The Gospel of John: The Rescue We Long For - Mar 30, 2025 (Myles Holmes)

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

So good to be together this morning.

If you have a copy of God's Word, you can open it up to John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

We're going to be in verses 37 to 51 this morning.

And if you don't have a copy of God's Word, our ushers are making their way down the aisle.

You can flag one of them down.

They'd love to put one into your hands that you can take as our gift to you.

We all, I know this about every human being throughout all generation, for all time, we love stories of rescue.

From an early age, we latch on to it.

In fact, really, as early as we can understand language, we are latching on to stories, whether they're fairy tales or adventure stories about rescue.

We're drawn.

We're drawn to people who are in distress.

Maybe they're trapped, maybe they're threatened by some monster, by some dragon, by some evil enemy, and they're longing to be saved.

And as we grow older, certainly our tastes develop, but that longing for rescue, though it grows more complex, that deep desire does not fade from us.

And so we see the darkness of Gotham, and we long to see Batman come and turn the tides.

We see the hobbits.

They're trapped in the minds of Maria, and we love that scene of Gandalf with his staff slamming it on the bridge.

I won't imitate him, but saying, You shall not pass.

Now I probably lost some of you guys with Batman and Lord of the Rings, and you're like, this is not for me.

And so maybe it's like Hallmark movies.

Any of you guys you love Hallmark movies?

Even Hallmark romance movies scratch that same itch of rescue.

The big city executive is coming to the small town bakery.

They're about to sell it.

But you know it's coming.

Rescue.

Rescue in the form of a carpenter wearing plaid who is gonna rescue the business and at the same time her heart.

Rescue.

Why do we love stories like that?

I want to suggest to you that it's not the romance, it's not the thrill of the rescue, it's not the nostalgia, but because deep down, those stories of rescue, they reach us in the innermost parts of our being, and they point to something greater than the story itself, something deeper than the story itself.

They point to a longing that you and I have for rescue ourselves.

They point to a hope, to a desire that amidst all the darkness of this world, and especially all the darkness that you and I face on a daily basis, they point to this longing we have that rescue might actually be possible.

I love what G.K.

Chesterton once said.

He said, fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist.

Children already know dragons exist.

Fairy tales tell them that dragons can be killed.

Now, of course, he's not talking about literal dragons here.

What he's saying is this that children they don't need stories to convince them that the world is evil and dark.

They already know that.

That is innate in them.

What they need is a story that says that evil won't get the last word.

They need a story that tells them that rescue is possible, that the monster can be slain.

Fairy tales, they don't captivate children.

These stories of rescue don't captivate our heart simply because they reveal a presence of evil, but because they reveal a hope in us that evil can be defeated and that rescue is actually possible.

So I'm making this suggestion this morning that you and I don't just love stories.

You know, we don't just like to watch movies or read books.

We actually need stories.

There is a reason why every civilization throughout the history of mankind has really been shaped by the stories that it tells.

Through every generation, from the ancient epic of Gilgamesh to the Avengers, from Dusty Scrolls to billion-dollar Netflix scripts.

Every generation, every culture, every people needs stories because deep down we long for rescue.

Now, John, the writer of the gospel we are in this morning, is inserting the story of Jesus Christ, the true historical story of Jesus Christ, as the rescue story of all time to believe in.

Because while all these other rescue stories are fiction, this one is factual.

And this one tells us of the rescue that all these other stories draw our hearts towards.

So that John says this, we've read this before, and we'll come back to this time and time again, because it really is the key to understanding what's happening in the Gospel of John.

In chapter 20, he says, these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John wants us to know this.

Here's our main idea this morning.

This is what I want you to take away this morning, okay?

That Jesus came to provide the rescue we all long for.

It is Jesus, but there is a problem.

And in John 6, we are confronted with this hard reality that not everybody wants the kind of rescue that Jesus offers.

This chapter, chapter 6, takes place over just the span of two days.

At the pace that you and I are working through John 6, we're going to be in it for two years.

There is a lot here that we have been chewing on.

But in that short time, Jesus addresses a crowd of 5,000 men.

Now, by the time that you account for women and children that were likely a part of this crowd, it's more likely that Jesus is addressing over 12,000 people.

And what John wants to see is this contrast.

He keeps going back and forth between the crowd and the disciples.

