What Shall We Do That We Might Work the Works of God? — Major Ian Thomas

John 6: The Work of God Is to Believe

John's Gospel, chapter 6.

The Lord Jesus, in the 27th verse, said, labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you, for him hath God the Father seized.

Then said they unto him, and the they refers to the unbelieving Jews, what shall we do that we might work the works of God? What shall we do that we might work the works of God? And this is the question that we shall seek tonight to answer.

Because it may be a question that would be sincerely echoed in your own heart. What shall we do that we might work the works of God? In other words, recognizing my responsibility towards the Lord Jesus as one who sincerely loves him, as I have come increasingly to see the implications of my conversion that makes me wholly available to him, what am I now to do about it?

What shall we do that we might work the works of God? For now, the Lord Jesus didn't answer the question, because the question cannot be answered. Because the question in itself is a contradiction. What shall we men do that we men might do the work of God?

Well, that's a question that doesn't have an answer. Unless men can become God. If men can become God, then men as God will do the work of God. But so long as men are men, men will only do the work of men.

And so instead of answering the question, the Lord Jesus gave them a new definition. And that is what constantly God has to do for us. This is what in many ways he has been doing throughout this week.

Redefining spiritual issues for us. Sweeping out the cobwebs. Destroying false bases upon which, in all sincerity, very often we have been building, because we have had an inadequate or an inaccurate concept of what is involved in being a Christian.

So the Lord Jesus, instead of answering the question, gave them a new definition. Verse 28, What shall we do that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

This is the work of God, that you believe on him whom God has sent. And that definition of the work of God in itself will be both baffling and perplexing. Unless we have a new definition of believing.

Because if I accept the commonly current idea of believing on him, Jesus, whom God has sent, that would be relegated to a critical act whereby I have registered a decision to receive Christ as my Saviour.

By popular concept, to believe on Jesus Christ, to become a believer, means that you have been converted. I am a believer, yes, because three years ago I accepted Christ as my Saviour. And if to believe on Jesus Christ is to be confined to one critical act whereby in recognition of our guilt and in repentance toward God we put our trust in Christ as a crucified Redeemer, then the work of God has been accomplished, so far as I am concerned, for the rest of my days and my times mayer.

Well, that obviously can't be right. For the work of God is not just one critical act in my past history. The work of God, according to the Lord Jesus Christ, in me and through me, is to be as a flowing river.

A continual process. Therefore, to believe on him whom God has sent, if that is the work of God, must also be like a flowing river, must also be a continual process. And of course it is. As some of us were discussing this morning at the midday meeting, in the fifth chapter of the first epistle of John, we have this same thought underlined.

And those who were at the midday meeting will forgive me if I reiterate this point. 1 John 5, verse 11. This is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

So that a man, a woman, a boy or a girl who has eternal life is that man, woman, boy or girl who has Jesus Christ. So that eternal life is not a destination, it isn't a place to which you are going. Eternal life is somebody who by his Holy Spirit has come to re-inhabit your redeemed humanity.

A person, not a place. Eternal life is Jesus Christ. He is the one who was in the beginning with God and was God, and by whom all things were made, and without him nothing was made that was made, and in him, in his person was life, and this life was the light of man.

It was his life within man that lit the lamp of the human spirit. And he that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God has not life. There are two kinds of people on earth in God's economy.

Those who have been re-inhabited by God, by the miracle of regeneration that takes place on the grounds of redemption, and those who as yet remain in the condition in which they were born, uninhabited by God.

And in all probability in such a congregation as this, there will be the quick and the dead. There will be the alive and the lifeless. There will be those who have the Son and there will be those who have not.

He that hath the Son, Jesus Christ, hath life. He that hath not the Son of God, whatever else he may have, he doesn't have life, so far as God is concerned. He is spiritually lifeless, dead. May we know that we have life?

Of course. These things, verse 13 of 1 John 5, have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, who credit him with the office that is involved in his name, Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.

