Clough John Lesson 31
“The
Bread of God is He” – John
One of the feedback cards is on the hymn we just sang, Christ The Lord is Risen Today, in the second verse Charles Wesley writes, “dying once He all doth save,” does this means that Christ’s death saves everyone or does it mean that He offers it to everyone in which their will determines or does it mean that all who will be saved, not including those in hell. Neither, or I should say none of those three options. You may think there is no other option; there is and I’ve outlined it quite carefully and I took two and a half pages to do so in the third framework pamphlet under Unlimited Atonement. What we mean is that Jesus Christ died for the sins, all sins of all men who ever have lived and ever will live but that in fact this renders men savable but not saved; we don’t believe in liberal universalism, such as Karl Barth who argues that all men are saved, all you have to do is tell them that they’re saved. We don’t believe that Jesus Christ is going to be one bit frustrated that He died for people in vain and they’re going to reject and He tried all He could and they just turned away. That’s Arminianism; we don’t accept that either.
What we say is that Christ died that all men could be saved if they would respond. This renders men savable and you have here precisely what we said this morning when 120 years passed before the flood and for 120 years God had Noah preach and preach and preach and preach and preach and gave everyone a chance to hear. All men, so to speak, were rendered savable during the 120 year period. And it was legitimate; Noah didn’t say, in effect, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, now I know you won’t and there are only 8 spaces in the ark but here goes anyway. It wasn’t that kind of an invitation; it was an invitation to believe, it was a bona fide invitation to trust in Christ but nevertheless God knew perfectly well and had designed history so that it was that way, that no one in fact would believe. But the reason that Noah preached for 120 years, even though it was 100% certain that no one would believe is to make the issue clear as to why men go to hell. Men go to hell, not because of their sin; men go to hell because of their rebellion against God’s solution for sin. In a way, hell is just sin extended; man has a problem, initially it’s rebellion against God. God undertakes to solve that problem by offering him salvation in Christ, and then men turn around and reject that and wind up in hell. So the idea is that men are in hell having consciously rejected, not just God and His authority but God’s grace as well as His authority.
The second feedback card: In John 6:11 there also appears the theme of Christ creating matter spontaneously from other matter. I do not understand how this is resolved with ex nihilo creation except that matter was previously established in the John 6:11 passage. Well, it isn’t obviously creation ex nihilo in the Genesis 1 sense of the word. As I said when I went through John 6, I’m not sure what went on there, whether He just extended the molecules, you sort of had a cloning effect of the splitting of the molecules and the atoms so they duplicated and they replicated themselves, whether it was that kind of a situation or whether it was that He just miraculously made the loaves in His hands as He fed them. But it was something that was well under cover, it wasn’t some spectacular thing that many people saw. Whatever it was it was very good slight of hand because it was done, so to speak, out of the public view. It was not a public miracle in how the bread actually was generated. Kind of like the thing with the water into wine, nobody really saw it happen, all we have is that they filled those waterpots up with water and then they turned around and He said dip in and nobody was looking for a few minutes and in the interim the thing had changed to wine. It doesn’t require a profound student of chemistry to realize that at least He had to generate carbon atoms in the process. So how He did this, again I don’t know, whether He used prior existing matter or whether He spoke it into existence as he did in Genesis 1, but regardless of the method it still isn’t like Genesis 1; Genesis 1 is the wholesale creation of the universe. If this an ex nihilo creation where He speaking a minor thing into existence then it just simply shows a little bit of what Genesis 1 is all about, but they really technically can’t be classified together.
