The Spirit Gives Life

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 6 and hold your place at verse 60 when you arrive there.

The title of today's message is The Spirit Gives Life.

The gospel message is hard to believe. That is the theme of today.

Today, the gospel message is hard to believe. In fact,

I will go a step further and I will say this. Not only is the gospel message hard to believe, the gospel message is impossible to believe apart from the work of God the

Holy Spirit in your heart. Just the other day, I had the opportunity to go and listen to Frank Turek speak.

Now if you're not familiar with Frank Turek, he is what's known as an apologist. He goes on to college campuses and he gives a gospel presentation and then he answers objections to the gospel from the college students.

I was very thankful. A friend of mine, Larry Cusick, last two weeks ago I had lunch with him and he said, Hey, Frank Turek is going to be in town, do you want to come with me and have dinner with him?

I said, yeah I do. Yeah, let's do it. So I had the opportunity to go in, sit at dinner, talk and hear him answer some questions there.

Then we went into the auditorium and there was several hundred people there to listen to him speak and he gave a wonderful gospel presentation and Frank and I would disagree on a few things theologically and somewhat the way we approach apologetics is a slightly different.

I don't want to get into that, but one thing he did do was he gave a wonderful apologetic or defense for the existence of God and why not believing in God is just unreasonable.

The whole idea of his ministry is that we have reasons to believe, right?

And I thought he did a wonderful job, but then came time for the questions and I was hoping to get to ask him a question, not because I had necessarily a question about the existence of God, but because I wanted to ask him a theological question.

But when then I looked and the line was stretched across the room, I was like, well I ain't getting in that line,

I'll just wait and see if it dies down. And it never did. And I bring this up only because even though I would say

Frank Turek gave a very reasonable, very intellectually appealing and very intellectually satisfying explanation for the existence of God, there were still many people in the room who didn't believe in God and didn't believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ. And so, it was a good reminder to me and the reason why

I'm sharing this with you is that intellectual arguments, while they are important and necessary and we should be able to give them, will never change the heart without the work of the

Holy Spirit. You should learn apologetics and please learn all you can to be able to give a defense for the hope that is within you.

But what we are going to see today, as Jesus will remind us, is that it is the Spirit who gives life.

It is the Spirit who must come upon a person and by God's grace, we preach the gospel, we give the apologetic appeal, we give the message, but then who is it that changes the heart?

The Holy Spirit of God. So let's stand and read. We're going to read all the way to verse 71 today, but I'm not going to preach it.

I'm going to only preach verses 60 to 65, so we have two more messages in this chapter, but I do want to at least read all the way down to verse 71.

So let's go to verse 60. When many of his disciples heard it, they said,

This is a hard saying, who can listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them,

Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the

Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life.

The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe.

For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.

And he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my

Father. After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve,

Do you want to go away as well? Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?

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

Holy One of God. Jesus answered them, Did I not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is the devil?

He spoke of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. As I preach, every time

I stand behind this pulpit, Lord, keep me from error. I am a fallible man, and apart from your spirit, nothing

I say will have any value. And apart from your restraining, I know how easy it is for me to fall into error.

So Lord, I pray that you would keep me tied to the post of your word and do not let me stray. And I pray for everyone who will hear this word,

Lord, that they would be reminded that our salvation is not something that we produced, not something that we were clever enough, intellectual enough, or intelligent enough to come to on our own, but Lord, you were the one who broke into our lives.

You were the one who came into our dead hearts and gave it life, and you were the one who, by your spirit, continues,

Lord, to live within us. And so Father, for the believer today,

I pray that they would be encouraged by this message. And for the unbeliever today, for the one who is there who has yet to believe,

I pray, oh God, that your spirit would open their heart, as he did with Lydia at the preaching of Paul, when it said that the spirit opened her eyes to hear, opened her ears to hear what

Paul was saying, and to believe, Lord, I pray that you would open the eyes, ears, and hearts of the people today, that they would see the gospel of Jesus Christ and be saved.

