Clough John Lesson 32

Doctrine of Election – John 6:37-40

John 6, as we have said time and time again, is one of the key political chapters of Scripture. I hope some of you don’t get the wrong impression from the board resolution. That resolution is not meant to inhibit anyone’s political activities; on the contrary, we need more Christians, many of you ought to be active in political situations and the reasons I say that is because Christians sit around and wait until some idiot gets elected, or idiots, in the legislature and start coming out with this ridiculous legislation, then we run around like chickens with our heads cut off wondering why it happened, and it’s because Christians have forsaken their citizenship responsibilities. So we don’t want that, all we want to do is just protect the integrity of the local church so we don’t wind up in a position like the National Council is and a denomination is, we speak thus and such and this is the Christian position on this, as a local church. If you want the details, look in the middle part of the New Wisdom paper on the American Believer in the United States Foreign Policy and in that publication you’ll see where we deal with the individual in politics versus the local church in politics. The local church teaches the Bible principles and when it comes down to a major religious issue it can take a stand, but when it comes to individual’s preferences for parties, candidates and so on, that’s your volition. I’ve taught the doctrine, now you apply it however you think, but whatever you do apply it, just don’t sit at home.

Now in John 6 we have one of the great political discourses. 1 Samuel 8 is one discourse and John 6 is the other. Any political science course that hopes whatsoever to bring in divine viewpoint ought to at least assign as an assignment to the students a reading and a report on these portions of Scripture. And the reason for that is that both these passages give you the extremes. 1 Samuel 8 is a warning against concentration of power in a government. It’s a warning against centralization of power. It is a warning, ultimately, against totalitarianism, socialism, and communism. Any system that concentrates power is warned against in 1 Samuel 8. The reasons are given and those reasons have come true every single time in history. Every time that men violate 1 Samuel 8 and concentrate power they always reap the results that the prophet Samuel said they would reap, whether they’re Jews or Gentiles, the principle remains the same.

Now in John 6 it’s the same thing except John 6, instead of warning against centralization of power in government warns against autonomous democracy. This is an anti-democratic section of Scripture. And the reason it is is because of a hidden assumption in democracy, and I’m going to use the word democracy in distinction from a republic form of government, the hidden assumption in a democracy is that man corporately together can generate their own values and standards. That is, the group of people getting together and voting can crank out their own legislation. So democracy is very autonomous. It is very Greek, it is very anti-Scriptural. In America we did not start this country with democracy. We began this country as a republic, where we had a constitutional structure and people voted inside the structure. Every Tom, Dick and Harry did not have the right to vote. We have people in this country so stupid they can’t write their own name and they’re supposed to have the discernment and think enough to vote on the major issues facing us. Now that’s ridiculous. And yet this is an expression of the anti-Biblical democratic spirit that is taking over this country and as I was told by some people who have been watching their children’s TV program now we have a little commercial coming on, there is a U in the United Nations. Now you can say what you want to about the United Nations and I’ve said my peace officially now in the new publication, you can say what you want to about the United Nations but one of the things about it is that it is an expression for an advance of world government, as it is currently constituted, it is generating these people, such as this add that is placed on the children’s TV program, this is just trying to develop in your children the attitude that we’re all part of one world, one democratic world and we all democratically are going to get together and democratically ordain our own commandments. Wrong? God’s commandments are dictated from heaven down, not from earth up.

God did not let a democracy form in Israel, ever. And it was at this point in the chapter of John 6, it was right at this time in history when you had a democratic movement begin in the Israel and Christ cut it off, very quickly. He saw very soon, as these people began to amass around Him and develop into a popular mass movement that He had in the crowd and in the mass that was following Him a growing democratic spirit and it was totally antithetical. Christ was going one way, the democratic spirit the other. The democratic spirit always handles the Lord Jesus Christ as “how can we fit Him into our plan?” In other words, if Christ is offensive to some segment of society then Christ has to go for the sake of society. It is always the sake of society; autonomous man collectively that must reign supreme. We must not tolerate these religious discussion that divide men from others for we are all brothers and after one fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man; we mustn’t fracture this by preaching the gospel or by getting involved in any kind of religious absolutes. And of course this is satanic and it’s completely reverse because democracy itself is a most dogmatic absolute. It absolutely is saying that all men collectively have the capability of legislating, and it doesn’t. So democracy is grounded on religious dogmatism of the most obscure kind but it’s there.