John 6, Jesus and the masses. I said there are two passages in the Bible
that are political texts; there’s no way of getting around them, they have
political doctrine and they have political implications. One of these passages is 1 Samuel 8; some of
you who are teaching school if you want to pull a sneaky one and of course not
violate the professed neutrality of the classroom, the way to get around that
is to say today we’re going to have a little project on this history of man’s
thought in the area of politics, and to get a proper perspective on history we
have to go back to the earliest sources and one of those earliest sources just
happens to be the book of Samuel, in the Bible for those of you in the class
that don’t know what the book of Samuel is, and if you turn to chapter 8 you’ll
find a very interesting passage and I would like assign for homework you to
summarize the thought of 1 Samuel 8 and contrast it with somebody else that you
happen to pick in the class. Of course,
all done in the name of history, talking about it in terms of history nobody
will ever fight you. You’ve just fed
them a wad of religion but they don’t know that and since the other side always
plays that game we play it too. Talk
history, it’s just not your thoughts, it’s
1 Samuel 8 is a good passage to show divine
viewpoint politics; it deals with the danger of centralized power and so 1
Samuel 8 deals with one extreme in the political spectrum—totalitarianism. Now as we would always suspect, God doesn’t
leave something unbalanced. And John 6
is the passage at the other end of the political spectrum. John 6 is Jesus’ attack against, of all
things, democracy. Now let’s be careful
what we’re talking about lest we be accused of saying the Bible is un-American
or something. If it is, by the way, we
also will say that, but the point is that’s not what’s meant here. Democracy had for its origin ancient
Now let’s see why democracy is so
dangerous. I know I’m speaking heresy to
some but that’s all right, because since you’ve gone to school you have heard
that
Now what happened in history… and democracy never did work, by the way, it always has degenerated into a mob. Now what happened was that you had the concept of a republic. Why is the republic a democracy? The difference, I use the word, is that republic has a constitution, or a constitutional framework and within that framework people can vote and people can decide, but people are not given free latitude to define law and what is right and what is wrong. It is what is right and what is wrong measured against the prior yardstick of the constitution.
Practical application of this point: when
was the last time you read the Constitution of the
Well, why do we have a republic? Why do we have a Constitution? Because the Constitution goes back in history
to the belief that all men collectively are not capable of cranking out real
legislation but rather they need some sort of an operating framework prior to
generating law. This actually comes
historically from back in
I go through all this rigmarole as we go
through John 6 because I want you to understand the political implications of
Jesus’ attack; why is this necessary, why bother with that. Well, if you read your papers the last 3 or 4
months you’ve noticed trouble in Africa and I think this shows where the
missionary statesmen of our century have failed miserably at one point; they’ve
done many marvelous things; the average missionary is very hard working, it’s
not his fault, but the men who plan the overall strategy of missions left out
something and now we’re paying a horrible price for their mistake. The mistake was that we send a missionary
into a country but we’d better tell that missionary, don’t get politically
involved in that country, don’t teach the Word of God with all the political
implications because after all, you might get thrown out of the country if you
do. So what, get thrown out, then start
infiltration, there are all sorts of ways of handling that problem. The point is that the missionary task force
on the African continent never taught the Word of God to point out the
political implications. So now you have
the spectacle and that’s all you can say, it’s just a horrible spectacle, of
some of the leading Marxists on the African continent graduates of missionary
schools. Now what the heck were they
taught in the missionary schools that made them so vulnerable to Marxist
philosophy? There’s something lacking in
the curriculum of those schools. And we
can only surmise that what was lacking was what was lacking in
These are necessary things; if we do not do
it we are creating a vacuum and the Marxists just wait for the Christians to
act stupidly enough to give them a long nice rope that they can then take and
use for their purposes, and they don’t hang themselves with it, they hang other
people with it. So when you read about
Angola falling and when you read about every African nation from the equator
south to South Africa, you are watching one group of countries after another
who had people who heard the gospel, who were witnessed to, who went to
missionary schools and now are some of the most vicious anti-American,
pro-Marxists people that the world has ever seen. The Chi-coms are in
This is just an application of why, when
you read a passage like John 6 don’t just read it as though it’s a nice little
sweet spiritual lesson for Sunday school.
This passage carries political implications that are deeply threatening
to a lot of people outside, a lot of people.
And you’re going to find yourself some day walking along and you’re
going to step in a landmine politically when you let people understand that you
have a certain position and you take it because of this, this and this, and
because of that doctrine, this doctrine and that doctrine. And all of a sudden you’re going to get BO
real fast as far as they’re concerned.
But that’s the price you pay for being a Christian. But if you don’t take the stand we’re just
going to go the same way
So we have John 6; now what is Jesus doing in John 6? It says it happened at the eve of the Passover. Because the Passover looked back to the basis of political freedom, and I remind you, political freedom as well as spiritual freedom, you cannot separate the two, the Exodus was political as much as it was spiritual and the issue in Jesus day was if He was King-Messiah then He would give them political freedom along with the spiritual. But they wanted just the political, not the spiritual and Jesus insisted therefore they’ll get the spiritual first and not the political. And that’s the story of John 6.