Your words are spirit and life, oh God. So may your spirit fill these words today, in Jesus' name, amen.

We have been studying through the gospel of John, verse by verse, and we are now in chapter 6, and as I said before I prayed, we are down to our final two messages, at least this is the plan that I will preach today and next week.

And originally I had planned to preach all of verses 60 to 71 in one message, but as I was looking over my notes this week and trying to edit some things, there were some things that I did not want to leave out, and so I said well

I'll make it two final messages instead of just one. And understand this, this is never my attempt to simply belabor the points, but rather there are important truths that we do not want to miss, and we're going to talk about next week the reality of this defection that occurs, this reality of this apostasy that occurs.

And I felt like if I dealt with the things I wanted to deal with today, we wouldn't really get to that, and especially the predicted rejection of Judas, as Jesus gives this message that one among you is a devil.

In fact the original title of today's message was one of you is a devil, and I was like there's no way I'm going to get there, and I wouldn't give it its due attention.

So just understand that it's never an attempt to simply belabor, but to make sure that we dig into God's word as is intended.

We are in the Bread of Life discourse. For those of you who are guests with us today, it's always a wonderful thing to have you, and we have been studying the

Bread of Life discourse now for several weeks. This is John chapter 6, which begins with the greatest miracle, and by greatest

I mean the one that more people saw than any other, and that is the miracle of feeding of the 5 ,000.

Greatest in the sense of scope. It affected more people, more people saw it, even more people saw that than the resurrection, and those people of course having eaten from the hands of Jesus Christ now want to follow after him because he is a king who is able to produce food from his bare hands.

And so the next day Jesus crosses the sea, that night he walked on water, and that's part of the narrative as well.

The next day he's in Capernaum, and the people are there following after him, and Jesus says to them, you do not believe.

He says you come to me, but you actually don't believe in me. Well, that begins what we call the

Bread of Life discourse. And later we find out that it's actually, he's actually speaking in a synagogue.

He's actually speaking in a house of worship among the Jewish people. So this is not just a discourse, but this is a lesson that he's giving to these people, and he's dealing with their objections, he's dealing with their challenges, and when we get to verse 60, it's where we left off last week, we end with this response of theirs.

It says in verse 60, when many of his disciples heard it, they said, this is a hard saying.

Who can listen to it? Now, last week we talked about the fact that the word hard there, the

Greek word hard, skleros, it's where we get the word sclerosis in our medical terminology, it means to harden, to be inflexible, to scar, those are all terms which refer to sclerosis, and this is what it says about, they're saying about Jesus.

They're saying, what you've said is too hard for us, what you've said is too inflexible for us, you've given us a statement to believe that we just can't accept, that is too hard to accept.

And I got to thinking this week as I was preparing the message, I got to thinking, what were the hard things that Jesus said? So I went back through the

Bread of Life discourse, and I said, there's actually 10 things he said that all by themselves would be really hard, but if you add them up, this is 10 things that Jesus said that would be hard to accept.

The first thing is that he actually said he was the Bread of Life, and he compared himself to the manna in the

Old Testament. He said, as the manna came down from heaven, so too did I come down from heaven, I am the Bread of Life.

That was the first thing that was very hard for them to hear, very hard for them, not just to understand, but to accept, understand this, there is a difficulty in understanding it, but the skleros here, the hardness here, it's not just hard to understand, it's hard to accept, even if you understood it, it'd be hard to take it.

The second thing he said, he told them they did not believe. People don't want to hear that.

People don't want to hear that you might not be a believer, or that you are not a believer. And the Bible says

Jesus knew their hearts, he knew from the beginning, we're going to see this today, he knew from the beginning those who wouldn't believe, so he could look at somebody right in the face and say, you are with me, but you don't believe in me.

That's a hard thing to hear, that's a hard thing to accept, but Jesus said it.