Now in John 6 we got up to verse 37 or thereabouts and it was here where we hit the doctrine of election. He says, Jesus does, in John 6:37, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me; and Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out. [38] For have come down from heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him that sent Me. [39] And this is the Father’s will who has sent Me, that of all that He has given Me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. [40] And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that everyone that sees the Son, and believes on Him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise Him up at the last day.” Then there’s a break in the discourse because the Jews interrupt.

So let’s take verses 37-40 as a unit and work with it for a moment. Verse 37, “All that the Father has given Me shall come to Me,” now we know from verse 35 that if you look at the word “come” you will also see that in this passage it is being used synonymously with the word “believe.” Those two words are used interchangeably in this text. So another way of reading verse 37 is this. “All that the Father is giving Me will believe on Me.” “All that the Father is giving Me will believe on Me, and he that believes on Me I will never cast out.” So you can plug in “believe” for “come” to see the theology of what we’re getting into.

Now before we get into the details of election and I at this time will read two of the feedback cards that were handed in this morning but since this pertains to the evening as well I’ll read it here and then I’ll answer these as we go on. But these are typical questions, I’m sure you have, just some of you didn’t feel like you wanted to hand in a card. One card says: Could you explain calling more; are all people called or just those that God foreknows. The other card: Concerning the doctrine of election, hyper-Calvinism states that man unregenerated has no free will but seems to be a manipulated puppet. If this is so, how can we pray effectively for the unbeliever? Could you please provide some Scripture relating to free will, sovereign election and so on. I do so in the third Framework pamphlet, chapter 2 and I have done so in the latest fourth framework pamphlet when we deal with the doctrine of prayer. It’s all in there.

Now in John 6 we have a beautiful imagery and it just dawned on me as I got into this thing later on in chapter 6 that I had missed something before when we dealt with this Jesus walking on the water, for I still wasn’t satisfied that I had really connected why John put verses 15 and 21 in the middle of this discourse because it kind of interrupts it. We know it historically occurs but John always has ulterior motives for everything he does. In fact, as we’ve seen this man is so skillful when he writes that usually he has a passage in here and there’s three or four reason for it being there. And if we look more carefully, like we discovered in John 1, remember how he set the days of the week up, and it just turns out, accidentally, that the days of the week follow this history of the world, for each day stands for each major dispensation. And we gather from that that John had massively accurate insight into the deeper plan of God. So as I began to ask myself more and more questions about this narrative I was still not satisfied that we’d really hit it right and I think I discovered something as to what he’s showing us here with this narrative. So let’s remember something before we start verse 37 and get into the details.

What we’re looking for is the overall theme, so we don’t lose the forest for the trees. If you were with us last time I’m sure you felt we did lose the forest for the trees and probably did. So let’s run it by again. The theme of John 6 is the sovereignty of God over against the sovereignty of man. It is to show the people who are gravitating to democracy that God is the only lawgiver, that God rules and not ultimately man. That’s the overall theme. We said further that in the walking on the water Jesus, when we read this whole thing in the light of Psalm 29, is revealing Himself to be King for we said in Psalm 29 what? What was characteristic of King Jehovah in the Old Testament? It said in Psalm 29 that King Jehovah sits upon the waters and the waters, the turbulent ocean and the sea and so on is always the picture of violence and chaos in nature, for to the Jew who lived in the eastern coast of the Mediterranean the most violent every day phenomenon was the pounding of the sea in the middle of a storm, so this became the most threatening force in nature to him and that is used over and over again in the Bible to denote adversity to man, the most powerful natural adversities that we can face. And so when in Psalm 29 we read “King Jehovah sits upon the waters,” it is the picture of God in relaxation. He’s sitting, He doesn’t stand and suppress them, He sits in a relaxed position over the waters, which is simply saying God controls nature, God controls adversity God is in absolute charge and isn’t threatened in any way, shape or form by any (quote) “accident or catastrophe” in nature.