Now in John 6:22 Jesus Christ begins the day after that famous night of walking on the water. The purpose of walking on the water, we found, from Psalm 29 was to demonstrate that He was still King Jehovah, that the Lord sits upon the flood of the waters and He was assuring His disciples that even though He starts this chapter at the height of His popularity, statistically Jesus Christ is way ahead of the game; He has a mass movement that He could use to bring political pressure on the authorities. By the time you’ve finished John 6 there’s hardly any of His disciples left. Statistically John 6 is a disaster for Jesus; here’s where He loses everyone. He erodes, deliberately, the basis of His popular support; He erodes the mass movement. Why does He do this? Well, He has reasons for doing it but He doesn’t want His disciples to completely give up and be discouraged when they see this complete collapse of the movement. And so right in the middle of the chapter you find that episode with the walking on the water, showing them yes, I am King, I am still King, now you’re going to trust Me to work out My kingdom the way I want to work it out, not the way men want to work it out. The issue is who was King, God or man? You have a mass mob here who believe in democracy; they believe that the mob can crank out rules. And one of their rules is that Jesus Christ will fit into their concept of the kingdom. They ultimately want to be king, and He is an accessory to their movement. And Jesus isn’t an accessory to anybody’s movement. So He’s about to demonstrate that; if anybody is king, it’s not the mob, it’s Him.
So He begins in verse 22 to straighten the crowd out, and He begins to preach the gospel to them. He says in verse 27, “Stop laboring for the food which perishes, but for that food which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you; for Him has God the Father sealed.” And here are the elements of the gospel; you can see three of the four elements of the gospel here. Let’s see how well we know basic doctrine. What are the four points of the gospel? God, sin, redemption by grace and faith. If you look you see the first three right in one verse. The ultimate authority in verse 27 is whom? God the Father. God the Father has sealed, it means He approves, God the Father is the One that chooses. And so Christ in verse 27 is witnessing to the unregenerate people in the mob, trying to convert them so they will become submissive to the Word of God, and He lays down the authority that the ultimate principle is not even the Son but the Father. The Father is the source of all things; the Father has sealed this, the Father wills this, and the Father is the authority of all. Therefore it’s not the mob, it’s not the disciples, it’s not the movement, it’s the Father, everything first from the Father. So the first point of the gospel is made clear, that God is the ultimate authority and not man.
The second point of the gospel is made clear when He says “stop laboring for the meat which perishes,” it’s present imperative negative, it means you are, stop it. And He cites a specific point act of rebellion; rebellion against what God has ordained and He exposes the sin at this point, the sin being shown by the way they want to design their kingdom. It happens to be a sin that is easy to that particular time, that particular situation.
Then the third point of the gospel is that redemption is by grace and this is why He says at the end of verse 27, “the Son of man shall give it to you,” everlasting life. “Give,” it’s the verb of grace, and so you have the third point of the gospel. God the Father, your rebellion, I will give you eternal life.
The fourth point of the gospel is found in verse 29, when responding to their idiot question of verse 28, “Jesus answered, and said unto them, This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent,” faith. So you see in verses 27 and 29 you’ve got all four points of the gospel. So Christ is evangelizing the mob and here is a very interesting thing; before the kingdom of God can come in, and remember the kingdom of God here at this point of history could have been political as well as spiritual; before that political aspect of the kingdom of God came in what did you have to have first? Personal evangelism; that’s always the place where it begins; personal evangelism. This is why it’s so necessary for some of you who have been coming here for years to review even the basics, as basic as that morning service is it is covering things that you need to know, if for no other reason to organize it in your own mind so you can go out ant talk to someone else. And you can teach someone else the four points of the gospel.