And what he's trying to draw out for us is this contrast of why do nearly 12,000 people miss it, but these 12 disciples get it?

Why, even though all these 12,000 people long for rescue, why do only 12 see that that rescue is found in Jesus Christ?

And so John goes back and forth in these powerful scenes depicting the crowd.

First, we saw in verses 1 to 15 that Jesus feeds the crowd.

He miraculously multiplies the loaves of bread and the fish, rescuing the crowd from hunger.

But that very same night when the disciples find themselves on a boat, being rocked by the wind and the waves, Jesus will rescue their life.

He will rescue them not only from hunger, but from death.

The next day, Jesus again speaks to the crowd.

The crowd runs across the water, around the water to Jesus to hear from him again.

And Jesus again speaks to the crowd, not offering them bread, but offering them life and hope in him who is the bread of life.

I want you to look at John 6, and we're gonna go a little farther down, but I want you to notice how the crowd responds.

John 6, verse 66, after Jesus tells them that he is the bread of life, John tells us this after this, many disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

John 6:66

So Jesus said to the twelve, twelve remain, twelve people remain, and he looks at them and he says, Do you want to go away as well?

And perhaps in the most beautiful confession of Christ in all of Scripture, Peter says this to Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to know that you are the holy one of God.

This is the heart of what I want you to see today.

It's a fascinating and sobering problem for us to think about.

How come so many people here miss the rescue that Jesus comes to offer, and only 12 receive it?

And more importantly, for you and I, how do we become those who see it and receive it?

Question we have to ask ourselves this morning is this what has to happen for a person to see the rescue?

What has to happen to receive the rescue that Jesus truly offers?

And this is the heart of what John is getting at in chapter 6, verses 37 to 51.

Now we're gonna see this in two parts.

This week we'll talk about how the rescue begins.

Next week we'll talk about how the rescue continues, but as we hear from God's word, would you stand with me and as we read God's true, trustworthy, inerrant word?

We stand together in honor of it.

Look what John writes in chapter 6, verse 37.

All that the Father gives to me will come to me.

And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.

For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.

They said, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

How does he now say, I have come down from heaven?

Jesus answered them, Do not grumble among yourselves.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

It is written in the prophets, and they will all be taught by God.

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God, he has seen the Father.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever 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 that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

This is the living and active word of God.

You can take a seat.

How these twelve received it, but the twelve thousand missed it.

The first thing I want you to see is this that in our rescue, Jesus receives us.

He receives me.

He receives you.

Our rescue, it begins with the a divine initiative.

It is God who starts the process.

Look with me at your Bibles at verse 37, where we'll spend much of our time this morning.

And notice what Jesus says.

All that the Father gives to me will come to me.

All that the Father gives me will come to me.

And I want you to understand this morning that this is where your rescue starts.

The order is incredibly important.

First, you are given to Jesus by the Father.

Then you come to Jesus in faith.

That order is the distinction between those who will be eternally rescued by Jesus and those who will not.

And so the ultimate question for you, if you are a Christian, it comes back to this reality according to Jesus Christ.

It comes back to this reality.

Not did you find God, but have you been given by the Father to the Son?

Because all who have been given by the Father to the Son will come to him.

Notice that word there.

You see it?

All.

All.

All that have been given to the Father.

Not some of the people that have been given to the Father.

Not even a lot of them.

It's not the especially spiritual people that have been given to the Father.

It's not the people who have their lives together that have been given to the Father, that have been given to the Son who will come to Him.

It's not those who are, you know, religious.

If they're religious and then the Father gives them to the Son, then they come to Him.

It is all.

All.

You know what this means for us?

If you and I are in Christ this morning, we begin to view our story with a whole new lens.

I love, I love this process.

You know, we're about to have some baptisms on Easter Sunday, and we're praising the Lord for the work that He's doing in the lives of these people who are being baptized.

And I love this process of coming alongside them and trying to make sense of like what the Lord has done.

You know what happens so often?

This kind of eye-opening experience of like, man, okay, I thought I came to Jesus in faith, but I'm starting to, as I tell my story, put the pieces of the puzzle together and realize that God had been orchestrating this the whole time.

And you and I can look at our story and begin to look through the lens of what God has done and realize like we weren't the initial mover, it was God.

It was the Father who sought you out.