Now we said that when Jesus appeared walking on water with the disciples it was to encourage them in the middle of all this other thing in John 6 because what Jesus is doing in the discourse we’re studying verse by verse is that He is weeding out the real believers from the phonies. And what He is laying the groundwork for is His kingdom, but His kingdom can’t be based on the autonomous democratic spirit. And therefore He’s just getting rid of people who will not bow their knee to His authority. In so doing He loses the crowd. Jesus starts out with a mass movement at the beginning of this chapter and by the time He finishes He hardly has any disciples left; that is a perfect example of a (quote) “failure.” And yet it’s not a failure and Jesus wants to show and reassure His disciples that it wasn’t a failure so in the middle of John 6 there’s this scene where He appears in the boat. That much we’ve already gone over.

But this chapter keeps on digging away and digging away and digging away and digging away at God’s sovereignty, God’s sovereignty, God’s sovereignty, God’s sovereignty so much that it dawned on me there’s even more to it than just Himself showing Himself as King Jehovah when He walked upon the water. Turn to Daniel 7. Keep in mind the political environment of John 6. John 6 is dealing with a democratic crowd; in Daniel 7:2 we read, this is one of Daniel’s visions, the vision of the kingdom that arrives politically; the political environment of Daniel 7, political environment of John 6, now watch how they mesh. “Daniel spoke and said, I saw in…

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… is a demonic manifestation of a happening that worked in the Greek society of the 5^th century BC. The same with the Romans, the great Roman apostate contribution to history was the totalitarian administration. Was that just an accident, that was just a product of mere natural sociological forces? Not at all. It was something that worked demonically in the Roman society of the third, second and first centuries before Christ. And so Daniel 7 gives us the symbol, and so the sea stands for the people and then the wind that whips up the sea stands for the demonic powers. We said other things, we said back in Daniel 7 that the sea stood for a certain character that masses of people always have. Let’s look at those things because when you deal with a mass of people, which the Bible says is a “sea,” this is a mass of people without doctrine, without absolutes. The “sea” is used as an image in at least three ways of this kind of a mass or mob of people. The mass or mob of people makes noise, the mob noise.

And so the sea, since it makes a noise, is a picture of the noise of the crowd like the noise of the ways. Some of you landlocked Texans have never been near the ocean under a tremendous wind storm. I mean a windstorm where the wind is blowing in a gale force for three or four days, enough where you can get waves 50-75 feet high and you go out near the shore, particularly if it’s a rocky shore where these waves come crashing in and they just start way out and then slam, and then slam, then slam, tons of water slamming against rock, and you add a little noise of the wind and the turbulence that the water in turn gives back to the wind because the water is an uneven surface and the wind is trying to blow over it, and you get this constant roar; you’d think it would be one wave after another, just a slush, slush, slush, but that’s not true. You listen to a turbulent sea; it is a constant battering of sound and if you’ve been in a storm at sea after a while either you tune it out or it can be very nerve wracking because it’s just steady, it just never gives up, constantly going on until it crushes whatever is in its way. Well, the same imagery is picked up in Isaiah 17:12-13 for a mob, the way a mob thinks or doesn’t, the way a mob speaks; a mob is a picture to Isaiah’s mind of the ocean, just the constant babble, a constant roar, going nowhere, just making a lot of noise.

Another characteristic besides noise that links the sea with a mass of people is the fact that in Jeremiah 46:7-8 it’s pictured as the sea destroying things with a flood. Jeremiah 46:7-8 says that the sea, when it’s unleashed destroys things ahead of it. I’ll never forget when I was an under graduate in Dallas Seminary and I was working on my thesis for the Genesis flood and I was talking to Henry Morris about hydro dynamics a little bit, that is the science of moving masses of water, and one of the things that he showed me was that to this day scientifically no one knows the characteristic of large masses of water; it’s just not prove because there’s no laboratory big enough to handle it. But it is unknown what the forces of water can do. The only thing we have in this country that corresponds to it is what happened during several of the hurricanes along the Gulf coast, and you can fly over the area and take photographs before and after and then you can see what’s moved and then you apply certain physics and you can apply and see how much power was expended by the waves to move things and it comes out in a very phenomenal way. But large masses of water are fantastically powerful. And they’re destructive.