Tonight we start with John
Something else that’s very interesting too. They had just seen the fact of the miracle but obviously because of their human viewpoint they have placed a different interpretation on the facts and here is one of those places of Scripture that you ought to keep in mind; facts alone will not convince. You cannot just talk about the resurrection of Christ and say why, I can offer you this proof, that proof, this proof and this other proof, I’ve got a photographic picture here signed by the Roman centurion that says that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Now even if you had that kind of evidence it wouldn’t prove anything because if I were a clever unbeliever do you know how I’d respond to you, if you came to me with a pile of evidence and you proved beyond my comprehension, I couldn’t even handle it, that Christ rose from the dead, I had no way of refuting that, my way of flipping out from under your attack would be simply to say well, strange things do happen in the universe. Van Til wrote, “let’s send it into Ripley’s Believe it or Not,” various things do happen. Now how would you answer that one? There’s only one way you could counter me and block me off from doing that…
By the way, this Church has the most unique New Year’s party I’ve heard of, I’ve never heard of this thing before but this is fantastic, they had a group of people get together for a New Year’s party and instead of falling under the table they got together with a system of using the approach of doctrine and everybody had to play a little game, instead of playing Charades they played the game where you have a situation and now you defend facing this human viewpoint situation with a point of doctrine, and when doctrine gets into the parties of a group obviously doctrine has gone quite far. I just mention that in passing, it’s one of the hopeful signs for us all that gradually things are working out.
So we have the fact and these people are unable to interpret the facts correctly, so you must have the facts plus the interpretation. Now you see the problem these people have is that they have seen something that looks a little bit like that manna of the Old Testament, God feeding the people from heaven but it’s not quite. Let me show you what they were thinking; in the literature of the day, one book called 2 Baruch 29:8, it’s a non-canonical piece of literature that was read during that time, said this… now I read this, not because this is Scripture but because this will tell you what they were reading, the mob, what they were reading so you can understand what they’re thinking here. “It shall come to pass that the treasury of manna shall again be sent from on high and they will eat of it again in those years.” That’s a reference to the coming Messianic kingdom. And various other Judaic writings read, (quote): “As the former redeemer,” Moses, “called manna to descend, as it is stated, Behold, I will cause it to rain bread from heaven for you, so will the latter redeemer cause manna to descend.”
So what they’re asking Jesus at this point is well now Jesus, yeah you did that kind of thing over there on the hill but what we want to see is can you make it rain food from heaven again over all the land, not just in Galilee. Can you do that, because according to our picture of the coming Messiah, Messiah is going to do that and unless you do that Jesus, we don’t really buy this deal that you’re truly the Christ, truly the Messiah. And then they quote something, and this is the irony of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is very, very fascinating from a literary standpoint, how cleverly this man weaves things and he weaves them not because he’s so clever but because God’s clever. And always traps us with our own rejection, our own objection. And this is a beautiful case in point because they just, in verse 30, accused Jesus of not fitting, apparently the Word of God. Now it isn’t the Word of God because what did I say? All these sources are extra canonical. This is not Scripture, this is an invention of Judaism. It’s a preconceived idea of what Messiah was supposed to do, and they’re saying Jesus, you don’t fit our preconceived idea. That’s the accusation of verse 30, but then they slip, and boy, it’s a real winner here.
At verse 31 they go on to add, and this is their undoing, “Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written,” and they think by citing the rest of verse 31 to have shown that Jesus doesn’t fit the norm of Scripture. Well, you know that Jesus always fits the norm of Scripture. He may not fit the 2 Baruch and a few rabbinic writings, Jewish preconceived ideas, but you know He’s going to fit the Scripture. So when you see a quote like this the best thing to do is look in your margin and find out where that quote comes from, you’ll see a little a or b or something and if you do that you’ll see that this is a quotation from Psalm 78. Well, they couldn’t have quoted a worse verse from a worst Psalm than Psalm 78. Let’s turn to Psalm 78 and watch what happens. This was bad news for the mob. And the irony of all this is that you have the mob quoting Scripture to its author because who is Jesus? He’s the author of the Old Testament. And you would think as the author of the Old Testament He pretty well knew the Old Testament. And so when they cite this Scripture, it’s all worked out of course, that’s the way God works in history, that man in his rebellion continues to glorify God. In Psalm 78 we have a “Maschil of Asaph,” it’s a meditation upon the problems of the nation.