I certainly know this is true for me.

I met Christ at a country style in 2002.

And there was too much that was happening in my life at that point for me to ever pretend like I was the first mover.

I look at that and my I mean I had never heard about Jesus Christ at all.

I just thought I thought he was a swear word.

But when I sat there in that country cell for the first time and I had heard the gospel for the very first time, my life was in such ruins and I was without hope in every way.

So the Lord had set everything up so that when I heard that word, I believed and found eternal life in Jesus Christ.

It was the Lord.

And you know, we look at testimonies in our church, and I won't name names here, but I will tell stories like the woman who was wrestling with questions about the gospel, and then on a plane ride, just so happened to sit in a seat where the screen in front of her was broken, so she couldn't put her earphones in.

And it just so happened, I mean, you know, I believe in God's sovereignty, that there was a GCC pastor right behind her who was sharing the gospel with another person, and she had to sit and listen to that because she couldn't watch the movie.

And she heard that gospel conversation, she spoke to that pastor, and later she believed in the Lord and received life.

You look at a story like that, and you say, Who's the one who's working here?

And you say, It is God.

Like the man who resisted God for years, and by the time that I had spoken to him, he spoke of this internal spiritual hunger that pulled him to seek Christ out of nowhere.

It just came out of nowhere in his life.

Nothing happened.

He just had this internal, like magnetic force pulling him to seek Jesus Christ, and he did, and he found eternal life.

None of this is random, none of this is coincidental.

This is the Father giving someone to the Son.

And so I want you to understand what the Holy Spirit should be stirring up in your heart right now, if you are a believer, is not this sense of pride as though, you know, you did anything in coming to Jesus, like you discovered the reality of eternal life.

It wasn't about you.

Not the sense of passivity in a sense of like, okay, well, since it's all God, I can just sit back and do nothing.

Instead, what should be stirring up in your soul right now is like this sense of awe, this humble response of like, God, why me?

And at that moment, you recognize that it is all his grace.

Your heart is stirred in worship.

That before you ever called out to Jesus, he was already drawing you to himself, that your salvation is not a result of your cleverness.

It is not a result of your upbringing, it is not a result of your moral performance.

God doesn't look at you and applaud and say, I need that guy on my team.

It is nothing but the sovereign grace of God.

It's all his grace.

And it had to be that way, didn't it?

In fact, this is what Jesus is telling us that if God had not moved his heart towards us, we would have never moved our hearts towards him.

Look at verse 44 with me.

I love to see that when I say, look at verse 44, and I see all the heads go down, and you don't have to look at this ugly mug anymore.

It's great.

Verse 44.

No one, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

Church, let those words sink in for a moment.

No one, not a few, not some, not the especially spiritual, not the ones born in Christian households, not the ones attending a great church, hearing great preaching.

No one can come.

Now, Jesus isn't saying that like no one can come, like you know, my kids have a sign on their bedroom door right now.

It says no boys allowed.

That's not what Jesus is saying here.

What he is saying is this no one can come because they are not able.

And scripture paints this picture of our hearts so that we understand it's not just like we're weak towards God.

It's not like we're in the water and we're looking up at the helicopter saying, Hey, come rescue me, let down the rope, and I'll grab on it.

What the scriptures say is that you are resistant and you are rebellious against God.

This is what Jesus said in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

The light has shone in the world, and what is the problem?

The people loved darkness.

When scripture talks about your spiritual life, it says you are dead in your trespasses and sins.

Have you ever tried to tell a dead person to walk?

It says that you are blind to spiritual realities.

Have you ever shown a blind person a picture?

It says you are deaf to the voice of God.

Have you ever tried to speak to a deaf person?

These things are not possible.

This is your spiritual reality.

You are unable.

Look at what Jesus will say in verse 63.

We will get here in like four months, probably at this pace.

It is the Spirit who gives life.

The flesh is no help at all.

Even if we tried to seek him, we wouldn't.

And left to ourselves, we don't.

This is why our rescue begins with divine initiative.

This is why our Salvation must begin with grace because unless the Father draws us, we will never come.

And loved one, praise God that He does.

He draws.

And in this moment, right now, in our hearts, as we sit before God's word, they're overflowing with the sense of praise.

God, thank you for what you've done.

Now, the natural question that we should ask is this if rescue begins with divine initiative, how do I know it's happened in me?