The moment you come for what you are, a guilty sinner, to him for what he is, the sinner's savior, and put your whole trust in him, you may know that you have eternal life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

For the moment as a self-confessed sinner you come for what you are, to him for what he is, the sinner's savior, God accepts you as one cleansed in his shed blood, God receives you back for Jesus' sake, and demonstrates the fact that your sin is forgiven by restoring to you the Holy Spirit by whose gracious presence Jesus Christ lives in you to clothe himself with your redeemed humanity as a member in particular of his new corporate body on earth called the Church.

The Fellowship of Forgiven Sin. Is that all? No. That's the threshold. That's the front door. That's the ABC. That's the milk for the babies. What does he then go on to say in the same verse? These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.

That believing you may go on believing. That by a critical act of believing you may have him, and by a constant maintained attitude of believing you may enjoy him. In other words, you have received the Lord Jesus within you by an act of faith that his life and activity may be released through you by an attitude of faith.

It is your act of faith in repentance toward God that restores you to your relationship to God as a forgiven sinner that enables God to restore to you the life of Christ. To what end? That from that moment you may live in the good, in the wealth, in the overwhelming plenitude of what he is for every moment of every day and for every step you take, so that all your activity henceforth will be nothing less than the activity of the Lord Jesus clothed with your humanity released by your constant, unrelenting attitude of dependence.

Now, it's that maintained attitude of dependence which is the criterion of true repentance. For remember, Adam fell into sin when he repudiated his love toward God and repudiated his dependence on God.

He believed the devil's lie, I am what I am by virtue of what I am and not by virtue of what God is in me. I'm perfectly competent to run my own affairs apart from any divine content. I can be morally good, but I don't need to be spiritually alive.

This is the basic lie. Now when the Lord Jesus came, we are told by John in his third chapter of the same epistle that the Lord Jesus came to manifest, to destroy, to disintegrate, to render null and void the work of the devil, to put into reverse the lie that he perpetrated in Adam.

And if he managed to persuade Adam to believe that he could lose God and lose nothing, that he could be self-contained, that he could be independent, the one thing that God wants to demonstrate in Jesus Christ is this, that you and I can never be independent, but we were created always to be unrelentingly dependent.

And in the measure in which you and I repent of Adam's sin, we will step back out of independence into dependence, that believing on the one whom God has sent as the true legitimate occupant of our redeemed humanity that releases his divine action through us.

In other words, the activity of a Christian is the activity of Jesus Christ. But his activity will never be released through you until by faith you depend on him for what he is in you. Any more than his redemptive activity in dying for you can redeem you until you depend by faith, independence upon what he did to redeem you from what you've done.

Or as we saw last night, the life germ in the heart of the grain of wheat will never be released until the grain of wheat has fallen to the ground, relinquishing itself into death. Then the life that is within is released.

And the grain of wheat from that moment no longer has any say whatever about the future. None. The moment a grain of wheat goes into the ground and dies, its future ends are shaped by the principle within that is now released.

Life. And that's the work of God. The work of God commences, so far as you're concerned, when you relinquish what you are and take every step in total dependence upon what he is. Your activity ceases to be your activity on his behalf and becomes his activity through you.

With due courtesy to the mother of that little child, I'm going to ask you to remove the child, unless it goes to sleep very quickly. Tonight is one of the most important nights of this series in which we're coming to the final issues.

And in fairness to those who have come so faithfully and for whom tonight is going to be a night perhaps from which life will never be the same again, we can't afford to have any disturbance. And so you'll understand that I make that request most courteously and I'm sure you'll appreciate it.

Faith as a Continual Dependence on Christ

Turning back to John 6, this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent. And having paused a moment to think of some of the principles involved in that statement by the Lord Jesus, we're now going to follow his exegesis of that principle throughout the balance of this chapter.

And as I mentioned just a moment ago, this is going to be one of the most important studies that we have because it is going to involve you and it's going to involve your future. If this issue that is being now enunciated and underlined by the Lord Jesus has never before been clearly presented to you nor appreciated by you or faced by you, then from this moment you will never be the same again.