Third thing that he said that was hard, he said, all the Father gives me will come to me. He said that it's

God who actually takes the initiative in salvation, it's God who takes the initiative in bringing souls to the

Son. He says, all the Father gives me will come to me. That's a hard thing to accept.

You don't think it's hard to accept? Still hard today. I preach that in some churches,

I get run out with pitchforks and torches, that it's God who takes the initiative in salvation, and if it were up to our dead souls we would never come on our own.

Fourth thing, he said he had come down from heaven, I mentioned that earlier, but that's another thing he said that's hard. He said, I came down from heaven, what'd they say?

No you didn't, we know you're mom and daddy. You're from Nazareth, we know you, you grew up in the carpenter's shop.

Your mom helped with my wedding. We know you. Fifth thing, and honestly think about how hard this would be to hear.

He said everyone who looks on him and believes in him will have eternal life.

Remember in John 3 when he compared himself to the serpent on the pole, and he says everyone who looks will, everyone who looked at the serpent was saved, everyone who looks at the

Son of God will be saved, just as the serpent was lifted up, so too must the Son of Man be lifted up. Here he says essentially the same thing, he says everyone who looks on me and believes in me will have eternal life.

He's not promising them life through keeping the law. Understand how hard this would be to hear from Jewish ears.

He's not promising them life through adherence to the Torah. He's not promising them life through Moses, he's teaching them life through himself.

This would have been hard to hear. Number six, he said no one can come unless the

Father draws him. That would have been hard to hear. That our hearts are so opposed to the message of Christ that we won't even come unless God does the work of initiating in our heart a desire to come.

Number seven, he said he would give his flesh for the world. That's a hard thing to hear.

And as I said last week, that one's even kind of hard to understand. But he said it.

He said the life I give for this world is my flesh.

I give my flesh for the life of this world. And number eight, even harder to understand and accept, he said unless you eat his flesh and drink his blood, you will have no life in you.

And yeah, that one's tough. And if you have trouble with that one, go back and listen to last week's message. I've already had at least one

Roman Catholic I know took my message and posted it and responded how wrong I was. I just, it happens.

Don't worry, it didn't hurt my feelings. I don't care. But I know this is the response.

Number eight, I'm sorry, number nine. He said he was the living bread and that he was greater than the manna that the ancestors had eaten.

And finally, number 10, he says whoever feeds on him will live forever.

Each one of these statements by itself would be hard for a Jewish person to accept, would be hard for that audience to accept.

Altogether, this message is, as I said last week, hard words that expose hard hearts.

These are 10 hard sayings that expose the hard hearts of the people who are listening. And so Jesus knows this.

And this is what brings us to verse 61 today. In the first of our verses that we're going to look at,

Jesus knowing in himself, this is verse 61, Jesus knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling.

Now, understand before we even go any further that when it says his disciples here, this is not referring to the 12 only.

That has to be clear because sometimes we think of the 12 and we think of the disciples as an interchangeable term.

But mathetase in the Greek simply means a learner, one who learns from someone else, a student of someone.

And all of the people following Jesus at this point are referred to as disciples. That does not mean they were true believers.

But this is not referring to the 12 because later it's going to distinguish the 12 from this group who leaves.

So just to be clear, in the other gospels, they are called apostles. It's interesting,

John only calls them disciples, but the other gospels call them apostles. The word apostle means one who is sent.

And we talk about their having apostolic authority. They were leaders in the early church.

We believe that. But in this case, the term disciple is being used in a generic sense, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling.

So this is the group. This is the crowd. And by the way, this word grumbling, we talked about it two weeks ago,

I think it was. We talked about the word murmur. This is that Greek word where the people are complaining, but it's a quiet, low roar.

And Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, do you take offense at this?

Do you take offense at what I've said? Has what I've said offended you?

Now, just real quick, I want to mention this just in passing. When it says he knew in himself that his disciples were grumbling, it also is referencing

Christ's knowledge of their hearts. Because even the ones who weren't necessarily grumbling with their mouths may have been grumbling in their hearts.