If it is a work that God must do, how do I know that this work, the sovereign grace of God, is effective in my own life?

Look again at what Jesus says here in verse 37.

All that the Father gives to me, notice something so important here, will come to me.

Will come to me.

You see the power of that word?

Will.

There is no question in it.

It's no qu I mean, it's so helpful.

I mean, this sermon is pretty much telling you what the text does not say.

It does not say that you might come.

All that are given to the Father might come to Jesus.

They will come.

So this is how you know that you are a part of this divine initiative, is that you, in your heart of hearts, you long to come to Jesus.

I was speaking to someone recently who, you know, struggling with this assertion, I don't even know if I'm a Christian, you know, I want to love Jesus, but I just can't.

And you know what my answer to is?

The fact that you want to love Jesus is a sign of the divine initiative that starts the whole process.

Because apart from God working in your life, you would never seek Jesus for eternal life.

You come to Him.

This is how you know that you have been rescued.

You long to meet with Jesus.

And this is the second thing I want you to see that happens in our rescue.

He calls us.

He calls us.

How do we make sense of the weight of this word?

All who are given to Jesus will come to him.

That is such a strong word.

There is no doubt about it.

It is guaranteed, there's no uncertainty.

If the Father has given you to the Son, then you will come.

How do we make sense of that?

Well, there's something you need to understand about your salvation, and that is this that your salvation didn't begin with your faith.

Did you know that?

In fact, what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1 is that you were predestined, this is God's word, you were predestined before the foundation of the world.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Before you ever breathed your first breath, before you ever repented of sin, God had predestined you before the foundation of the world.

God made the first move.

That is why the picture of adoption in the Bible, as a picture of the work that God has done in your life, is so fitting.

That's why the biblical authors love to say that you have been adopted into God's family.

Because in adoption, what happens?

The parents move long before the adopted child knows what's happening.

And you know, you talk to families, even in our church, that have adopted children, and it's such a long process that they have to walk for walk in before they even think about adopting that specific child.

And this is what God has done for you.

Long before you made the decision, you were in the eternal mind of God that he would save you.

You were predestined for adoption.

But then what happens?

Again, turning to God's word so that there's no question, there is no doubt that this is what God says about our salvation.

This isn't me making it up.

Look at what Paul says in Romans 8 30.

And those whom he predestined, they call this the golden chain, by the way, because it's such a clear progression, next to next to next to next.

Those whom he predestined, he also called.

And those whom he called, he also justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

Listen, we haven't been glorified yet, but it is as good as done, because as soon as you are predestined, the whole process begins, and the next step is being called.

I love what Mark prayed this morning.

He said, To those who are called, the preaching of the gospel is the power of God.

What is the difference between preaching that falls flat and preaching that is the power of God?

It is that preaching that is the power of God rings in the ears of those who are called by God.

You must be called.

Those whom God predestines, he also calls.

What is this call?

What is it?

Theologians call this the effectual call.

The effectual call.

It is an inward, that is, it's in your heart, powerful in the sense that you cannot resist it when it happens.

And it is a personal, in that it's given to you.

It is an inward, powerful, personal summons of God that actually brings a sinner to faith.

This is how John Murray writes it in an incredible book that is worthy of challenging you to read through it.

It's called Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

And John Murray says this the call of God is efficacious.

That means it is effective.

It is not a mere invitation, it is a summons that is invested with the power of the Spirit of God so that it is always effective in bringing about the desired response of faith and repentance.

This is always how God calls his people.

So you'll remember if you were with us when we went through the book of Genesis, when God calls Abraham, he says to Abraham, Go to a land that I will show you.

And I will make you into a great nation.

Before Abraham actually goes to the land, he is called there.

But because he is called by the power of God, it is as good as done, so that God can say, listen, if you go, I'm gonna make it, he doesn't say, if you go, I'll make you a great nation.

He says, I will do it.

Because why?

The summons that God gives comes along with the power of God.

Inside the call, the effective call, is the power to respond.

So that when God calls Abraham, it is not just a suggestion, oh please, Abraham, could you please go?

It is a powerful summons that along with the call comes the power to respond and obey.

It had the divine power to produce in it the faith that we have come to know Abraham for.

Now, this effective call is different from the general call.

