpose.

But who's really the fool, right?

The fool, Proverbs tells us and Psalms tells us, says in his heart, there is no God.

And so thus John would have us know that the problem, the deepest-rooted problem in humanity, when Christ came to earth and was rejected and was not known and was actually killed, wasn't merely a lack of information.

It wasn't merely a lack of education, it was a resistance to truth.

It wasn't mere ignorance of truth, it was an aversion to the truth.

It was a love and a preference for sin and darkness.

And we all by nature stand as humans, fallen before God in need of Jesus to overcome this resistance.

This is our story, in fact.

Our story is that we reject the truth in preference for lies.

When Christ, the king of the cosmos, came, he was refused.

John chapter 3 discusses this, as we'll see when we get there in a few months.

John 3 · chapter mention

That people, when the light shines on him, people actually love the darkness rather than the light, and so they hate the light.

See, the issue isn't just light, the issue isn't just knowledge, it isn't just education.

If it if it were, then all Jesus would have needed to do when he came to earth was set up a bunch of rabbinical schools and have everyone educated.

And then everyone would love and know God.

Ah.

But the problem is deeper.

Verse 11 tells us this.

He came to his own, his own people, and they did not receive him.

It's one thing to come into the world and the pagans look and say, Who is that?

But to come to your own people, the Jews who had been longing for Messiah, who had already been worshiping God, who was the light and life of the world, who'd been looking for a Messiah, a prophet to come and fulfill all the prophecies concerning him.

And when Jesus came fulfilling prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, at least 319, I think, something like that.

Prophecies were performed by Jesus that are just major prophecies.

And there's a bunch of other small ones that are possible.

The odds of that happening, I think, if I remember right, is the same odds of you um stacking silver dollars in the state of Texas a foot deep and randomly going out there, reaching blindly and picking up one.

The odds that one person at that point in history could fulfill all those prophecies is astronomical.

But instead of him, them seeing him come from Nazareth and realize that that that was a part of the prophecy, him being born in Bethlehem, they mock him for having come from Nazareth.

That's the way the word is a blindness of heart.

In the words of Wilson Knight, he said the gospel pictures Jesus silhouetted against the world of formalized religion, hypocrisy, envy, evil, and suffering.

Jesus came to his own, he came to the most religious people, it seemed like in the world, and even they didn't receive him.

As the story unfolds, we see that there's a movement take place in John of this theme of Christ revealing himself and it being met with ever-increasing hostility and rejection.

The way that John outlines this is in John chapter 1, we have sort of this abstract introduction.

John 1 · chapter mention

You have John the Baptist coming and proclaiming this is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

You have a very small people saying, Okay, I'll believe John.

John says he was told by God that this is the Messiah, so I'm gonna follow the Messiah.

But then in chapter two, we find Jesus begin his public ministry and he turns water into wine.

It's pretty impressive.

He they fill up all these wine, these wine jars with water, because they were out at the wedding.

And what wedding is a good wedding without wine, right?

Apparently Jesus thought so.

And Jesus begins his public ministry by, as the creator of the world, literally speaking this water into wine.

And when people saw that, they're like, this is incredible.

Can I follow you?

Then in chapter four, we find chapter three is mostly preaching and discourse by Jesus.

Chapter four, we find Jesus going to Samaria and reaching out to this woman who was largely rejected by society.

She'd been married five times.

She was living with a man, and she was a Samaritan.

She was not exactly an upstanding citizen to the Jews.

Jesus, Jewish rabbi, goes to her and he begins to tell her things that there's no way he could have known.

And she says, I perceive you're a prophet.

He's like, I'm more than a prophet.

She says, You know, they say that the Christ is going to come one day, and he says, The one speaking to you is he.

And she takes her water pot or she leaves it.

She runs back to Sychar where she was from.

She tells all her friends, Come see this man who told me everything I ever did.

The whole city comes out and it says, Many believed.

Jesus left there, went back to Capernaum, where he spent much of his time in Galilee, and there he healed the sick son of an official.

Then in chapter 5, we find Jesus going to Jerusalem, and there beside the pool of Siloam, he finds this man who'd been born lame, who was 38 years old, who was emaciated from not moving around, just waiting for the pool to be stirred, and maybe he could be healed.

Jesus walks up to him and says, Do you want to be whole?

What a strange question to ask a man who's been waiting for 38 years to be healed.

Do you want to be whole?

And it's almost like he'd forgotten that there was hope.

And he says, yes.

And Jesus says, get up and go home.

And he stood up and he leapt and he ran home.

Then in chapter six, we find Jesus, because of all the growing crowds of people following Jesus, he goes away into the wilderness, but all these people, thousands, follow him.

