John 6:44 (The Drawing Of God)

The Shepherd's Church

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When you think about the news on TV, we can only take so much of it before it starts to make us a little bit crazy.

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You think about all of the negativity, and all of the frustration, and all of the pain, and all of the spin, and fakeness of it all, you can only take so much before it just makes us mad.

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You think about your favorite meal even, that's something that's good. If you eat it once every now and then, it's wonderful, makes you hungry for it again.

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But if you eat it every single day, every single meal all the time, eventually you'll hate that meal. I've gotten that way with Domino's, it's definitely not my favorite.

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But we've just eaten it too much. It is repulsive to me at this point. I need a break.

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The only thing that if we repeat it over, and over, and over, and over again, that never loses the sweetness of the gospel.

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That's the only thing. Today, I'm not probably going to be sharing a whole lot that's new. I'm going to be reminding you of things that you already know.

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But Jesus said that these things are a wellspring of life that will constantly flow inside of us.

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So when your heart, if you're a Christian, when you're hearing these truths, your heart is going to leap with joy.

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Because it's the only thing that we can say over, and over, and over again, that never loses its luster and its beauty.

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So today, we're going to be looking at that. What is salvation? What is the gospel? Now, John tells us the purpose of his gospel in chapter 20, verse 31.

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He says, These things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him, you may have life in His name. John is not saying that all you have to do is believe in Jesus.

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We know that's true. But he's not saying that it's just a Jesus belief, simple belief sort of salvation.

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He's given us specific details that we're supposed to believe. He's saying these things have been written. Verse 1 of chapter 1 has been written so that you will believe the gospel.

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Chapter 2 was written so that you will believe in Jesus. Chapter 3, these things are necessary details that John is including so that we will have the right belief in Jesus.

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He's picking certain stories and giving you an essential body of data so that your faith will be legitimately placed in Jesus.

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If all John needed to say to us was, believe in Jesus and you will be saved, he wasted a lot of ink on his gospel.

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19 ,000 words is how big John's gospel is when he could have just said nine.

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If you believe in Jesus, then you will be saved. That's combined. It worked out earlier.

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The gospel could have been a single line. The New Testament could have been no more than a paragraph. And that is important to understand, especially in the time period that this was written because books were expensive to make.

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I've said this before, I think, but the book of Romans would have cost about $10 ,000 modern day money to produce.

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John's gospel would have been more because his gospel is larger than Romans. Books were expensive to make.

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The materials were in low supply. Most people who were reading it or who were attempting to read it were illiterate.

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Why would John go to such lengths to write this beautiful theological treatise where every word is like a gemstone tied together in this beautiful necklace of grace?

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Why would he do that if all he needed to do was say, just believe in Jesus and then you will be saved? Because John thought that all of it was necessary so that you would know which

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Jesus that you're supposed to believe in. So you would know who he is and his character. John's pastoral point is

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I want you to believe in the right Jesus. I want you to know who Jesus truly is.

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I'm gonna tell you a story to kind of drive this point home. It's a fictional story.

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I made it up, but I think it actually proves the point well. Now we know not all of us in this room are women, but let's just imagine for a second that you are.

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You're a young woman and in your travels you run into a wise, sagely old man who is very intelligent, claims to speak for God.

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He's known to give good advice. So you start talking to him and he says, you know what, I've got an idea for you. If you wanna live a happy life, then all you have to do is marry a man named

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John. That's all you have to do. And you say, but wait a minute,

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I need to know his last name. I need to know if he has a job. I need to know if he's a bum.

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I need to know if he's got good character. I need to know a lot of things about him. And he's like, no, no, no, no, don't worry. All you have to do is put your trust in John.

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All you have to do is raise your hand and accept John into your heart. All you have to do is make him your number one and you will have a happy and fulfilled life.

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So you go against reason, you go against logic and you meet a

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John that same week. And John is incredible. He dotes all over you.

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He treats you wonderfully. And then you say, you know, have you ever thought about marriage?

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And John says, I was actually just thinking that right now. Would you marry me? And you say, yes, I'd love to.

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And everything's going great for the first five or so minutes. But then very shortly after that, it starts with little side comments.

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It starts with belittling and mocking. Couple weeks later, you're feeling emotionally abused.

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Maybe a couple months later, you're feeling like things are getting worse. Maybe it turns physically violent.

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Maybe John is beating you after six months, cheating on you after a year. After two years, he's threatening to kill you.

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You finally escape and you run to that old man and you say, you fool. Why did you tell me to do that?

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And then he has the audacity to look at you and says, I guess you just picked the wrong John. This is a fictional story, but this is what preachers are doing all across this country.

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They're standing up and they're giving you a simple Jesus message, not telling you that he cares about holiness, not telling you that he cares about obedience, not telling you that he flips tables over in the temple because he cares about purity.

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They've given us the wrong Jesus. And is it any wonder why people leave the church and abandon faith and do all of that because they believed and put their faith in an easy

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Jesus, in a political Jesus, in a signs and wonder Jesus. We've been given the wrong

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Jesus. That kind of preacher is epidemic in this country.