There are two calls, and it is good for us to understand this so that we don't get confused.

There is the general call, that is the preaching of the gospel that is commanded to go to all people everywhere.

It is a real call, it's happening right now.

The gospel is being preached.

Everyone in this room is uh hearing it, I think.

But there is an effective call that will only go into the hearts of those to whom God has chosen.

You see it right here in John 6, don't you?

Jesus, I mean it's astounding to me, is preaching to about 12,000 people here.

And the call is going out to all people.

I am the bread of life.

But Jesus tells us something deeper.

Of all that would hear that outward call, who would the sound of Jesus' voice would ring in their ears.

Only some would hear the inward call, the effectual call, and come to him.

Now Jesus would later tell his disciples in Matthew 22, as he, after sharing a parable about the kingdom, he would say this: Many are called, speaking of the general call, but few, Jesus says, are chosen, speaking of the effectual call.

Many are called, few are chosen.

In other words, they may hear the outward call, but few experience the inward saving call of God, Jesus says.

Now, there are two things here I want you to understand about the effective call.

Are you with me?

Are you with me?

We're pretty deep here, but stay with me.

This is good that we stay here and we drive deep into an understanding of how God saves us.

This is so good.

Okay, here's the first thing I want you to understand.

It is the call that makes you a Christian.

This is actually built into the very definition of the church.

The Greek word for the church is ecclesia.

And ecclesia, the definition of it, is the called out ones, those who are called out.

And so you'll remember in Matthew 16, when the church is founded, it's the first time in the New Testament that the word church is ever used.

It's the foundation of the New Testament church.

Jesus mentions the church, and he does so in response to Peter's confession, where Peter looked at Jesus and said, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Now Jesus responds and he looks to Peter.

You remember what he says?

He says, Peter, you know, flesh and blood cannot reveal this to you.

But my Father, who is in heaven.

In other words, he's saying, Peter, you are not smart enough to figure this out on your own.

In fact, it's not an intellectual thing.

What Jesus is looking at Peter, and he's looking at us this morning and saying, is, listen, this is an internal heart reality.

You must believe it inside, and you can't affect that.

It must happen from my Father, the same one who created the heavens and the earth, the same one who sustains all things.

This is something that must happen internally, Jesus says.

Peter didn't come to that confession on his own.

It was revealed on him.

And it is on that kind of heaven-revealed confession that Jesus then says, I will build my church.

What is Jesus saying?

The church will be the gathering of the people who have believed that same truth, who have been called out by God, giving them this heavenly revelation of who Jesus Christ is.

This is what the church is.

Those who have not only heard the gospel with their ears, but heard the Father's call with their hearts.

Now, the reality of this, this should profoundly shape the way that we do church.

If anyone in here ever pretends to be perfect, you can know for sure that they are not a part of a true universal church.

Why?

Because God does not call people out of perfection.

He calls them out of brokenness, he calls them out of sin.

He calls them out of rebellion.

And so let me just, can I just completely offend you if you're a member of Redemption Church?

You are a hot mess.

Okay?

You're broken.

Why?

Theologically, because that's what the church is.

It's like we gather up all the people that were sinful, broken, rebellious, but called out by God from the darkness into the light.

And that should profoundly shape the way that we do life together.

The church is not a gathering of people who are good enough, smart enough, moral enough to make it on their own.

You know what the church is?

And I gotta say this because sometimes, you know, religious gatherings can become this place of like pride and like superiority, of like, man, you know, we got it, we figured it out.

You know what the church is?

The church is the place that, you know, the rescue team is in the helicopter flying over the ocean and they're pulling people out of the ocean and they're wrapping the emergency blanket on them.

And the church is where the rescue team, that in this illustration is Jesus Christ, brings those people.

And we're all huddled up and we're still in the emergency blankets and we're shivering and we're saying, I can't, I can't believe what just happened.

I can't believe what we were just saved from.

That should profoundly affect the way that we do church.

We were swimming, drowning, gasping for breath in an ocean of sin and shame.

And we look across the aisle here, we look to the person beside us, and we say, What wait, you've been rescued too?

You too.

Every time we gather, there should be this sense of awe in the room as we still hear the crinkle of the emergency blanket.

It's on our back.

Like we were on a hell-bound race.

We were swimming in the waters of condemnation.

We were on the face of eternal destruction.