So besides the first characteristic of a sea and a mob being noisy, being turbulent, is the second one, they are potentially extremely destructive; extremely destructive. A mob has never created anything. Never! Throughout history there has only been one solution for a mob and that’s destruction of the mob before they destroy you. Napoleon when he was a young artillery officer gained the confidence of his superiors because he was given a security assignment one day, Frenchmen always are writing about something, and they got together for a big mob in Paris, the streets of Paris, and started coming down the street, and Napoleon didn’t know about all the laws that we have in this country so he lined his artillery up and told them zero elevation; load and fire, and they loaded and fired and that was the end of the mob. So Napoleon had a very simple solution to the problem. And that’s the only solution that you can use on a mob because when people are in a mob and once the mob starts you’ve lost control and you can’t do anything about it, you have to destroy them, contain them, immobilize them, either chemically or with weapons. People are extremely dangerous, they’re worse than animals; animals you can herd when they get going, people you can’t even do that with; they become just frenzied. So mobs are extremely dangerous and water is extremely dangerous, a sea, a storm, Jeremiah 46:7-8.

And finally the other characteristic that unifies the characteristic of a mob and the characteristics of a stormy sea is formless-ness, or instability. Genesis 49:4, Isaiah 57:20. Here you have the fact that a mob can be manipulated in the sense that before they go on a rampage they can be manipulated. The media today can manipulate. If you don’t think they can, remember what happened when Kennedy was assassinated in the streets of Dallas, day after day after day it was Dallas, the city of Dallas’s fault, it was terrible, all this mass manipulation. So mobs can be manipulated. Now let’s pull all this together from Daniel 7 and go back to John 6 and see what we’ve got. Daniel 7 tells us that out of the mob of people, without Bible doctrine, the sea, comes monsters and the monsters are all animal like; that is they are sub human and they are all political. They all have political implications here. So what Daniel is warning against is that out of mobs you have sub human anti-humanitarian political movements that have arisen in history.

Now go back to John 6. Here you have enacted not just the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is the King, Jehovah, over the flood of nature but here you have the Lord Jesus Christ walking on the sea, and the sea, we know from Daniel, has another connotation; it’s the mass of people. And so what did that little physical historical episode of walking on water show? That Christ was not only King over nature but He was King over the mob, and then He went to prove it and this is the discourse that followed the walking on the water… followed Christ’s revelation of Himself as the one I stepped on the mob, I am not moved by the mob. And there’s another thing in here; the Gospel of John also brings out this later on and the other Gospels supplement this, remember we said when we went to Matthew to cross reference John 6, who got out of the boat and started walking toward the Lord and got his eyes on the water and then fell? Peter, the apostle, and in all four Gospels who is it that professes to uphold the Lord Jesus Christ against the mob and finally falls because he gets his eyes on the mob. Peter! So this Gospel has a very interesting structure; all carefully woven together.

Now we’re not saying that John fabricated this, we’re saying this is literary historical fact but John has those acute eyes that come from long, long years spent studying Scripture and he writes as an old man, full of wisdom and he’s able to present us all these cross themes. Peter got out of the boat and Peter’s eyes were on the water, and later on Peter would do exactly that with a mob of people. So I think that verses 15-21 are a set up for the rest of this; it’s not only a real physical miracle but it’s a set up to tell us and warn us about the Lord Jesus Christ’s coming confrontation with the mob and in John 6:37 as He confronts that mob He exercise His walking on them, like He walked on across the Sea of Galilee. Jesus is going to walk all over this mob. “All that the Father gives Me,” He tells them, “is going to believe on Me, and He that believes on Me I will never cast out.” What is He saying? “All that the Father gives,” verse 37 is divided into two parts; 37a and 37b; the first part of verse 37 refers to a truth of the doctrine of election which states that election is 100% certain, “All that the Father is giving Me,” those are the elect, “All that the Father is giving Me, they will believe on Me.” They will not die before believing on Me. They will certainly believe on Me. Why does He say that in the middle of this, isn’t that kind of a terrible thing to say in an evangelistic service? No not in this one because in this one He was facing a group of democratically autonomous people and He had to just walk all over them to show them that not man but God legislates; not the crowd is in ultimate charge but He is in ultimate charge; God’s plan is in ultimate charge. And therefore even their individual acts of faith fit inside God’s plan.

And then the last part of verse 37, “And he that comes to me,” or “he that believes, I will not turn away,” “I won’t cast him away.” That’s the other side, that’s the fact that someone who genuinely believes in the Lord has thereby shown that he’s elect. So the first part of verse 37 comes down heavy on the sovereignty; the last part of verse 37 takes up the responsibility. How is election seen? Election is seen by belief, so we say that belief reveals election. How do you know who’s elect? Those who believe. Who are those that believe? The elect. The terms are coterminous here. And they’re carefully put together in this verse.