And Jesus knew them. He knew their hearts. And it's just a good reminder that Jesus knows your heart today as well.

Jesus knows your heart today as well as he knew their hearts then. And it says he knew in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this.

And he says, do you take offense at this? Now, I want to talk for a moment about the idea of taking offense.

The word take offense here is the Greek word skandalizo. And it is where we get our word, of course, scandal.

Now, we're familiar with the word scandal, the idea of someone being caught up in a scandal or something that's scandalizing to someone.

And the idea is similar here in the Greek language. It's something that is offensive.

It's something that causes people to stumble. That's the idea. Something that causes people to stumble.

We are told to not cause our brother to stumble. And Jesus is now looking out at this crowd and he's asking them, are you offended?

Are you taking offense at what I have said? Now, understand this.

There is a difference. Between being offensive and someone taking offense.

This is R .C. Sproul actually said it this way. He said there's a difference between an offense given and an offense taken.

There's a difference between an offense given and an offense taken. Understand this.

Jesus said nothing for which he needed to apologize. Jesus said nothing that was sinful or wrong.

Oftentimes, people will come. And our elders have actually had this conversation at length.

Because people will come to this and they'll say, hey, so and so offended me. Okay, did he intentionally offend you or did you take offense at what he said?

That's a big question. Was he being intentionally offensive? Was he being sinful in his actions?

Did he speak to you with cursory words or ugly words? Words that were intended to demean you, defame you, insult you?

Or did simply he tell you the truth and you didn't want to hear it? You understand there's a difference there.

If someone tells you the truth and it offends you, that is your problem, not theirs.

Ultimately, that is your problem, not theirs. Now, should we be intentionally hurtful?

No. We should have our words seasoned with salt.

We should seek to have preserving words. We should seek to go to our brother in love and in kindness. I'm not, trust me,

I'm not giving you all permission to go around and just start being, as Brother Mike says, the president of the

Sin Sniffers Association. Go tell everyone just everything they're doing wrong. That's not the idea.

But understand this, just because you are offended doesn't mean you've been wronged.

Just because you are offended doesn't mean you've been wronged. These people are offended, but Jesus has done nothing wrong.

He has done nothing for which he needs to repent or apologize. Our Savior never sinned and thought word or deed.

And so when he stood up and said what he said to these people, and he asked them, do you take offense at this?

He's giving them the opportunity to consider the fact that nothing he has said is truly offensive, because he has told them the truth.

Nothing he has said is wrong, even though it would offend their sensibilities. When he talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, nothing he has said is sinful or worthy of his repentance.

Now, he says, do you take offense at this? And then he follows this up with an important question.

He follows it up with a question. Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?

This is verse 62. Jesus is asking them, if you've taken offense at what

I've said, if what I have said has offended you, it's causing you to stumble, it's causing you to, it's tripping you up.

What if you saw the Son of Man ascend into heaven? Would that give veracity to everything that I have said?

If you saw the Son of Man ascend into heaven, would your mind change? Honestly, I think sometimes.

I think about the end of the Gospel of Matthew. I just want you to see this with me.

Turn over to Matthew 28. Jesus is given the

Great Commission. It says in chapter 16,

Jesus is preparing for the Great Commission. And it says in Matthew 28, 16, it says,

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain, to which Jesus had directed them.

And when they saw him, they worshipped him. But some doubted. Isn't that wild?

Isn't that wild? Jesus, they're looking at the risen Savior. And yet some still doubted.

Some were still struggling with the reality of what they were facing. What did

I say at the beginning? This is hard to believe, right? Even the guys who saw it, this is hard to believe.

And so going back, how this connects to what I was saying in verse 62, going back when Jesus is speaking to them, he says,

What if you saw the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? What if you saw that? Guess what?

Even if they saw that, apart from the work of the Spirit of God, they still wouldn't believe it. Even if they saw that.

So if you think, well, Jesus here has offended them to the point where they won't believe. Man will not believe without the work of God on his heart, no matter what he sees.