And there he takes a few loaves and a few fish and he feeds the multitudes, fills their bellies.

Everything's going wonderfully.

Surely this is the Christ.

This is the one who's going to deliver us from all of our problems, food, healing.

Maybe even eventually he's going to go run for politics and he's going to deliver us from Roman tyranny.

But in John chapter 6, everything changes.

John 6 · chapter mention

It hinges on a verse in John 6.66.

It says that Jesus began to identify who he really was.

He wasn't just a prophet.

He wasn't just a man who could perform miracles.

He was God in the flesh.

He was the one that was behind the manna given in the wilderness.

He was, in fact, the bread of life who comes down from heaven, and by partaking of him you will have eternal life.

And that was more than they could handle.

They turned away from Jesus.

And in John 6, verse 66, it says, After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

John 6:66

So he turns to the 12, really one of the lowest points in his ministry, it seems like, when everything that seemed like it was going so well, and then they're gone.

In fact, they wanted to make him a king.

And there it goes, just walking away, full bellies and empty hearts.

And he turns to the 12 and he says, Are you going to go away too?

And Peter says this, Lord, where would we go?

You only have the words of eternal life.

And then he says, This, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God.

So you have in John's gospel this huge amplification of Christ's influence, and then it dwindles to 12 people.

And then from there on, Jesus begins, he really ratchets up the self-revelation.

He says in chapter 8 that he is actually not only the descendant of Abraham, but he existed before Abraham.

Minds blown.

They wanted to kill him.

He heals people on the Sabbath.

He breaks up their feasts and he runs people out of the temple that were making merchandise.

He does a lot of really unpopular things, and people can't stomach Jesus.

One of the most amazing to me was when in John chapter 12 we find where Jesus and John himself attribute Isaiah's vision in Isaiah chapter 6 as being about Jesus.

John 12 · chapter mention Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Remember that such that iconic vision in Jewish history where Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets of Israel, in the year that one of their greatest kings, Uzziah, had died, when the land was filled with mourning, Isaiah says, I saw the Lord in the year that King Uzziah died.

I saw him high and lifted up in this vision.

This massive throne of heaven, as it were.

And there were these angelic beings flying through the air, covering their wings with their eyes because they could not look upon the glory of God, covering their feet because they were ashamed, and flying with the other two, six wings, and there were these burning creatures called seraphim, as the name means.

And what were they crying?

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies, the Lord of hosts.

The earth is full of his glory.

Jesus in John 12 says, You know that story?

Isaiah saw me.

It's no wonder these Jews who love Jehovah hated Jesus because they couldn't make the connection, right?

He was doing all these things, but instead of receiving this knowledge and embracing him, they rejected him.

They killed the king of glory.

And yet many of us today might look in judgment upon them and say, How could you do that?

How could you refuse Jesus?

But what about today?

In John chapter 19, Pilate so famously looks at the Jews and says, Behold your king.

John 19 · chapter mention

And you know what they say?

They say, We have no king but Caesar.

Away with this man, crucify him.

You think you would have said something different?

Apart from God's grace, that's literally how we live our lives.

It's as if we erect cross after cross that we hang Christ on and say, We don't want you.

Away with this man, get out of my life.

The cry of modern man may not be, we have no king but Caesar, but it certainly is away with this man.

We have no king but science.

Away with this man, we have no king but sexual freedom.

And you can take his morals and take a hike.

Away with this king.

We have no king but career advancement, but financial security.

That's the unifying principle to the world.

We have no king but food and drink and bodily pleasures.

We have no king but healthy and happy children, and we'll be damned, God, if you ever let anything happen to them.

Oh, in this heart that rejects the king of the cosmos is the heart that apart from God's grace beats in our chest.

But in God's profound mercy, in many cases, he performs a heart transplant and he gives us faith in a new heart so that we're finally open to receive what God reveals.

And when he reveals it, we embrace it.

This is our gospel conviction that Christ welcomes fools and foes into his family.

The very people that reject Christ out of ignorance, and the very people that reject Christ out of animosity, those are the kinds of people, people like us, that he welcomes into his family.

Verse 12.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

What right do you have to call yourself a child of God?

What an audacious claim.

Yeah, you're a child of God?

Really?

That's the mocking question people would say.

Christians, I think they're so high and mighty.

You're a child of God, really?

Here he says there's only one person in the universe who can confer that right.

And if you believe in him, he confers the right to those who receive the testimony of Jesus.

God grants the authority, the privilege, the right to be adopted into the very family of God.

Seems almost too good to be true.