Now the rest of the verses amplify the two parts of verse 37. Verse 39 amplifies the first part of verse 37 and verse 40 amplifies the second part. Verse 38 is a filler here for the reason which I’ll show in a moment. Verse 37a is amplified in verse 39; verse 37 b amplified in verse 40. Jesus very carefully avoids leaving any lose ends in His discourse.

First let’s look at John 6:38. After making the statement of verse 37, which is a very powerful statement, He then says, “I have come down,” and notice He prefaces it with “For,” “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” “For,” because why? Why is Jesus interested in pointing out verse 38? Why has this become an issue? Because what’s the theme of John 6? The will of God versus the will of the mob. Which comes first? And Jesus says in My kingdom the will of the Father comes first. And so every opportunity He has… you see this in almost every third verse in this discourse, He’s talking about the will of God, the will of God, the will of God, the will of God, the will of God, the will of God, and never once the will of man, because He has to crush this democratic spirit. And so He says I come as King, but I’ll tell you something, I am the Son and I, even I the Son, must do My Father’s will. I do the will of Him that sent Me. And who is ultimate? The sea or following God’s will I walk on the sea.

Now we come to John 6:39, “And this is the Father’s will” so both in verse 39 and 40 He defines for us what God’s will is for Him, “This is the Father’s will who hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given He I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” So what is His will? The Lord Jesus Christ’s assignment? His assignment is to carry on the program of salvation. A person trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ at a point in time. His trust in Christ thereby revealed his election. And thereby shows He is in union with Christ, he goes through life and dies, that’s the end of his life, and goes to be with the Father. All right, that period of time is the Christian life, and during that period of time Jesus Christ has to keep us saved, to carry out eternal security. Eternal security is a guarantee of what’s going to happen forever. But eternal security, as most Christians understand it, doesn’t say a thing about how we are kept secure.

We are kept secure by a constant intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ and in all four Gospels He tells us in advance, before He dies, how it happens, because before He dies He has His prayer and in the prayer He asks, Father, I pray for so and so and I pray for this and I pray for this and I pray for that; in other words, Christ is praying for His disciples before He goes to the cross, and gives us a picture of His intercessory ministry. So when it says I must not lose any person, it is the will of the Father, you’ve got in verse 39 one of the most powerful statements you could ever see in Scripture for your security; one of the most powerful statements, because God the Father has commissioned His Son not to lose one person. And so therefore Christ says “Yes Sir” and He keeps doing His intercessory ministry day by day by day and we can sin a lot, we can sin a little and Jesus Christ continues to make intercession, applying His once and for all finished work on the cross constantly to our account, over and against and to blunt off Satan’s accusation of this one, this one here, they don’t belong in the kingdom. And Christ says I paid the price.

Then maybe tomorrow something else happens, this one doesn’t belong in the kingdom. And Christ comes along as our high priest in heaven and says yes they do, because I have paid the price and My righteousness is credited to their account. And you may have a believer down here who’s committed some sin and everybody else is looking down, why, he couldn’t do that and be a Christian, that’s the usual party line. And it’s always some little thing that shocks somebody else. Now I have said this before and I will say it again, ad nauseum, that a Christian is capable of doing any sin that an unbeliever is except more skillfully. That’s the only difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. A Christian knows more about sinning, that’s all, he’s had his eyes opened and he knows how to do it more skillfully but apart from that the Christian’s like everyone else. It is not your goody-good brownie points that is keeping you secure. I don’t know how long it’s going to be before certain individuals wake up to grace and wake up to the finished work of Christ and Christ’s continuing work as high priest. But we still have people that have never understood this point. And the reason I can tell they never understand the point is because they’ll come to some adversity and do a tail spin and zero out and oh, this is terrible, this is bad news, I don’t see how I can be accepted by the Father. Now the Father knew you were a stinker all along, you’ve just suddenly become aware of it but God’s been aware of it for all eternity. And He knew you were a slob when He allowed you to be regenerated. He knew our decrepit, depraved rebellious nature and yet at the point we trusted Christ God’s omniscience knew every little cloddy thing that we will ever know and lots of things that we will never know about our character and he still accepted us. Now look at how stupid this idea is; here we go down through the Christian life, God knows this much about us all this time. Now along comes some sin and you discover this much about yourself, oh, I’m such a terrible person, oh I’ve failed the Lord, I’ll never recover from this blah, blah, blah. And you haven’t seen 2% of your crud. And yet God the Father, who sees 100% of it accepts you perfectly on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done. As I say, it takes a long time to get through some people’s heads and the more religion you had before you got under the teaching of the Word the worse off you are because some of you have come out of these legalistic little churches and you are still tied up in knots over the taboo thing. I had some minister say the other day, I saw some girls coming out of Lubbock Bible Church with pants on. We don’t have a gate at the door that says if you wear a dress you’re allowed and if you don’t you’re not. Where do you find that in Scripture. You don’t find it in Scripture.