But God reached down and rescued us.

And so we sit here and we don't sing like this, oh, thank you, Father, for what you've done.

We're like amazed.

What has God done?

It means when someone someone new comes into this, comes into this church, we're not like, oh man, weird new guy.

I don't want to meet that guy.

Right?

And I love this about our church because we're really like what we are is we we come up and we're like, you too?

You too?

You got rescued too?

And if you don't know the rest, like I want to tell you something.

I want to tell you why everyone at this church is so weird, okay?

Okay, you guys are offended by that.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I want to tell you why everyone's so broken.

Because Jesus has rescued us from a life of sin and shame.

That is what gathers us together.

Have you ever looked around this church and just been like, what is uniting us all together?

You ever thought about that?

I think about it all the time.

Like, I love preaching, I love, I just get to look at all of you guys, and I just love that.

That's why it's so long, because you guys are so such beautiful people.

But I just think so often, like, what unites us together?

We would never, can we be honest, like we'd never hang out if it wasn't for Jesus.

But this is what unites us together.

We have been rescued by Jesus.

It's not our sameness.

It's not our status.

It's not our background.

It is the miracle of being rescued.

It is the miracle of being called out by grace.

The second important thing I want you to understand is this.

First, that first you understand that the call is what makes you a Christian.

The second thing you need to understand is this that the effectual call is an internal reality.

The general call is external.

You hear it through the ears, but it cannot be received unless it is heard internally in the heart.

Jesus says this clearly in John 6.

Look at verse 45 with me.

Look at the text with me.

John 6, verse 45.

John 6:45

It says, It is written in the prophets, and they shall.

I lost my spot here.

Let me try this again.

It is written in the prophets, and they will all be taught by God.

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

Jesus here is quoting Isaiah 54, verse 14.

Isaiah 54:14

The passage is all about peace and the restoration God is promising his people.

And Isaiah says there, All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.

Now listen, if you have kids that have been in schools before, you know that good teachers make all the difference.

And so you fight for your kid to be in the class with the good teacher, and you push against him being in the class with the bad teacher.

Good teachers make all the difference.

Now, Jesus is taking that desire we have for good teaching and blowing it out of the water.

Those who come to Jesus are not just responding to a compelling teacher.

There is a teaching that can only come from the grace of God.

Listen, this should give that, we should have every hope as we think about our own evangelism here.

People are not gonna respond to the gospel because they think you're cool.

You know, it's hard for you to believe because you look at me and you're like, that must be why people are responding to the gospel, because he is so cool.

They're gonna respond because they have an inward teacher.

That's all God.

It takes the praise away from you, it takes the pressure away from you.

Teachers, they can inform the mind, God can teach the heart.

You see the language here?

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, it is an internal call, not a head knowledge.

Listen, there are all sorts of things I can teach you about the Bible.

In fact, liberal scholars who do not know Jesus Christ personally know more than you and I would ever know, could ever dream about knowing of the Bible.

What's the problem?

We don't need classroom education, we need heart revelation.

And what the Father is doing here is not just imparting facts.

Listen, we can impart facts, can't we?

And I used to do youth ministry, those kids knew facts.

You know what the most anxiety uh riddling, is that what you say, time in my life is?

Is when I do Bible trivia with kids who have grown up in Christian homes.

Because they know facts.

They're like, who was Moses' uncle's dog?

What was their name?

And they are like Joephafath or something.

I don't know.

And I'm like, I don't even didn't even know Moses had an uncle, okay?

And I went to seminary.

You can know facts.

What you need is a knowledge of the heart.

The Father is revealing Christ.

He is shaping our understanding, he is opening our spiritual eyes to see and save your savor who Jesus is.

What is the result?

You see it here in the text.

We come.

We come, verse 45.

It is an internal knowledge that once learned from the Father, Jesus says, everyone who learns it comes to me.

So listen, coming to Jesus does not begin with human reasoning or clever arguments.

It begins with God teaching the heart.

It's not about just sound hitting waves hitting your eardrum.

It is about the voice of the Father awakening the soul.

Now we see how this works in Acts chapter 16.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Can you keep a finger in John 6 with me and go to Acts chapter 16?

Acts 16 · chapter mention

And as you're turning there, I just want to encourage you in your evangelism, when you share the gospel, it's not about your ability to teach that matters.