But this is exactly what the apostles in Galatians, the Apostle Paul echoed in Galatians 3.26.

In Christ Jesus, you all are sons of God by faith.

To embrace Jesus is to come into possession of all the fullness of Christ Himself.

We become heirs with, co-heirs of the universe with Jesus, Romans chapter 8 says, if we suffer with him, we will also reign with him.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

In other words, when we by faith receive the revelation of Christ, we are brought into this parent-child relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Now that all sounds really good, right?

But remember what we were talking about earlier, the problem.

The problem isn't just information, the problem is hostility against God by nature.

Which is why John in verse 13 of chapter 1, how about he qualifies who it is that comes to believe in Jesus?

Look at verse 13.

He says, Those who receive Christ, who believe in his name, they were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

In other words, this birth that happens when we became children of God, it comes from the top down.

There's no grassroots kind of getting to God, where we kind of get together and we do a little scrum or something, like they do in Australia.

Never mind.

And we build a tower, maybe like in the Old Testament.

Remember the Tower of Babel?

You find the people wanting to build a tower unto God because they wanted to rule over God.

And they build that tower.

And what does God do?

God confounds their languages.

He sends them, and that's exactly what religion often is.

Religion is this effort to build this tower to God.

Interestingly, about the story in Genesis 10, they wanted to fight against God.

And so this top-down salvation of being born from God, or in Jesus' words, in John chapter 3, born from above, it's a prerequisite to us coming to believe Jesus and receive eternal life.

John 3 · chapter mention

This is amazing because in John chapter 1, it's almost as if John really thought through what he was going to say.

John 1 · chapter mention

In chapter 1, in verses 4 and 5, he says, In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness couldn't overcome it.

Two functions of Jesus, the Lagos, the life giver and the light giver.

The source of all life, natural and spiritual, and the source of all true knowledge.

And this corresponds perfectly with our two problems.

Jesus as the source of light meets us in our spiritual darkness.

But Jesus as the source of life meets us in our spiritual death.

So that with new life and new spiritual capacities, we are able to draw near to Christ in faith.

Ephesians 2 9 so famously says, For by grace you save through faith.

And that not of yourselves.

It is a gift from God, not of works, lest anyone would stand before God and boast.

Now I want to think about a case study really quick.

We read moments ago from John chapter 6, where Peter, after the crowds had left Jesus, Peter remains behind and he stands as a spokesman for the apostles.

John 6 · chapter mention

He says, No, Jesus, we're not going anywhere.

We believe that you're the Christ, you're the holy one of God.

Here's a question: What must have happened to Peter prior to him being able to embrace Jesus in that way?

What made Peter different than the world that rejected Christ?

What made Peter and the apostles different than the crowds that filled their bellies and then walked away?

In John chapter 6, we actually are told by Jesus exactly what happened.

John 6 · chapter mention

So if you will, turn in John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

I'm just going to read a couple verses here in this lengthy passage where Jesus is going to lay out for us how people come to faith in him.

Because I'm interested in that.

I want to know how I can come to faith in Christ because I want to be given the right to be a child of God.

I don't want to reject Christ.

How does this happen?

John 6 in verse 35 says this.

Jesus said to this crowd, he just fed them.

They wanted to make him king because he was a good cook.

And Jesus says in verse 35, I am the bread of life.

Forget about the food I just gave you.

I am the bread you should want.

Whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Two key words there in verse 35.

Come to Christ and believe in Christ.

He's drawing an analogy to when you believe in Christ, it's as if you're coming to receive bread.

When you believe in Christ, you're believing in Christ Jesus.

So notice how he uses those two together.

But in verse 44, we have a big problem.

Because to come to Jesus is to believe in him.

But verse 44 says this no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

Did you know that verse was in your Bible?

John 6, 44.

Come to me, all ye who are labor and heavy laden, I'll give you rest.

But no one can come to Christ unless the Father gives him the ability.

In fact, he says specifically, unless the Father who sent me draws him.

And if you do a word study in this word draw, it's not the way it normally is spoken of, to woo.

It is the word used to draw water out of a well or to drag someone to the authorities for imprisonment.

I think seven times it's used in the New Testament, every time is this forcible action of dragging or drawing or pulling something.

And yet often it's taught, hey, no one can come to Christ unless God woos them and he woos everybody.

But that's not what Jesus taught.

He said, Come to me for life.

And then he said, No one can come to me unless the Father draws him.

Now, if that wasn't clear enough, we drop down to verses 64 and 65.

He reiterates it in a little different way.

He says, But there are some of you who do not believe.

Well, of course, there's many of them, right?