Now if you look at the following verses and I’ll name them as we go through this, we’ll look at several, I want you to notice what is the recurring theme of Psalm 78. Keep in mind, this is a Psalm they think Jesus ought to fit. Psalm 78:2, “I will open my mouth in a parable; and I will utter dark sayings of old, [3] Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. [4] We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength, and His wonderful works that He has done.” Now notice the theme, we’re going to show God’s wonderful works. Well, you can’t show God’s wonderful works unless you show how man fouled up. So what’s the theme of Psalm 78? Look at verse 7, “That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments. [8] And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. [9] The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. [10] They kept not the covenant of God, they refused to walk in His law.” Look at that for a nice little theme.
Now look at Psalm 78:18, it goes on and it extols God for His work and then it drops back to this counterpoint, there’s two themes in here, the praise of God and the unbelief of man. So from verse 11-17 you have God’s works; and then you have man’s response to God’s works. Verse 17, “And they sinned yet more against Him by provoking the Most High in the wilderness. [18] And they tempted God in their heart by asking food according to their lust. [19] Yea, they spoke against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” What has the mob just asked Jesus to do? Furnish them a table, haven’t they? And what is the Psalm that they quote that Jesus supposedly doesn’t fit? The very Psalm that shows that their question is a question of unbelief. Clever, isn’t it, how God works.
Psalm 78:20, “Behold, He smote the rock,
that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can He give bread also? Can He provide flesh for His people?” It’s sarcasm.
Verse 22, continuing, “Because they believed not in God, and trusted not
in His salvation.” It does on to describe
how it rained down manna, by the way there’s verse 25 where you get the word
“angel’s food.” I don’t know how somebody
used that for cake at one time, but that’s where it came from. And it goes on and describes all the works of
God and then counterpoint, back at verse 30, “They were not estranged from
their lust [desire]. But while their
meat was ye in their mouths, [31] The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the
fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of
Then Psalm 78:40, “How often did they
provoke Him in the wilderness, and
grieve Him in the desert! [41] Yea, they
turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. [42] They remembered not His hand, nor the
day when he delivered them from the enemy.”
Then it goes on to describe God’s works, the other major theme. It goes on and on and on to describe how God
did this and God did that and God did this and God did that and in verse 56,
counterpoint. “Yet they tempted and
provoked the most high God and kept not His testimonies, [57] But turned back
and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers; they were turned aside like a
deceitful bow. [58] For they provoked
Him to anger with their high places, and move Him to jealousy with their graven
images. [59] When God hear this He was
angry and greatly abhorred
Now wasn’t that a brilliant Psalm to quote, to say Jesus, you don’t fit Psalm 78. Do you know what He’s going to turn right around and say? Well, mob, you do! Let’s turn to John 6 and that’s exactly what Jesus does in so many words. Jesus is going to take their little appeal to the New Testament and start to undo the crowd and His response to the crowd is in two parts. The first part is John 6:32-35, that’s Jesus first answer to the Mob. The next answer is verse 36 to verse 46. This is answer number one; this is answer number two.
Again keep in flow the logic. We started this evening at verse 30; the crowd demanded in verses 30-31 that Jesus fit their standard. Verses 30-31 mean Jesus must fit man’s standard. What is that? What are verses 30-31 but the spirit of democracy, man’s standard, God even You must fit man’s standard. So what is prior, God or man, in authority? Man! According to verse 30-31. So what would you expect Jesus answer to be in so many words? God will be the final authority, not man. So now in verses 32, 33, 34, and 35 we have Jesus first answer.
John 6:32, “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses has not given you the bread from heaven; but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. [33] For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. [34] Then they said unto Him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. [35] And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” The gist of Jesus’ answer here, verses 32-35, is that you are still in the pattern of national unbelief. You fit Psalm 78 because you’re still doing what your fathers did, over and over and over and over and over again, you still do not trust God because you still insist on being seduced by the spirit of democracy, that man and the mob will make the law, not God. God’s Law, not man’s law.