The point is that we still have this thing where I suddenly discover some cruddy thing about myself or worse, somebody else and then say well, they can’t be a Christian or if it’s myself go into depression over it. Life is too short for you to go out and zero out with some depression every five minutes over some little point of your sin nature. You have got to learn that when this happens it happens and don’t cry over spilt milk; confess your sin and move on, get back into the word and keep rolling. When you’re in battle you cannot stop; the worst thing to do is get terrified and freeze because you are dead then, the enemy will fire right in, find out where you are and pick you off. You’ve got to keep moving, even if you’re hurting you’ve got to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, and the same thing in the Christian life; Satan would like nothing better than to immobilize you and he can do it…some of you are so easily stopped by the least little thing and you think you’re being pious because it sounds so Biblical to condemn yourself because of your sin. It’s like you’re sitting there with the monks in the Middle Ages hitting yourself on the back because of your sin. Now that’s ridiculous; what did Christ do for you on the cross. He died for your sins so stop trying to be another Christ and use His assets and move on. God knew you from all eternity.

Now when Jesus Christ is John 6:39 is saying that this is the Father’s will, that I lose not one person, He is going to carry out God’s will and if you lost your salvation it would mean that Jesus Christ failed His Father. That’s the implication of loss of salvation. It is saying the Son did not do the Father’s will.

Now let’s go to John 6:40 and see the other side of the coin. Here He takes up the theme of the last part of verse 37, He’s not looking at it from God the Father’s point of view yet, remember verse 37a He’s saying those who were from all eternity were elect, they are ones who show up in history as believers. Now He’s saying the reverse; see, He went from past to the act of faith. Now in verse 37b what He’s saying is those who believe are the elect and so I accept them, so He’s going backwards. And in verse 40 He develops the theme, “And this is the will of him that sent Me,” notice He repeats Himself, it’s not a waste of words, it is to drill into this rebellious mob that the universe operates on God’s law, not man’s. So He says, “This is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which sees the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life,” so He’s not talking about the Father giving, He’s talking about the historic act of trust, and it doesn’t say in verse 40 whoever sees the Son and does 5,000 brownie point type works is going to attain eternal life. What it says is whoever trusts the Son.

Again, let’s run this by to make sure we all understand 1 John 1:9. As Christians, what do you do every time you uses 1 John 1:9? We go back to the gospel. You see, He’s designed it so we have to go back to the starting line, not absolutely because we don’t lose our maturity but you have to go all the way back to where you began the Christian life, which was where? Some exciting experience? No, you started, if you were evangelized properly, you started by trusting in Christ’s finished work on the cross. So what happens when you confess your sin? “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,” notice it doesn’t say He is gracious to forgive us our sin. Ever notice that about the wording of 1 John 1:9. The word “grace” is missing. It says “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” “Faithful and just,” why does it say that, why doesn’t it say gracious? Because 1 John 1:9 isn’t looking at the gospel, it’s looking at a post salvation readjustment through confession. The grace has already been given; the grace has already outlined the system and now within the system God can be just to His own character because what happens, our sin is credited to Christ’s account; Satan will make an accusation, Christ will claim at this point in time it is covered. You see, legally what happens is that at the time you trust in Christ you’re perfectly justified, but legally it’s a different thing from experientially. A company can go out and buy so many acres out here and say we legally own that thing; there may be hundreds of acres but it’s going to become actual when they start building there and then everybody sees that they own it. And if they don’t ever build on that then it destroys the whole thing as [?] found out recently with their cotton business; a sad situation.