Gordon Stein debated Greg Bonson back in the 80s, one of the greatest atheist Christian debates in history.

And I've listened to it multiple times. It's one of my favorite things to just put on and just listen to again. Because Bonson was such a wonderful debater.

And in that debate, Bonson, who is the Christian, is talking to Stein, who is the atheist. And he asked

Stein, he said, Is there anything you could see that would make you believe that God exists?

And Stein thought for a minute, and you can go back and listen to it, check my work if you want. He thought for a minute. And he said,

You know what? If that lectern, they had a lectern similar to this pulpit. He said, If that lectern were to stand up and raise up six feet off the ground and hover for a few minutes in the air, and then lay itself back on the ground nice and softly.

He said, I would have to admit that if I known that it wasn't done with wires or some other type of magnetics or tricks.

He said, I would have to admit that God had did it. And I would have to believe that God is real. And Bonson looked at him and said,

No. You would find another explanation. You would find something else to believe other than God.

If that lectern rose up six feet, stood there, and then put itself back down.

That is the problem with the heart of man. Is that until the Spirit of God changes the heart, the heart, the mind, the intellect, and the will is so opposed to God that it does not want to believe.

Now it'll believe in anything else. It'll believe in karma. It'll believe in chakras. It'll believe in the ability to look at the stars and map out your future.

It'll believe in everything other than Jesus Christ. It'll even believe enough to get on an airplane and fly it into a building.

See, the wicked heart will believe anything as long as it's not the truth. As long as it's not the truth.

This is why we get to verse 63. It is the Spirit who gives life.

By the way, I always have to point this out. I always love it when the

Scripture goes out of its way to remind us that the Spirit is a person, not an it. He doesn't say it's the

Spirit that gives life. He said it's the Spirit who gives life. The Spirit is the third person of the

Trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Three persons, one essence, one

God. And that's why I just, I point that out. That who there is referring us to the person of the

Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit, the person, the third person of the Trinity who gives life.

Remember when Jesus in John chapter 3 said, unless a man is born again, he will not see the kingdom of heaven?

Unless he's born again. Unless he's born from heaven. Unless he's born of the

Spirit. Remember he said he must be born of water and of the Spirit. And that spiritual rebirth is necessary even to perceive the kingdom.

That spiritual rebirth is necessary. A changed heart is necessary for a person to come to the kingdom.

It is the Spirit who gives life. And then Jesus immediately follows up. And in case you were wondering, the flesh profits nothing.

The flesh, the ESV, I think softens it too much. Is no help at all.

Well, as the King James says, profit is nothing, right? All right, I'm just, sorry,

I look to you, you know. That's right, your job in Mike's is the

New America Standard. And when I really need another one, I go to Andy for the new King James. This is my consortium here.

But the King James says the flesh profits nothing. The Spirit gives life.

The flesh is no help. See, believing in Jesus Christ is a spiritual matter. Believing in Jesus Christ is the result of a spiritual rebirth.

It's a changed heart. The flesh cannot produce it. Intellect cannot bring us to it.

The free will will not arrive at it. In John chapter 1 it says,

Jesus came unto his own and his own received him not. Probably one of the saddest verses in the

Bible. Jesus came to the Jewish people. That was who it's referring to there, I believe. He came to his own people of the flesh.

His own nation. The ones who'd been given the scriptures. The ones who'd been given the law. The ones who'd been given the prophets.

The ones who'd been given time after time after time after time. Grace from God and all those things that Mike was reading about earlier.

All the times where God has in his mercy, been with his people and even in judgment.

But God there, he, Jesus comes to those people and his own people did what?

Received him not, right? Jesus came unto his own and his own received him not. But to as many as received him, who believed on his name, to them he gave the power to become children of God.

Who were born not of blood, meaning it is not hereditary.

I say this all the time, but I have to keep reminding you all, your children are not saved because you're saved.

Children, you are not, you don't go to heaven on mommy and daddy's faith. We are saved through grace alone, through faith alone.