So verse 32, let’s go at it in detail. Jesus said, “Verily, verily,” it’s a solemn statement. When you see this in the Gospel of John Jesus is about to get into a lot of detail. He says, “I say unto you that Moses did not give you the bread from heaven.” In other words He says look, you people wholly missed the point; there was a greater issue at stake at the Exodus than just going out and picking the “what is it” off the ground every morning. God did not create man for the high purpose of scraping a little man off the rock every 24 hours. There’s more to life than that. And so He’s saying yes, the manna came but that shouldn’t be the end of your interest, you should have higher interests than these, you should realize… what do you want political freedom for anyway? It’s very interesting in this day when everybody wants political freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, somebody has never raised the next question and I’d just love it if some of these news commentators when they interview people would just ask them the next obvious question: What are you going to do with your freedom when you get it. Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Well, maybe it would be worth thinking about before you go to all this problem of tearing everything up to get your supposed freedom. What kind of a positive program do you have after you get it?
So we have here Moses, yes, he gave you bread but he didn’t give you the bread from heaven; that kind of bread. And notice, like John always does, he uses the same words for two things. Didn’t the manna come from heaven? Yes! And so Jesus says the bread came from heaven but Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven, and he deliberately does this to cause people to think, to cause them to realize that there are two breads involved. Then He adds, “but My Father is giving you,” present tense, “My Father is giving you the authentic bread from heaven.” The word true, the Greek word from which we get the word “authentic,” it means that real bread, the bread for which the manna stood. And He “is giving you,” present tense, “For,” verse 33, explanation, “the bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven.” Now we know what He’s talking about in verse 33. When you see “He that cometh down from heaven,” that means Jesus, but the mob didn’t see it that way so this is why I’m translating it peculiarly. I want you to read it, verse 33, I want you to read that verse the way the mob heard it. When they heard the word they didn’t realize Jesus was talking about Himself. What they heard was this, “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” That’s what they heard, “the bread of life is that which comes down from heaven. Why do I use “that?” Because the mob thought of two things, they thought of Jesus here and the bread separate from Him. Oh, the bread is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. See, they hadn’t separated it from the manna.
So then in verse 34 they do like the woman at the well. “They said unto Him, evermore give us this bread.” Now the word “give” is an aorist, give us this bread all the time, so they’re asking Jesus to do it once and for all, sort of like the perfect tense in this case. Give us the bread, point occasion, but give it to us so we have it forever, continuing results, so we never have to have it come down again. Now why do you suppose a mob would ask that question? Let’s think a minute. Why do you suppose in the Old Testament that the manna came down only with a 24 hour supply? Why do you suppose that God had it set… He could have done it so you had a whole month’s supply, He could have put a preservative in it, but He didn’t. Why did God in the Old Testament keep doing the manna every 24 hours? Because He wanted to keep people grace oriented; He wanted to exercise them every day that this day’s bread You have given, not tomorrow’s, today’s. Notice in the Lords’ prayer, “Give us this day, our daily bread.” It doesn’t say this day tomorrow’s bread. Literally the way the Lord’s prayer reads is Lord, give us this day our bread for this day. It is a present prayer, not for the future but for the present. And the same in the Old Testament, there’s an insistence of God upon a continuing dependence because He knows our hearts, that if He gives it to us all at once we’re going to blow it, and the mob asks a human viewpoint question, Lord, give the blessing all at once, then we won’t have to keep going and get it, we can just get all under our greedy little palms and now all of Your blessing God, has been transferred from your realm to our realm and now it’s under our control. Now we will organize it according to our standards. Again the autonomous spirit of man.
And so verse 35 must have blown their minds, “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life;” Huh… here they had been thinking of manna coming from heaven, separate from Jesus, and then He gives them this answer. Now this, obviously entails a little major readjustment because you can’t go out and scrape Jesus off the rocks. So what are they going to do. Let’s see what Jesus says first, “I am the bread of life, he that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” For future reference, because this passage is an extremely irritating passage I want you to notice the word “come” and I want you to notice the word “believe.” Do you notice those are to be taken as identical in meaning. “Coming” and “believing” right here mean the same thing. So later on when you see these words used, you’ll mentally substitute for the verb “come” the verb “believe.” They are interchangeable terms. Jesus says “come and you’ll never, never hunger,” it’s emphasized, and “he that believes on me shall never, never thirst.” Now what does Jesus pick up in verse 35; it’s their apostate request completely reversed around. What was their request? That God have this manna come down from heaven one morning that would give them a supply that would last forever and they’d never have to go scrape any more off the ground, never have to be dependent on God any more. Now Jesus very cleverly takes that position and says yeah, I’ll give you a blessing once and for all and you’ll never have to have any more—Me! And the way He does it is take their request, twist it around, and then offer Himself. And of course obviously once they’re with Him that’s constant dependence, constant trust in Him.