You will go in one or other direction as you will discover. Tonight I'm going to put the proposition to you as the Lord Jesus himself puts this proposition. And having given you the proposition at the close not just of this meeting but at the close of this week's ministry, I shall invite your participation.

You see, when the Lord Jesus said this, he was met at once by this objection on the part of those who had questioned him. You tell us that the work of God, the tangible work of God is constituted solely by an attitude of dependence, by an attitude of faith, by, in other words, a spiritual relationship.

They said in so many words to the Lord Jesus Christ that this was pure hypothesis. This was altogether too theoretical. It was altogether too much in the area of mysticism. They said therefore unto him, what sign showest thou then that we may see and believe?

What dost thou work? And then they cited Moses. They said, now Moses, he was a practical man. He didn't talk in this hairy, fairy, theoretical, mystical kind of way. No, no, no. He was a practical man.

He gave them bread from heaven to eat when our fathers did eat manna in the desert. He fed hungry men. That's the kind of gospel we need. That's what they said. We want the kind of gospel that does things.

Now Moses gave them bread from heaven and when they saw what Moses gave, they believed. Jesus Christ said, you're twice wrong. First of all, verse 32, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven.

My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. And secondly, you say that because Moses gave them bread, they believed. For forty years they grieved God, that generation, because they believed not and they died because of their unbelief in the wilderness.

The bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world. A quality of life that men do not by nature possess because man is man by virtue of what God is in man and man is not man by virtue of what man is apart from God.

And the bread of God is the Lord Jesus, he which comes down from heaven that men might have what they don't by nature possess. Life. Whose life? His life. And because it's his life, his activity. An activity which will only be released by a spiritual relationship of total dependence which will be the expression of complete repentance.

Your fathers, when they saw the bread that Moses produced, did not believe. They died in unbelief. And I say unto you, verse 36, that you have also seen me, thee, bread from heaven, and you believe not.

They saw and didn't believe. You've seen and didn't believe. For seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing. Action, in other words, does not produce faith. Faith produces action if it is to be divine action.

The only action which is produced apart from faith is carnal action. Faith produces spiritual action. You can always produce action apart from faith, but it won't please God. Without faith, Hebrews 11, without faith, it is impossible to please Him.

Hebrews 11, verse 6. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Impossible! That doesn't mean to say that you can't try to please God without faith. Of course you can. It doesn't mean that you can't be very busy trying to please God without faith.

Of course you can. You can work yourself to the bone, but you won't please God. Because without faith, it is impossible to please God. Why? Because this is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom God has sent to occupy your redeemed humanity, that by your maintained attitude of dependence, you release what He is in terms of what you are.

Faith releases divinity. And whatever you do, other than an attitude of dependence upon Christ, is not what Christ is doing through you, because what He does through you is only released by faith. Therefore what you do, other than in dependence upon Christ, must stem from some other source.

And the only other alternative source to Christ is the flesh. So without faith, it is impossible to please Him. Because faith alone releases His activity through you, and only His activity through you pleases God.

What's the alternative? What's the reverse?

If without faith, it is impossible to please Him, alternatively, whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Romans 14.

Romans 14. Here is a general principle applied to a particular case. The particular case was as to whether they should eat meat offered to idols. That was the particular case, but it is covered by a general principle.

The last verse of Romans 14. He that doubteth is condemned if he eats, because he eateth not of faith. And whatsoever is not of faith is sin. The man who has doubts, misgivings, and uneasy conscience about eating, and then eats, perhaps because of you, stands condemned before God because he is not true to his convictions.

He does not act from faith. For whatever does not originate and proceed from faith is sin. Because faith alone releases the activity of Jesus Christ through you, and only the activity of Jesus Christ through you is legitimate.

Any activity that does not stem from Jesus Christ in you, operating through you, can only stem from the only other alternative source of activity, and that is the flesh. The sin principle of satanic origin.