And we pray as Mike does, we pray that God would bring you to saving knowledge of him early.

But no one walks in holding on to their parents' coattails. Not of the flesh.

I'm sorry, not of blood. Not of the will of the flesh. Meaning it is not something you willed to happen.

You weren't born again because you willed it. And not of the will of man. No one else can will it for you.

I know all of you have been in situations where you've shared the gospel with someone and they've rejected it. And you've wished that you had the power to reach into their heart and do spiritual surgery and do that work on their heart.

And you can't do that. You cannot do spiritual heart surgery.

Only the spirit of God gives life. And that's why it says who are born not of the flesh, not of the will of man, not of the, not of the will, not the will of man, not the will of flesh, not the will of man, but of God.

Born of God. That's what Jesus is referring to. It's the spirit who gives life.

The flesh does not do it. Now that does not mean, and I want to be very clear here, as I was speaking about Frank earlier,

Frank Turek and the situation with him, that doesn't mean we should not give intellectual answers to questions.

We should. We should seek to break down every barrier any person has that would keep them from following Christ.

We should seek down to break intellectual barriers. We should seek to break down any barriers that they have in understanding.

We should try to make the gospel as clear to them as they can be that way. And that's why we go out and share the gospel as clearly as we can.

We talk to them about the need for forgiveness, the fact that they've broken God's law, the fact that they stand in the courtroom of God, having fallen under his condemnation.

But now if they trust in the son, they trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, his sacrifice becomes the penalty that's paid for them.

And they receive the gift of his righteousness. And by that righteousness, they can stand before the judge, clothed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.

We want that message to be as clear as possible. And we want to be able to overcome any objections.

But at the end of the day, we cannot give life. We cannot give life.

We trust God. And this is why I will say this. You have never failed in evangelism except when you didn't evangelize.

You've never failed in evangelism except when you didn't. Because if you evangelize and someone believes, you say what?

Praise the Lord. And if you evangelize and someone doesn't believe, you don't automatically assume, well, they're a reprobate.

No, maybe you were one of the ones God is using. That one day, like I can look back in my life, having been saved at 19, and I look back years before, and years before, and I thought of the people who planted seeds in my life.

In fact, the day I knew I needed Christ and I needed someone to talk to was a man who had planted the seed of the gospel in my heart three years earlier at a karate tournament.

And he came to me, or I went to him, and I said, you shared Jesus three years ago, and I want you to tell me why you believe.

So don't ever feel like you have failed in evangelism, because it's not you who's changing their heart.

You are spreading the seed, and God brings the increase.

Paul understood that. He said, I planted, Apollos watered, but it was

God who gave the increase. So as I said, we've never failed except for when we don't, and we should always be willing to share the gospel.

So he says, it is the spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all.

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. Jesus says his words are spirit and life, which is to say that his words give life.

It is by believing those words that one has eternal life. You don't get saved. Understand this.

This is something I think people get confused about, because people will say, well, if you believe

God's the one who does the work, if you believe God's the one who changes the hearts, if you ultimately believe that election is something that happens prior to the foundation of the world, if you believe all those things, and we do here, then why evangelize?

Why go out and share the gospel? Because it is in the preaching of the gospel that the spirit works in bringing the person to the son.

I remember years ago, I've told this story before, where I was at our booth, we put the booth at the fair, at least we used to, we haven't done it in a couple years because we've been doing the parade, but we go and evangelize throughout the year at different times, and we're at a booth, and this guy comes up to me, and I'm sharing the gospel with this little girl, and he comes up and he says, why are you doing this?

And I said, well, I want to share Jesus with these people. And he says, yes, God's going to save them whether you do this or not.

And I said, now, hold on, let's talk for a minute. And we began to interact.

I found out that he was what was known as a hyper -Calvinist. Now, he wouldn't hold that term, but that's what

I'm called. I'm a Calvinist, but he's a hyper -Calvinist. Calvinist drinks too much coffee. No, which means he didn't believe that the preaching of the gospel was necessary.