So what happens in the plan of salvation is that we are legally justified at this point in time, completely, but as moments go by in history it comes out into the open what it means to justify us. You see, here is, we’ll say Charlie Brown, we’ll try to pick some innocuous name so it will be the other person, and then as Charlie Brown trusts in Christ Charlie Brown is perfectly justified in Christ; Charlie Brown’s sins have been totally paid for by the Lord Jesus Christ. So that’s all very fine, as far as God’s concerned it’s okay, but as far as the creature, including Satan is concerned, it’s not yet okay because there must be a historic demonstration of what it means to justify Charlie Brown. What’s the historic demonstration? Charlie Brown’s life. So Charlie Brown goes on and he does a nosedive in the Christian life. All right, Satan says aha, got him; so he comes up to the Father and makes an accusation, he lodges a protest over Charlie Brown; Charlie Brown the clod down there claims to be a Christian, he’s not a Christian, Christians don’t do that. See, that’s Satan’s line. So what happens? He lodges a complaint, Jesus Christ says on the basis of His advocacy, if you want to see this operate, 1 John 1:9, all the way into I John 2, Jesus Christ says objection removed because My finished work is applied to his account. And then time goes on, maybe two minutes later Charlie Brown goes on another nose dive and another accusation is made and again Jesus Christ comes to His account.

Now as this goes on down through history time and time and time and time again what is being shown? It’s a revelation of justification. Now justification was there on paper; the contract was there, the contract was a seal, it’s okay but there was no historical outworking of it. So you have to see this business of Christ constantly making intercession for us is simply the outworking of that original contract. He buys the land and then he builds his building.

So in conclusion let’s look at the end of John 6:40. Notice that both verse 39 and 40 end the same way. Notice verse 39, I “should raise it up again at the last day.” And the end of verse 40, “I will raise him up at the last day.” Now that’s not an accident that they both end the same way, because at the raising, at the end of history, or we’ll take the Church Age for Christians, the Church Age ends and the rapture; now the rapture is just a fancy way of saying resurrection, and it’s resurrection phase one because there are parts to the resurrection. When the resurrection occurs you are locked down, there can be no shifting. So the period of testing is over as far as God is concerned. Everything is fixed; the status between heaven and hell is fixed; there’s no crossing over. And when resurrection occurs, then Christ’s intercessory ministry stops. And His sustaining ministry continues because as God He constantly sustains creatures, and will forever. But His gracious intercessory ministry does terminate at a point in time, when He has delivered us at the door when we our soul picks up our resurrection body. When that has happened the plan of grace is finished and we go on from that point, but grace is at least finished there, as far as Christ’s intercessory work. This is why both verse 39 and verse 40 terminate.

Let’s summarize what we’ve done so far in chapter 6. We’ve said first of all that Jesus Christ is insisting in this chapter that in spite of the crowd’s response to Him, in spite of all the adversity, He walks on the water and He demonstrated it physically because that’s most easily seen. So physically Christ demonstrated He walks physically on the physical water, which is a sign of His control over nature. But those of us who know the symbology of Scripture pick up from the way John has written this and he’s adjusted his text and so on, we pick up this other theme; not only does the Lord Jesus Christ run nature but He runs humanity; He is sovereign both over man and He’s sovereign over nature; He controls the runaway seas and He controls the runaway mob; both! And in so doing Jesus Christ has said and will say time and again, My Father’s plan reigns inviolable, nothing stop My Father’s plan; and it’s a challenge to autonomous man in every age, bow your knee to the Lord Jesus Christ while you can or He’ll break it, for in the Scripture there are some very sobering passages, that “every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Christ, those in heaven, those on earth, those under the earth.” And you know who those “under the earth” are, who finally ultimately must still confess Jesus as Christ? The unsaved, people who have rebelled against Him will come face to face with all eternity while they are in hell they will still have to make allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ as Christ, except then it will be too late to do anything about it, they’ll just have to do it.

Jesus Christ, then, almost crudely, if we use the word carefully, powerfully slaps down the democratic spirit of man. So next time you see where there’s a U in the UN, just cross it out; there’s the King over the United Nations; the United Nations in this passage is the water and Jesus Christ walks all over it. The United Nations is Christ’s doormat; that’s the proper symbology and the proper attitude to have. Try it, see how that theme goes over, the theme that the United Nations is Christ’s doormat.

Father, we thank You…..