Whatsoever does not originate and proceed from faith is sin. That is, whatever is done without a conviction of its approval by God is sin. In other words, sin involves infinitely more than telling lies, getting drunk, running off with your neighbor's wife, being proud, dishonest.

Sin involves all activity that does not stem from the sovereignty of Christ within your human personality, whose activity alone clothed with your redeemed humanity will ever receive the favor of God. And as I pointed out the other day, that involves teaching your Sunday school class in anything other than an attitude of dependence upon Christ.

This involves getting up in a pulpit and preaching a sermon in anything other than an attitude of faith in Jesus Christ. This involves taking out your checkbook and writing out a check for fifty pounds to some missionary society in anything other than an act, an attitude of total dependence upon Christ.

All these activities in the area of Christian service can originate from the flesh and are sin. Now this is hard to be uttered. Not only is it hard to be uttered, it's hard to be heard. Because it means that a great multiplicity of so-called Christian activity which originates and stems from the flesh stinks in God's knowledge.

And that is why by and large the activity of the Church in all its multiplicity of direction and all its multiplicity of machinery achieves so pathetically little. Never was the Church of Jesus Christ in all its intricate organization so well equipped with every kind of mechanical vice and with all the human personality and gift available to it never in all human history was so much available to so many to achieve so little.

Because the Church of Jesus Christ by and large has missed the whole principle of divine action. This is the work of God that you believe on him whom God has sent and allow him to be himself doing his own work in his own way through you as when and where he will.

And your activity on his behalf will never in God's economy be a substitute for what he is and does. Now my dear Christian friend, this has absolutely nothing to do with the sincerity of your motives.

Nothing whatever. You can be as sincere as the devil himself in the service of Christ. But you won't please him. Christ of whom we have many things to say and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing, for when for the time you ought to be teachers you have need that one teach you again which be the first principles.

Spiritual Maturity Beyond “Milk” Christianity

These are the first principles. The baby talk, the first principles of the oracles of God. Hebrews 5 verse 12. You are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat. For everyone that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness.

He is a baby. And I warned you at the beginning of this week that I was not intending to keep on feeding milk to babies who've been sucking milk for donkey's years. Or baby's years. My object was to teach you what you don't know because that's what a teacher's for.

To help you to understand what you haven't understood before because that's the only purpose of talking to people. The tragedy is that we've largely educated the Christian church to be content listening to the same thing being said again and again and again and again week after week, month after month until you can recite it backwards.

It's less disturbing to your conscience. Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age. Even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil, to recognize the evil in what appears to be good and which passes muster for good.

It's a terribly hard lesson for us to learn initially that simply because an activity happens to be in an area of Christian service it isn't necessarily spiritual. That the fact that a missionary has gone to a mission field does not make that activity spiritual.

That the fact that you happen to be in an evangelical church preaching or teaching at an evangelical Bible class that that fact in itself does not make it spiritual. There is only one criterion as to what is spiritual and what is not spiritual and that is the origin of the activity.

You can engage in Christian service.

For every kind of ulterior motive. Did you ever notice in Ezekiel 44 verse 18.

It concerns the priests and may I remind you that every forgiven sinner is added to the universal priesthood. You as living stones have built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

You are a chosen generation. You are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. You are a purchased people that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, Peter says.

And this concerns the priesthood. And all the Old Testament foreshadowings have their spiritual implications in the New Testament. They shall have linen bonnets upon their heads and they shall have linen breeches upon their loins.

They shall not gird themselves with anything that causes sweat. These were God's instructions concerning the priesthood in the Old Testament. They were not to be clothed with anything that would cause them to sweat in the presence of God.

No sweat in God's presence. A priest must never sweat. Isn't that interesting? Now the distinction between carnal activity and spiritual unction is just that, sweat. Beware of the busyness, the sweat of a barren life.

