WWUTT 851 This is the Work of God That You Believe?

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In John 6, 29, Jesus said, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

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As much as we fight over free will and autonomy, the scripture is clear. Your ability to believe is from God when we understand the text.

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You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to sound teaching of the word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com

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and don't forget our website, www .tt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the Gospel of John 6, and today

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I'll start reading in verse 25 through verse 40. The apostle John wrote,

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When they found Jesus on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here?

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Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

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Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the

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Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.

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Then they said to him, What must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered them,

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This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. So they said to him,

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Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?

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Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.

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Then Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, but my

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Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

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They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them,

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I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

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But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe. All that the

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Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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

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

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So back in verse 26, Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

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Remember, this is the people coming to Jesus, finding him there in Capernaum after he had fed the 5 ,000 on the other side of the

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Sea of Galilee. So then seeing that Jesus had not, he didn't get in the boat with his disciples and go to the other side of the sea.

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They got in boats and went to the other side to see if they could find him, and there he was with his disciples, though they knew he did not get in the boat with them.

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It's because, of course, the other miracle that we have in between the feeding of the 5 ,000 and this discourse between Jesus and the people is that Jesus walked on the water.

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So he just walked out there on the lake and got in the boat with his disciples, showing to them that he was indeed the

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Son of God. Now, Jesus is revealing things to his disciples, the 12 whom he has chosen, that he has not shown to other people.

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He has shown them the feeding of the 5 ,000. They've seen it, and they know. But the reason why they're coming to him is so that he'll do it again.

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He'll feed them again. They want to see it again. Give us food for our bellies. And this prompts Jesus to say to them that you're seeking me not because you saw signs.

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You're seeking me for the wrong reason, but because you got your fill of the loaves. You're seeking some sort of fleshly fulfillment, some sort of appetite that you want to have fulfilled, and it's not a spiritual appetite.

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So then Jesus says to them, verse 27, do not seek the food that perishes, but seek for the food that endures to eternal life, which the

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Son of Man will give you, for on him God the Father has set his seal.

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So Jesus has food to give them that's even greater than this miracle that he has performed.

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The miracle was showing who he was, that he was sent from God, and yet that's not what the people see.

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That's not what they believe. They just want to see him do another sign. They want him to appease their worldly appetites somehow.

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They do not actually want to see him as the Son of God, who he's outright saying this is who he is, the one who was sent by the

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Father. He revealed greater things to his disciples, but he's yet shown these people enough that they might see that this is a man who performs miracles because he is sent from God, and yet they don't know that of him.

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They still want the thing that was produced by the miracle that he did, which was something that would appease their flesh.

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They don't actually want to see the miracle worker himself. So Jesus says that the food that I give endures to eternal life.

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Well, he doesn't say that yet. He says, do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the

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Son of Man will give to you, speaking of himself in the third person, for on him

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God the Father has set his seal. And I love that because that's a king's mark.

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Setting a seal on something is the mark of a king. You would have something that would be rolled up like a scroll, some sort of document or message that was being sent out by the king, and to show that it was authentic and was a message of the king himself, or Caesar or the emperor or somebody, he would then take his signet ring and he would press it into wax.

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There would be wet wax dripped on the outside of the crease of the document, and then he would press his signet ring into that wet wax that would show the seal of the king.

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And so Jesus is saying here that the seal of God himself is on Jesus Christ, that they would know that he's been sent by the

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Father. The seal is on him. They should be able to see and recognize Jesus Christ is a message from the king.

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He is a message from God, but they don't want to hear the message. They don't want to listen to the teaching.

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They just want to see him do another miracle. They just want him to give them something that would feed their fleshly appetites.

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In Ephesians 1, the apostle Paul says, in him, in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised

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Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

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That was Ephesians 1, verses 13 and 14, by the way. So those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ, who have been given the

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Holy Spirit, have been sealed by the Holy Spirit of God. We have the same king's mark on us that Jesus Christ had when he was sent by the

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Father. So we are inheritors of this kingdom. And the way Paul puts that, too, in Ephesians 1, 14, the

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Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

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We have a guarantee of the eternal kingdom of God, which we are fellow heirs of with Christ.

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We receive that kingdom. If we are faithful to the end, if we believe in him, we obey his commandments, we follow him, and we remain sure and steadfast to the end.

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He keeps us to himself all the way to the end of life. Then on that day that we pass from this world into the next, we receive that inheritance that we have been promised.

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And it is sealed for us. The Holy Spirit is that seal. He is the mark that God has placed on us that shows that we are his, and this inheritance that we have been promised will be ours.

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Amen. Glory, hallelujah. The other thing I love about that, too, is

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Paul showing the Trinitarian work of the deliverance of our inheritance, how this inheritance that we're going to receive is guaranteed by the

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Father. It is effected through the Son. It is sealed by the promise of the Holy Spirit, the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all working for us to the praise of his glory.