What matters is what God is doing with this person's heart.

And this is what happens in Acts chapter 16, where Paul is preaching the gospel in this city, and he's holding a prayer meeting by the river, and this woman named Lydia comes.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

It's the first convert of Europe.

And notice what happens when Paul preaches the gospel in chapter 16, verse 14.

Look what happens.

One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyratira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God.

The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said of Paul.

Paul preaches the gospel.

His preaching reaches the ears, but it is the Lord who opens the heart.

That's the effectual call.

It's when the general call of the gospel is joined by the inward, powerful, loving voice of Jesus Christ through the preaching of the gospel.

Suddenly your heart becomes alive to Christ.

And so the question you should be asking is this have I received the call?

How do I know?

Listen, church, here is how you know.

You feel the internal draw to know, experience, and delight in Christ.

The external does not matter.

You may be here just to check a box.

What matters is the internal, the desire, the longing to know Jesus Christ.

Let me try to explain it this way.

One of the most contentious stories in our household is the story of how Amber and I started dating.

Now, one of the wonderful things about preaching is that I have this platform and I have a microphone, and I can tell you how the story really went.

And Amber can't do anything because she has no platform and no microphone.

So let me tell you what happened.

Before Amber and I started dating, I was putting on a clinic in flirting.

I was what kids today called the Captain of the Riz.

Have you ever heard that?

Now the fact that you are laughing is telling me that you don't believe my side of the story, but let me continue to tell you what happened.

It was a textbook.

I was driving up to Bear.

I lived in Aurora driving up to Barry just to spend time with her.

I was waiting on MSN for her to log on after school.

And I was putting in my description, you know, life, like just anonymous sort of poems, which whenever a guy is doing, something's going on, right?

Life without you is like dull pencils.

There's no point.

You know.

It was clinical.

I could write a book, honestly.

It's very clear where I came I stood, okay?

Then Valentine's Day came and it was the grand finale.

I took her to a coffee shop.

I sat her down, just me and her.

I laid out all my feelings.

I told her that I liked her.

I told her that I wanted this to be something more.

Do you know what she did?

For 15 minutes, I still remember the way that the clock looked on the wall.

For 15 minutes, she sat there in silence.

And if you don't think 15 minutes is a long time, sit in silence with someone that you just told all your feelings about.

Try doing that.

And then her dad came, picked her up, and she left.

Now, she heard the general call.

But there was no power drawing her to it.

There was no spark, there was no effectual call.

Why?

Well, at that point, it just didn't see me that way.

Honestly, a lot of you guys are thinking right now there's a lot of good reasons for that.

But you clearly know how the story ends by the sovereign grace of God and a large, large, large dose of deception that I did in those first early years.

I eventually convinced her to marry me, and we are now living the fruit of that miracle every single day.

But here's the point: hearing about the love isn't the same as being drawn to it.

And just hearing about Christ isn't the same as being drawn to the Father by Christ to Christ.

The general call goes out week after week.

The sermon is preached week after week.

The question is this: have you experienced the effectual call?

Have you felt that internal longing, unshakable pull towards Jesus Christ?

Have you stopped admiring him from a distance and finally come to him?

And maybe right now you feel that draw.

Maybe you feel that desire.

I want to know Christ.

I want to come to him.

I want you to understand the power of that draw.

It does not happen naturally.

It can only happen supernaturally.

And so if you feel that draw, I want you to understand it is not hype, it is not emotion.

It is the Father who is drawing you to himself.

And it is your responsibility now to respond to him, to come to Jesus, to believe in Jesus, to cast your faith in Jesus Christ, to say there's no other way I can save myself from my sins.

Jesus, you are my Lord and Savior.

You are the bread of life.

Apart from you, I will die.

Here's the last thing I want you to see.

Jesus rescues us by meeting us.

If you are in Christ here, here's what's true about your story, according to this verse, according to John chapter 6, verse 37.

John 6:37

Do you understand you are a gift from the Father to the Son?

You have been given to Jesus.

And Jesus so loves his gift that he delights in the Father, in what the Father has given him.

And what we are hearing here is this: that nothing will stop him from meeting with you.

And what we will hear next week is that nothing will stop him from holding on to you for all of eternity because he loves the gift.

You guys love gifts?

I mean, you love gifts?