God preserved us from being busy as a compensation for our spiritual ineptitude. God says, no priest must dare to come into my presence sweating. And yet lots of us congratulate ourselves. We come bursting in sweat, pouring down our faces and we tell everybody how busy we are in the service of Jesus Christ.

And everybody is impressed. Except God, who says a priest is not allowed to sweat in my presence. On the contrary, verse 23 of Ezekiel 44, bear in mind the words that I read you from Hebrews 5, discerning between good and evil, they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane.

That which derives from God and that which doesn't. They shall cause them to discern between the unclean that stems from the flesh and the clean that stems from the Spirit. And a priest who has learned not to sweat in God's presence has the office to teach God's people the difference.

That's what we've been seeking to discover this week, the difference between the clanking bustle of man's activity on God's behalf and that easy flowing river that stems from a divine source, the lamb upon the throne.

As a young man, I once went to a voice trainer. She didn't seem to consider that it was worthwhile my coming again. I can't say that we got on too well from the start. For one thing, she looked a bully.

She was a great big buxom woman. And when I came to the room, she said, I'm going to teach you how to breathe. You don't know how to breathe. I said, pardon me, I've been breathing ever since I was born.

No, you haven't, she said, you haven't been breathing yet at all. So I wondered how I'd survived for so long. Now, she said, expire. I said, I'm too young. And she didn't think that was funny either. So, I expired.

She said, that's not the way to expire. This is the way to expire. From being about that size and width, you went down to about that. So I expired. And I can feel my ribs touching. Now, she said, inspire.

So, I inspire. She said, that's not the way to inspire. This is the way to inspire. And all the pictures came off the wall. And then she said this. It was a pocket sermon. She said, you will never learn to inspire until you know how to.

Expire. It's a spiritual principle.

Until you have learned to expire, I am crucified.

With Christ. You will never.

Inspire. Christ lives in me. You'll just perspire. You'll sweat in the energy of the flesh. And you'll be congratulating yourself in being so busy, in such demand, in the service of Jesus Christ. And you'll be kidding yourself, receiving everybody except God.

And there'll be nobody more pleased than the devil himself. For he has successfully neutralized you by keeping yourself wholly preoccupied with what you can do for God, which is precisely nothing. And it's amazing how busy you can be doing nothing, and how much sweat is generated in.

The process. God said to Abraham, in your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Abraham was an old man, over eighty years of age. His wife was barren. She had never borne. Physically, it was impossible for her to bear.

And God said to Abraham, the word of faith, in thy seed shall all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Sarah shall.

Bear a son. That was the word of faith. But of course,.

God had misjudged the issue. And fortunately, he had a man like Abraham to keep him on being. Fortunately, he had in a man like Abraham somebody who had level-headed common sense, who could face issues as they were without being mystical and unrealistic.

And he realized that God had got himself in an unusual dilemma. And so he had a committee meeting with Sarah. And they decided that God had overlooked the fact that Abraham was so old and that Sarah was barren.

And they decided that they must help God out of his awkward dilemma. And no doubt, God would be extremely grateful.

For their endowment. And they invited.

Hagar, a bondwoman, into the home. And of Hagar, in conformity to the resolution that had been passed at the committee meeting between Abraham and Sarah, Ishmael was born, the son of a bondwoman. And they presented Ishmael to God, thinking how grateful God would be that they should have taken care of his interests so thoroughly on earth, in the situation that had arisen as a result of God's absent.

Mind. Now wasn't that nice of Abraham.

And Sarah? How lucky God was to have folk like that around the place running his affairs. And for fifteen years Abraham said to God, All that Ishmael may live! God said, I have not begotten Ishmael.

Nor have I any interest in Ishmael. You can throw him out!

For fifteen years he nurtured in his bosom that which was born of his sheer fleshly carnal sincerity.

He wasn't a hypocrite. He didn't.

Even know that he was repudiating God's sovereignty in his life. He didn't even know that it was rank unbelief prompted his sincere endeavors. He thought that God should have congratulated him upon his ingenuity.

God said,.