In this case, he was talking about Judas, John tells us, but there are some of you who do not believe, and he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.

So two word pictures.

Unless God has drawn someone to Christ like water out of a well, or unless it's a given.

He used the analogy of force in the use of and in the analogy of a gift that God gives.

Unless it's granted, you can't trust in Christ.

Which is why in verses 67 through 69, when Peter says, We're not going anywhere, Lord, you have the words of eternal life.

We need to realize that that was not something Peter, of his own volition, of his own intellect, of his own good will, is just a good guy.

Now, this is something granted him by the Father.

Now, lest you don't want to believe Jesus' words in John 6, there's a corollary to this in Matthew chapter 16, where Jesus tells the apostles, he says, Hey, a lot of rumors are going around, on around, be going on around about me.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Ooh, that's weird.

Too many prepositions there.

Who do you say that I am?

And the people are like, Well, we've heard that you're the prophet Isaiah, that maybe you're the prophet Elijah, you're one of the prophets, who knows?

But and he says, Well, who do you think I am?

And Peter's like, I think you're the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus responds to him this way.

He says, Blessed are you, Peter, because flesh and blood, mere humans, have not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.

If you're here this morning and you believe Christ, and you receive Christ, and you trust in his name for salvation, that means you are a walking miracle.

It means like Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10 says, you are his workmanship, which literally is the word poema.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

You're like a poem written by God with his very hand.

How should we respond to this text today?

How should we respond to this idea that the light and life giver entered creation and almost everybody rejected him?

But not everybody.

Those whom God had, we believe around here in election and predestination, because Paul taught it and Jesus taught it, and the Old Testament teaches it.

That God has a people.

We welcome Christ, we we receive Him, we believe upon Him, we submit to Him in every part of our lives.

I'm increasingly convinced that maturing in the Christian faith, that going from a baby Christian to a more mature Christian and then a more and more and more Christian is to continually surrender more and more of my life to the Lordship of Jesus.

So that it's not just, well, yeah, I trust Jesus for salvation.

I know when I die, whoo, I don't want to stand in my righteousness, I want to stand in his.

But there are parts of my life I have not opened the door to him to.

There are things in my life that I've maybe I haven't even realized it until the Lord took me through a trial.

And I realized, you know, I just, I didn't trust the Lord with my kids.

Or when we go through a financial difficulty, you know, I didn't really trust God to provide.

I didn't know I had to.

And he proved to me I did.

This act of full surrender, I've personally been trying to work into my own life, my own morning routines in the last mass month and a half, to where literally, not every morning I've done this faithfully, but most mornings I have a prayer that I go through and I say, Lord, I fully surrender my life to you.

I surrender to you my health, use it.

Take it, give it to me.

Whatever you want to do, Lord.

I surrender my wife as precious as she is, she is yours, use her according to your purposes.

I surrender my precious daughters.

I trust you with them.

If something happens to them, Father, I trust you.

As Job says, though he slays me, I will trust him.

The money I've been working, I've been 12 years out of college, right?

I've been saving up money.

I'm looking forward to one day having a little retirement.

God, I trust you with my retirement fund.

If you want to wreck that, or if you want it to go to someone else, if you want me to never retire, I submit it.

I surrender it to you.

Everything in my life I thought was mine.

It's not.

I push all my chips towards Jesus and I go fully in with him.

Many of us are okay spending a few hours every week or two in church, but have we surrendered 365-24-7 to him?

Hey, this is yours.

I don't own this time.

I'm a steward.

Here it is, Jesus.

What do you want me to do?

We're often okay giving some money to a good cause here and there, but have we opened our hands?

Have we surrendered our retirement fund?

Have we opened our hands and said, God, this is yours?

If you want to change my plans, wreck them.

Because I trust you.

We talk to other people often about many things on everything under the sun with classmates and kids and spouses.

But how do we use our mouth?

Do we recognize the lordship of Christ over our mouth so that when we speak words, we only speak things that honor Him?

Or is that a part of your life that, hey, get out of here, Jesus?

Yeah, you're my you're the savior of my soul.

I'm gonna say what I want to.

That's how we can act, right?

Or maybe we don't speak in ways that are that are bad and represent Jesus wrongly, but we just don't speak about him at all.

Would you know Jesus was Lord of the universe if if people only knew what you said and what I said?

Would we even know that Christ is King?

Would we know that there's a judgment to come?

Would we know that there's salvation in trusting Jesus Christ?

Would we know that God alone can save us if all people knew was what we said?

May we be the kinds of people that surrender to the King of the cosmos?

Because the promise is sure still today to all who receive Him, to who believe in His name, He gives the right to become children of God.