He didn't believe the preaching of the gospel was necessary. That's not Calvinism. That's an ugly and twisted perversion of what

Calvinists believe. We believe that we preach the gospel and God does the work of conversion, but people are saved through the preaching of the gospel.

It's through the spirit. The spirits, his words are life, are spirit and life.

That's what we're doing. We're preaching the word of God and knowing that as that word is mixed with the spirit of God working through that and faith is brought and wrought by that spirit, that person comes to believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ. This is why some of the greatest evangelists in history have been

Calvinists. George Whitefield preached to more human beings than probably anyone else in his generation.

More people saw him than saw President Abraham Lincoln. Saw him in person.

More people saw him in person because he would go and he would draw massive crowds of people to preach the gospel.

There were atheists who would go and listen to him. One very famous atheist was quoted as saying, I'm going to hear

Whitefield preach. And they said, why are you going? You don't believe it. He said, no, but he does. He believes it.

That's worth going to listen to. He believes it. And Whitefield is well known for believing in the doctrines of grace, but he was a evangelist.

John Newton wrote Amazing Grace and he was a Calvinist. Amazing grace.

How sweet the sound that saved what? Good old boy? No, a wretch like me.

Understand there are things we believe that are hard to believe. But one thing we don't believe is that you get saved apart from preaching the gospel.

No, no, no, no, no. I've spoken to you. These words and these words are spirit and life.

Christ has proclaimed the message and they have rejected it. And that will often happen at the preaching of the word.

But when the spirit gets a hold of someone, well, you know this, because if you're saved, the spirit got a hold of you one day.

And the spirit drew you. And this leads to verse 64, where he says these sad, sad words.

But there are some of you who do not believe. Jesus Christ is preaching.

He is proclaiming himself as Messiah. He's proclaiming himself as the bread of life. He who eats of me, who drinks of me will have eternal life.

I am the living bread. I'm the bread that came down from heaven. I'm better than the manna, the manna that your fathers ate.

They ate and died. But if you eat of this bread, you will live forever. And the people stood there in unbelief, in unbelief.

But notice verse 64. It actually tells us something about Jesus in this passage.

It speaks again, I think, to his divinity, because it says this.

For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.

Now, I wrote this out. I want to actually read this to you. Because when it talks about Christ knowing from the beginning, we talk about something called exhaustive divine foreknowledge.

Exhaustive divine foreknowledge is the fact that God knows everything that will ever happen.

But then we have to step back and ask this question. How is it that God knows everything that will ever happen?

There are different ways people come to the conclusion about the answer to that question. How does God know what's going to happen?

Some people believe that God sees it and through seeing it, we call this the foresight or prescient view.

God simply sees it and that's how he knows. But then there is the other view, which we would say is the view of God's decree.

That God has decreed all that will come to pass. And so let me read what I wrote.

The Bible indicates that God knows everything that will happen or can happen. By the way, the Bible also says God knows everything that can happen.

Like I don't want to get into the idea of middle knowledge and all that stuff. That's a whole other subject. But the question of counterfactuals, that's a big thing with William Lane Craig and some of the more philosophical apologists get into those questions.

But the Bible does indicate like when Jesus says to the town, he says, if what had been preached here had been preached there, they would have repented, right?

Like God, like he says that. Like I know what would have happened, but this is different, right? So he said the

Bible indicates that God knows everything that will happen or can happen. God is not able to know all things that are occurring at this moment.

I'm sorry, God is not only able to know all things that are occurring at this moment, but he's also able to know all things that will occur in the future.

How is it that God knows everything? The answer is that he establishes it by his divine decree.

That is not to say that he is moving men around like puppets, but he is actively working out what he is doing and what he is allowing.

In reformed theology, we believe God's foreknowledge is much more than mere foresight. God is active in working out his will and he ensures nothing can thwart his will.