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But we receive the benefits of this work that has been accomplished in Christ Jesus.

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Amen once again. So Jesus talking once again about the seal of the

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Father that is upon him, the king's mark has been placed upon Christ, the

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Son of man who will give you eternal life, and on him God the Father has set his seal.

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And then they said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? And John 6, 29 says, this is one of those verses you need to underline.

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You need to memorize this. What must we do to be doing the works of God?

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And Jesus answered them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

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I have never understood the argument over whether or not God has caused faith.

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Like there are so many that argue that, no, no, no. Faith is not the work of God. Faith is something that you do, but it's not a work.

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And they'll continue to argue. It's not a work. Work is, you know, baptism, or work is doing works of righteousness, or something to that effect.

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But faith itself is not a work. As though you somehow can conjure up within yourself faith.

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Like you automatically decided one day, hey, I'm just going to believe. I don't believe now.

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Let me manifest faith in my, there we go. Now I have some faith. Where does that come from?

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How are you able to do that? You can't do anything. You can't cause something to come from nothing.

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And in your heart, there was nothing. There was no desire for God. Romans 3 .12 makes that clear.

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Our sinful nature is dead set against God. And no one does anything good. If no one can do good, then how can you choose to follow

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God, which would be a good thing. In Romans chapter 8, it says that if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, they cannot please

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God. So if you don't have the spirit of Christ, and yet you're then somehow able to make yourself believe in God, how would you be able to do that?

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Because that would no doubt be a pleasing thing to do. None of these things are within our power to do it.

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You cannot conjure up your faith. You did not create faith within yourself. It is

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God who gave you your faith. Hebrews 12 .2 says that Jesus is the author and the perfecter of our faith.

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And that doesn't mean that Jesus came up with Christianity. It means that Jesus gave you faith.

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And Jesus furthermore is the one who perfects our faith. So he gives it to us and he grows us in it.

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In Philippians chapter 1, the apostle Paul said, I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.

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Philippians 1 .6 and it's in verse 29 that we have, For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, it has been granted to you to believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

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Ephesians 2 .8 and 9, It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no man may boast.

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And there we have grace, salvation, faith, are all the work of God. None of that is something that you do.

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That's all the work that God does. And I actually came to understanding this. I don't know that I necessarily warred with it in my mind or in my heart.

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I was never wrestling with, well, does God grant us faith or do we come about faith?

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That really wasn't a question that I was wrestling with. A lot of these things pertaining to the salvation that God gives to us.

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God gives us faith. God gives us repentance. God gives us a spirit willing to follow him.

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God raises the dead man to life. Dead in our sins and our trespasses, he makes us alive together with Christ.

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All of these things I kind of came into just through teaching of the word. That was how I came into it, but I wasn't necessarily wrestling with some of these questions.

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So when I came to the understanding that faith was given to us by God, it's not something that we do and we don't come up with our faith and we don't decide one day to have faith.

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You hear the call of the gospel, repent and believe, but your ability to obey that call is from God.

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Because we read back at the start of John's gospel, John 1 .13, those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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So your ability to believe in God is by the will of God and praise him for that.

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Because otherwise, because of our sinful will, we would never be able to overcome that, to follow

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God. In our fallen sinful state, inheriting the sin of Adam, we're rebellious against God.

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We have no desire to follow him. Again, Romans 3, no one seeks for God. We're not even looking for him.

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Our disposition, our orientation is away from God until God transforms our hearts to pursue him, to follow him, and then to desire him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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So anyway, I kind of rabbit trailed there. What I was saying earlier is when I came to this understanding that we don't manifest our faith, that faith is granted to us by God, I was never really wrestling with that question.

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It wasn't something that I was thinking about. It was when I was listening to another preacher explain Ephesians 2, 8, and 9.

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And he was even trying to go into the Greek, but I could tell, though I wasn't a Greek scholar myself, that he didn't know

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Greek either. So in Ephesians 2, verse 8, it says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

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And he was trying to break it down and say, see, there's like passive Greek and active Greek and all this kind of thing.

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So when you look at, for by grace you have been saved through faith, this is not your own doing.

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The part where it says this is not your own doing is talking about grace and saved. It's not talking about faith.

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And this is what the pastor was explaining, because he was trying to say faith is your response.

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Faith is what you do. God, by his grace, gives you salvation. And when I was listening to him explain that,

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I was going, no, that's not what that means. I'm even looking at it in my

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Bible going, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. I don't see anything there that you did.

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I don't even know. I could tell this guy was reaching to try to put himself in. See, I did the faith thing.

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That was my part. God did the grace and the salvation, and I did the faith. And I'm looking at this verse going, it says it's not your own doing.

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What are you talking about? That was how I came into that understanding. It wasn't because I was laboring over Ephesians 2 .8

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to try to understand it or wrestling with, now, where did my faith come from? Did I make this decision, or did it come from God?