Now in verse 36 and following, the second part to Jesus answer. This is extremely difficult so if you get confused don’t get upset but just remember Jesus spoke it to a crowd that probably had less Bible doctrine than you do, and you’re going to have to argue that then Jesus was unwise in teaching people over their head. Well, I think if we are guilty of that we have good company.
John
John
Now what this part of
this answer is, the first answer in verses 32-35, that part of the message
emphasized the fact that they were still in the pattern of rejection of Psalm
89. They had seen it but they hadn’t
distinguished the manna. In Moses’ day
Moses gave manna and they concentrated on the physical manna and forgot the
spiritual principle. He says you’re
doing the same thing, I just got through telling you about this bread from
heaven but you don’t see that the bread from heaven is Me. So you’ve made the same mistake that Psalm 78
says your fathers made, not one improvement.
What happened to the evolutionary idea that as time goes on we all
progress.
John 36-46, what’s
answer number two. Answer number two is… and this really hits the heart of the
democratic spirit. What did we say the
democratic spirit was? The belief that
man is the ultimate controller of history, that out of man’s resources the mob
together collectively together can legislate value. What is the gist of this part two
answer? God alone has the final say,
even among those who are saved. God
alone has the final say! So not only,
mob, do you people not have the authority to legislate, not only do you people
not have the authority and the capability of coming here and putting Me in your
box, but the Father alone has the authority to decide which of you are going to
be in His kingdom. You’re not voting on
Me, said Jesus, God the Father is electing you, or not electing you. God has the final say, not man. And so this is the most hard, difficult,
powerful statement of the sovereignty of God in the Gospel of John, right
here. This is why I have been telling
you for about three weeks, I kept saying this passage is political, the passage
is political, the passage is political, the passage is political because I
wanted you to see what led to this. What
led to this statement of Jesus was the insistence that man does this and man
does that, why even if Jesus comes down here we’re free to vote on it. And this passage denies that; you’re not free
to vote on even Jesus without the Father’s permission. You can’t take a step, you can’t take a
breath without God’s decree. So this is
why in this situation where you have the most autonomous anti-Biblical attitude
on the part of the people, you have the most heavy sovereignty passage on the
part of God.
Now let’s look at this
sovereignty passage; as I say this is so hard that it irritates a lot of
people. John
So He says the Father elects, and those who are the elect will believe. Now at this point we want to review the doctrine of election. Five points on the doctrine of election. Remember the divine viewpoint framework, where does the doctrine of election show up. It shows up originally with the call of Abraham? Doctrine of election—call of Abraham.
The first point in the doctrine of election is that to understand the doctrine of election you must understand that it is rooted on the divine viewpoint foundation. God is here, He is sovereign, He is righteous, He is just, He is loving, He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal. God, therefore, is outside of His creation and He dictates to His creation. Within the creation there are things we call cause/effect relationships, gravity, natural law, these things. But we also have a cause/effect that operates between God and the creation. We’ll call these category one cause/effects and we’ll call these category two cause/effects. The category two cause/effects are similar but not identical to the category one cause/effects. So you who say, well the doctrine of election makes everybody a robot, the doctrine of election cause determinism, even hyper-Calvinists say this. Wrong! All the doctrine of election says is that God is finally responsible for what happens inside the creation, that God originated the creation, God has destined the creation and therefore every intermediate point between beginning and end is determined by God. It doesn’t mean determinism in the sense of scientific law because you’re thinking now in category two terms when you should be thinking in category one terms. The whole point is that to see election properly, understand it is God’s effect on the creation from outside of the creation. God does not break His creation. Part of God’s creation is responsibility; it’s an institution, the first divine institution, that is not destroyed by whatever this mysterious cause/effect is. So don’t worry that man suddenly is rendered irresponsible; he isn’t.