Sarah shall bear a son. My covenant is with Ishmael and not with Ishmael. And God repudiated.

Ishmael, born of Abraham's sincerity on God's behalf. And Ishmael became the father of the Arab nations who have breathed murder all down history and today surround Israel in the Middle East, the flashpoint of human history in our.

Twentieth century. And there.

Are armed men at this very moment facing each other across their rifle barrels and their machine guns with jet fighters waiting to take over the moment's notice. At this moment while I'm talking to you.

Because of Abraham's sincerity on God's behalf in begetting Ishmael in defiance of the word of faith.

That's why God said don't sweat in my presence. Or you could go.

All down the history of the word of God and see again and again and again how well-meaning men have tried to organize God.

Out of business. Lord Jesus said this is the work of God that you believe on him whom God has sent. John 6, verse 35. 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. This is a key verse without which you will not grasp the significance of what later he has to say.

You will be completely bewildered or you will become a Roman Catholic. I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger. When do you cease to hunger? When you eat. He says when you come it will be as good as eating.

You will not hunger.

So to eat is to come. He that.

Believeth on me shall never thirst. When do you cease to thirst? When you drink. So to believe is as good as drinking. When you believe you drink. So from now on when the Lord Jesus says drink he will mean believe.

To eat is to come and to drink is to believe. Now that's the key. He uses the particular illustration because it was placed in his hands as it were by the Jews who had quoted Moses in the wilderness. So the Lord Jesus picks up the parable.

He speaks about bread and he says I am the bread of life. When you come you don't hunger. When you believe you don't thirst. So to eat is to come and to drink is to believe. A very beautiful.

Picture. Physiologically correct. For it is the fluids of your body that.

Apply what you eat to the place where it's.

Needed. It's the blood stream that.

Takes to the extremities of your body, the nutriment, the healing properties of all that you take as nourishment. And if you didn't drink and you didn't sustain the fluids of your body you could put all the nutriment in the world in your mouth and you would die.

Of starvation. And you can come.

To Jesus Christ for what he is but if you don't apply what he is by faith to your needs you will die in your sin. You come and believe. You apply what he is to what you are. That's the secret. That's the symbol.

Verse 47. Verily verily I say unto you he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. The moment you come to me for what I am admit yourselves to be what you are guilty sinners claiming the adequacy and the efficacy of my toning death upon the cross.

Your sins are forgiven you and my father restores to you the life that sin forwarded. The Holy Ghost comes to re-inhabit your human spirit and your body becomes the temple of the living God. You have everlasting life.

My life. Then said Jesus unto them, verse 53. Verily verily I say unto you except you eat the flesh of the son of man come and drink his.

Blood. Believe. You.

Remain in the condition in which you were born.

Ye have no life in you. You're lifeless. For my.

Father cannot restore to you my life by the gift to you of my spirit until first you have been cleansed. And you can never be cleansed from your sin until first you have come and believed. Now that's the evangelistic note.

That's the evangelistic message. This is the threshold. This is the front door through which you enter into life. And if there's a man or a woman or a boy or a girl here tonight and you've never come to the Lord Jesus nor believed on him as your redeemer, the Lord Jesus says to you tonight, you have no life in you.

You're dead. For he that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. You're dead. And before one word more that I could say to you would ever help you, you've got to obey the gospel in this first initial act of faith that receives what he is, life.

That thereafter you may depend as an attitude of faith upon what he is moment by moment. But you cannot depend as an attitude upon what he is in you until first by an act of faith you have received him in you.

So without this act of faith whereby you come and believe, says Jesus, you have no life. You're dead. But of course that isn't the gospel. That's the beginning of the gospel. That's the evangelistic note of the gospel.

This is God's command to all men everywhere to repent and be converted. Now he goes on in the rest of the chapter to explain what it is that happens once you have life. What are the implications of coming.

And believing? Verse 56. He that eateth my flesh comes.

And drinketh my blood believes, dwelleth in me. Justification.

And I in him sanctification, dwelleth.