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It was actually listening to people try to infuse their own synergistic version of salvation into the

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Scriptures. And as I'm listening to them do that, and I'm looking at the same Bible they're reading from, I'm going, I don't see what you're seeing, man.

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I don't know how you get that. It couldn't be more plain than what we have Jesus saying here in John 6 .29.

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Jesus answered them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

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That's the work of God, that you would believe. So what is it that the people asked him?

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Once again, what must we be doing to be doing the works of God? Man, this is the question of everyone who has not found grace, who doesn't understand the grace of God.

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This is what everybody is clamoring for. Though they may not have ever verbally asked the question, this is the question that is in their hearts.

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What must we do to be doing the works of God? And note here that the people who are asking this question don't really want

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Christ. You know that because you know how this conversation is going to go, I guess.

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I mean, I assume you've read ahead or you've heard John 6 before, but if you know the direction that this conversation is going,

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I read the whole thing last week, so if you've been keeping up with the devotionals, you know that. Then you know that this is a people who's not truly seeking after Christ.

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So what they're asking when they say, what must we do to be doing the works of God?

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They are trying to justify themselves. They're trying to say, well, if I do enough of this, that's the work of God, right?

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So therefore, I have the food that endures to eternal life that you were talking about.

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What if I'm doing this over here? What if I'm this kind of person? I mean, true, I do this, that, and the other, but at least I'm doing this, and that's the work of God, right?

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So then I'm okay, I'm set. And Jesus answered them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

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And we have to understand what is meant here also by believe. When Jesus says that you believe in him whom he has sent, it doesn't just mean that you believe in a historical figure somewhere in the past whose name is

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Jesus Christ, or even that you know that he died on the cross and rose again from the grave. The faith that you have must affirm itself by obedience.

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If you're not obeying Christ and his commandments, then you don't truly believe in him.

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Because to believe in Jesus is not just to know who he was and what he has done, but also what he has said.

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And what the call of the gospel is, is a response. And it's a response unto obedience.

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Jesus came preaching, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That is Matthew 4 .17.

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It's the first words that Jesus preached in the gospels. Matthew 4 .17,

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repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven is the good news, but to receive the kingdom of heaven you must respond to Christ by repenting, turning from sin, following Jesus Christ.

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And once again, the ability to do that has been granted to us by God, not of ourselves.

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Once again, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, so that no one may boast, it is the gift of God.

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Praise him for his glory and goodness. You have come to faith and you know and believe because God is good and God is gracious.

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I was just thinking about this a couple of days ago. And truth be told, I was reflecting on my family.

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I was just thinking about how wonderful my wife is and how adorable my children are and how nobody delights me more than my family, being home with my family.

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And I've had a great chance to do that over the course of Christmas week, even though we were all pretty much sick all week long.

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Somebody in our house was sick all week. It was that kind of a holiday. But anyway, I was just thinking about how wonderful things are for me with the family that I have and the church that I pastor and how there was a time in my life

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I was not seeking to get married. In fact, it was the furthest thing from my mind.

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I was not seeking to be a pastor, also not something that I wanted to do. And yet the

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Lord worked all of these things out to give me the things that I have. And it was not because of me.

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I look back at the stupid young man that I was even a dozen years ago and I'm going, how did that guy ever end up with what

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I've got now? It's by the wonderful grace of God. And that's it.

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I had that millennial laziness in myself, too. I was not working as hard as I should have been working, even to be obedient unto the

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Lord. Yet he was faithful and good to me, though I had not been faithful to him.

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And I say that to you not to say that God's going to give you all the desires of your heart, because I think I could reflect in my story that wasn't even what

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I desired in my heart. God gave me way more than that. And that's what we've all received in Christ Jesus.

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We've been given way more. We are going to get an imperishable kingdom that is unlike anything that is in this world.

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There is nothing in this world that can compare to heaven. Not even my wonderful family can compare to the glory that awaits us in Christ if we endure to the end.

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And he is the one who has promised that if we are sealed in the Holy Spirit, he will deliver us from this life into the next.

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And we must continue to place our hope and our trust and our obedience in him, faith in Christ.

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And this is the work of God. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness.

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My goodness. I did not deserve any of the wonderful things that you have given me, most especially the salvation that I have in Christ.

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What could I possibly have done to deserve this? Even as I'm praying this, I know the ridiculous things that I've done in my life that make me so undeserving of ever even being able to call on your name at all.

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Why you don't snatch the life right out of me, but instead gave me your grace is just a wonder to your goodness.

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And so I praise your name. And I pray this for all who have listened to this lesson today and have heard the word of God taught, that we would understand that the faith that we've been given, the ability to believe in you is the work of God, that we would believe in Jesus Christ and so be saved.

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Continue to work out this salvation in us with fear and trembling until the day of Christ.

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And we pray this in his name. Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .utt