The second point of election; not only does it depend on the divine viewpoint foundation but election is God’s basic promise, it is the promise behind all other promises. This is very simple to understand. The first one is very complicated but the second one is very simple. If God promises that you’re going to be conformed to the image of Christ, and that’s certain, if God promises you that, doesn’t that imply that all the other things that are necessary to get there are included in the promise? If I say that you’re guaranteed to graduate from college after four years of study, doesn’t that promise include the fact that you will do passing work in the courses, because that’s the prerequisite of graduating. Same thing here. That’s what we mean by saying the election is God’s basic promise. When God promises your destiny He promises everything that you need to get to that destiny. It is God’s basic promise.
The third thing about the doctrine of election is that election renders things 100% certain, that God never makes an election statement but that that election doesn’t come to pass. God promised that Abraham would inherit the land. Now the Jews haven’t yet inherited the land permanently but we who are premillennialists believe yes, he will, because we believe in unconditional election, that election will occur, that Abraham is destined and will get there eventually, 100% certainty.
A fourth thing, a fourth point in the doctrine of election is that it is God’s free choice. God is not bound by something in back of Him; God doesn’t look up at a scoreboard to see, let’s see, do I have enough elect people here…oh, I need three more people, in other words, God has a plan in back of Him that He’s operating from. Election says God operates from His own person, He doesn’t have a plan that’s judging Himself, it is his holy free choice. This means that God doesn’t look ahead and see if you are going to believe. That is a commonly used explanation and I fought it many years and I got to thinking, that doesn’t say a thing. If you say that God looks ahead and He sees certain that you’re going to believe, the obvious next question is how can He be certain that you are going to believe unless it’s certain that you’re going to believe. In other words, if God knows in advance that you’re going to believe, that proves that it’s certain. So all you’ve done is postpone things; it sounds like you’ve really done something profound by saying God looks ahead and sees you’re going to believe. But if you just stop five minutes and ask yourself what you just said, you find it’s just hot air, that’s all it is. You’ve just gone around and met yourself. So it’s a nice thing to say but it’s just like saying all things that are red are red, it just doesn’t send you too far down the road.
The fifth point to the doctrine of election and that is that election is a loving relationship between God and man. That is, the elect will show historical, empirical evidence that they are elect. You won’t have such a thing as an elect person that doesn’t show that they’re elect; it’s impossible, incompatible with how God works.
So Jesus Christ here in John 6 raises the issue of the doctrine of election against the democratic spirit. And what is the institution most used by those of the democratic spirit? Election; election but how do we usually conceive the word election? Man casting a ballot. And what is the doctrine that Jesus uses to decide? The doctrine of election where God casts the ballot. So this is why the doctrine of election is used against democracy because here God elects, not man. Every time you go to the polls, you don’t realize it but every time you go to the polls it’s an exercise of human sovereignty and what Jesus is doing here He’s cutting you down, the fact that you have a limited area of which you’re responsible but don’t get this Greek idea that man collectively can arbitrarily generate any piece of legislation he wants to, he can generate any value he wants to by just going to the ballot box. The ballot box is not sovereignty in God’s sense of the Word.
Let’s continue with John 6:37 now. Can you spot in verse 37 the doctrine of election. Let’s test; we have five points on the doctrine of election. “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me: him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” What do you see there? “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me.” That’s the third point in the doctrine of election, it’s 100% certain; those who are elect will surely believe says Jesus. And then He says at the end of verse 37, “he that comes to Me I won’t cast out.” What’s that? The fifth point in the doctrine of election, a loving relationship. The one who shows signs of being the elect is the elect; the one who believes in Jesus Christ has shown by his belief in Jesus Christ that he is the elect. That’s what it’s saying. He that believes in Me, I’m not going to cast him out.
We’re going to have to stop here because of
our time but let me just go into verse 38 a little bit and get the start on it
and we’ll finish it next time. “I have
come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent
Me.” Now it’s necessary Jesus add verse
38 because in verse 37 He’s left it with just bare naked will of God. He’s left Himself out of it, so as always,
before He goes too far Jesus brings Himself underneath the Father’s will, and
so He adds, if this strikes you as hard, remember, the Father elects Me too…the
Father elects Me and I must fulfill My election and My election is to do
several things which He’s then going to go into. And we’ll get into how the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself is involved in the doctrine of election.