I do.

When I left my last church, you know, it's kind of a bad practice to give people incredibly good parting gifts because you think, well, if I want something, I'm gonna have to leave.

We don't have that at this church, so blessed.

But I left, you know, I got that, I got this amazing, you know, huge Traeger barbecue smoker.

I love it.

Now I always say barbecue smoker because when I had my interview with the elders here, I said that I love smoking.

That did not turn out well.

You know?

You gotta preface it.

Barbecue smoker, okay?

That's what I learned.

Now, this gift wasn't just a thing to me, it was a symbol.

It represented so much more.

It represented years of ministry, of deep relationships, of shared sorrows and shared joys and the love of a church that I had poured myself into, and they had poured themselves into me.

So I didn't open up that smoker and just say, oh, no, no, nice, that's cool.

I received it with joy.

I felt honored by that.

It meant something to me.

And yet that moment, as meaningful as it is to me, and if you've you know been at this church for like any more than two weeks, you know that the smoker in meat is very meaningful to me.

As meaningful as that was to me, it is just a faint shadow of how Jesus receives you when you come to him.

You are a precious gift given to him for him.

You know, this week I was reading in Ephesians 5, and I saw this with such clarity, but this on my mind, such as the joy in preaching that you get to see these kind of things.

I saw this in Ephesians 5, as Paul is talking about marriage.

He's telling us that it's meant to reflect the gospel.

It's meant to reflect Jesus' love for the bride, his church.

And look what he says in Ephesians 5.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing with of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself.

To himself, to himself in splendor.

Listen, if you are a religious Pharisee, you cannot fathom those words.

Jesus is sanctifying you, Jesus is the one cleansing you, so that he may present you to himself in splendor.

That means that Jesus is not just saving you from something, he is saving you for something, for himself.

He delights to receive you, to cleanse you, to make you new, then to step back, so to speak, and to rejoice in the beauty of what he has redeemed.

That's why he's rescuing people.

You guys on your street have that person who has the classic car, right?

And every Saturday morning, they are out there and they are cleaning that classic car.

There's never been a speck of dirt on that car, right?

But they are always out there cleaning it and stepping back and looking at it.

And the thing is like shinier than the Shekinah glory window that we have in this church.

You cannot believe how shiny this thing is.

And what are they doing?

They're stepping back and rejoicing in this car that was once rusty and old, and they have refurnished and made beautiful and rebuilt and made it more powerful.

You know, that is what Jesus wants to do with you for all of eternity.

He's he's gonna say five times in this text that one day you will be raised to life.

And you know who will be the most excited in that moment?

Like you and I are gonna be excited, right?

I can't wait to get there and lock eyes with some of you and like we just got resurrected to new life.

And we look at each other, we put our arms like, we made it.

We like Jesus did it.

We're so excited.

You know who's gonna be the most excited?

Is Jesus.

Because beginning an eternity past from the time that you were predestined for all of eternity, he was preparing this moment that you might be presented to him in splendor.

He has done the work and he will stand back and receive the glory.

Loved one, you are rescued for his glory.

You are rescued for himself.

Jesus has done that with you.

You've come to him.

You're not a fixer-upper.

He regrets.

You're not a project he tolerates.

You are a treasure he delights in, and he is making you radiant.

He loves what the Father has given him.

This is the greatest.

Can you see it?

Can you see?

This is the greatest rescue story there ever is.

Listen, I love Lord of the Rings.

You know that.

You're like enough with the Lord of the Rings analogies already, okay?

But man, I gotta tell you, like, there it is nothing compared to the actual real story of what Jesus Christ is doing in the lives of those in this church who believe in him.

This is a beautiful rescue story, and it is re it is offered to you if you have been given by the Father to the Son and come to Him.

Could you turn with me to prayer?

Father, we thank you.

That we thank you.

We can't even begin to describe the weight of those words, Lord, the weight of thankfulness that we really should have in light of this fact, Lord, that we have done nothing to earn your salvation, that it's all of grace.

And that, God, you have done the work of calling us, and within that call, giving us the power to respond, raising us from death to life, giving sight to blind eyes, opening up deaf ears so that we can see your son and come.

And so, God, our response now is this: we come to you.

We come to you, Lord.

And we thank you for the call that you have given.

We pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Would you stand with me and worship?