As Dr. R .C. Sproul has said, if there is one single molecule in the universe that is running around loose, totally free of God's sovereignty, then we have no guarantee that a single promise of God will ever be fulfilled.

If there is anything outside of God's sovereign control, then we have no guarantee that any of his promises will be fulfilled.

Now, what are we not saying? We are not saying that God is causing men to sin and that is often something that is applied to us.

But we are saying this, nothing happens outside of God's decree.

God's decree, of course, is both active in his work and allowing in his work.

And we would say certainly God allows men to sin, but he always has purpose.

We see this in the story with Joseph and his brothers who mistreated, mistweeted, mistreated their brother, sold him into slavery.

And years later when he's facing them, Genesis chapter 50 verse 20, he says, what you meant for evil, meaning you did it, you wanted to do it, it was your desire to do it,

God didn't twist your arm. But what you meant for evil, God meant for good to save this day many people alive.

If that action would have thwarted God's plan, it would have never happened. That's a key point.

We see this, there's a passage and I can't take you there address and verse right now, but I'll find it if anybody wants me to find it for him.

There's a passage in the Old Testament where it says that the men of Israel had to go away to worship during the year at a certain point.

And when they went away, it says, while you are away, your enemies will not covet your land.

What are you saying, God? That you can keep... What have people been doing with the land of Israel for 5 ,000 years?

Coveting that land. But when you are away during this time of the season of the year, your enemies will not cover your land.

Why? Because God is sovereign even over the hearts of wicked men. When Abimelech brought

Sarai into his house and wanted to defile her, God came to him and said, do not touch her.

She is the wife of Abram. And what did Sarai... Or what did Abimelech do?

He went to Abram and said, what are you doing? You want to get me killed? You don't think

Abimelech wanted to bed Sarah? Certainly he did. But God protected it.

God was not going to allow his plan to be thwarted. This is the difference between a view of divine sovereignty that says

God is actually in control and a view that would look at things that happen and say, God didn't have anything to do with that.

God wasn't in control of that. God was out of control when that happened. I remember when

Katrina hit, Hurricane Katrina. And it was like preachers were breaking their legs to try to get to the news people to let them know

God wasn't in control of this. This was just nature. If God's not in control of a hurricane, what in the world is he in control of?

If God's not sovereign over the wind, then what are you worshiping?

This is the point. Jesus looks at him and he says, you don't believe.

You don't believe. There are some of you who don't believe and I know who they are because God knows all things.

And Jesus in this knew who would not believe. And he knew one other thing. He knew who would betray him.

Now I'm going to ask that we suspend for a moment our desire to go into the Judas part because I'm going to do that next week.

But when it says, and he knew who would betray him, that's going to take us into verses 66 through the end of the chapter because that's when

Jesus actually says, one of you is a devil. But let's end with verse 65 because this ties everything up today.

He said, and this is why I told you. When did he tell him? Back at verse 44. This is why

I told you no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by my father.

The word granted there doesn't just mean allowed. It doesn't mean permitted.

It means enabled. God must give us the ability to come.

So here's the blessing that you can say today. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if God has saved you and you trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ, you can look to your neighbor and say salvation is of the Lord, not of me.

Because it was certainly not by the will of the flesh. It was because the flesh profited nothing.

And my spirit was dead in trespasses and sins, but God was the one who made it alive.

And by grace, I have been saved. And for those of you who have not yet believed, our prayer for you is that God would open your heart, would take out your heart of stone, give you the heart of flesh that you would believe.

And I would say to you today, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. How? By the spirit.

I pray that God would give you that desire to trust in him. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the opportunity to hear it again.

We know that this message is not hard to believe. It's impossible to believe apart from your spirit.

For the spirit gives life and the flesh is no help at all. Lord, use this to encourage your people.

And Lord, for those who are not yet your people, who have not yet come to a saving knowledge of Christ, I pray by your spirit that these words to them would be spirit and life.

And Lord, that they would change their heart by your spirit, the only one who can.

In Jesus name. Amen. Let us prepare for the communion.