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And that kind of preacher deserves all of the criticism that we could give them. But thankfully, we don't have a

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Bible that's unclear about who the real Jesus is. And we're not in a gospel that's unclear on who the real

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Jesus is. John gave us chapters and verses and grammar and situations and parables and examples so that you and I would not be confused and so that our faith would be in the right

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Jesus. You see, for John, he's not saying all you have to do is believe.

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He's saying, believe in the Jesus I'm telling you about. Believe in the Jesus I'm showing you. Heaven and hell, for John, are in the balance of doctrine.

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We have this culture in society that says, you don't need theology. All you need is to believe in Jesus.

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You know, theology means thoughts about God. Everyone has a theology. Either your theology will be biblical or it won't, but everyone has a theology.

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We need to know why we believe and who we believe and where to place our hope. And John is telling us that.

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Now, we affirm that we're saved by Christ alone. It just better be the right Christ. Who is this

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Jesus? John tells us. How do we believe in this Jesus? John tells us.

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What's salvation like? Why is salvation like? Where does salvation go? How does it get applied to us? John tells us all of that.

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What's the purpose for our salvation? John tells us all of that. And he also, very helpfully, gives us counterfeit examples so that we will understand what it's not like.

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Think about John chapter two. People come, or Jesus comes to Jerusalem where they worship a building more than they worship

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Jesus. They had a building -centric savior. This actually affects the church today. I've been in churches where if you move a chair, then you're going to hell.

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It's because they worship their building more than they worship Jesus. Again in John two, you've got crowds who are fawning over him, loving him, wanting to follow him, but they're not wanting to follow him because of who he is.

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They're wanting to follow him because of the miracles and the stuff that he can do for them. They're treating him like a parlor trick

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Jesus and a vending machine Jesus. And we covered a couple of weeks ago how that is epidemic in the church today as well.

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John three, you see a religious gospel. You see Nicodemus looking for Jesus to be a highfalutin,

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Pharisaic, religious, scholarly, Jewish, Pharisaic savior.

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And yet because Jesus didn't fit into his mold in that moment, he rejected Jesus. Now, praise

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God, someone who is a legalist can be saved. That's my story. Nicodemus, at the end of Jesus's life, does bow the knee to Christ.

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In John three, he doesn't. The reason he doesn't is because he thought Jesus should be X. Jesus was not that, so we had the wrong

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Jesus. John five, we see a man who has a self -help Jesus in mind.

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He's sitting there at the pool for 38 years and he wants to be like all of his friends who run to the temple. Jesus heals him.

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He doesn't even say thank you. He runs to the temple and eventually turns Jesus into the Pharisees because he didn't want

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Jesus. He just wanted his stuff. He just wanted his miracle and his healing. The Pharisees had a legalistic faith because Jesus didn't share their view of the

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Sabbath. He must not be from God when their view of the Sabbath was actually not from God.

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They said that in order to be saved, you needed to have Messiah plus religion, Messiah plus our tradition,

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Messiah plus our rules, Messiah plus our authority. They had the wrong Christ. If they knew who

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Jesus was, they wouldn't be asking him to submit to their authority. They'd be bowing down on their faces, submitting to him.

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All throughout the gospel, we see false examples of what it means to believe in Jesus.

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Today, we're gonna see something true. John 6, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful passages.

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John 6, 44. It's one of the most beautiful passages in all of the Bible. I return to it time and time and time again to demonstrate to people what salvation is.

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I think it's one of the clearest passages in the Bible. I think it's one of the most helpful passages in the Bible when it comes to what is salvation.

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That's what we're gonna be talking about today. What is salvation? Today, we're gonna learn that it's a past event that happened.

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Today, we're gonna learn that it's a present reality that is happening. And we're also gonna learn that it's a future promise that will happen.

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It will happen for everyone who is in Christ. So if you will, turn with me to John 6, 44, as we read this beautiful passage together.

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It says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

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Father, you have been exceedingly gracious to us to give us such clear words.

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It's almost impossible to argue with the clarity of it. Lord, I pray that today would be an exploration into the goodness of your gospel.

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Lord, I pray today that our hearts would leap with the goodness of your gospel. Lord, I pray that that good news would be ever new again this morning, and it would cause us to sing with joy.

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Lord, I pray that we would understand it. Lord, I pray that we would find our identity in it.

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And Lord, I pray that we would be encouraged to leave this place today and herald it.

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In Christ's name, amen. Jesus begins the story of salvation where we have to begin.

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No one. No one comes to me. That means that no one in their own sin and their own power or in their own ability, their own strength can come to Jesus.

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No one can come to him. God made a human where he set up rules and he set up structures and he set up consequences, and they rebelled and they inherited the consequences.

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And the consequences of their sin caused an infection to be unleashed upon their soul.

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And it was a cancer that wreaked havoc with their ability to know and seek after God. It paralyzed their soul in a sort of immutable and incurable inability.

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Human beings on their own cannot seek God. We cannot know God. We cannot come to God.

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We can't. That infection was called sin, and it was so damaging to the soul of Adam and Eve that they not only lost their desire to seek after God, they lost their ability.

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They stopped looking for him altogether. Romans 1 says that they turned from the creator, worshiping him and turned to the creature and started worshiping it instead of God because their sinful hearts were darkened.

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Sin is so powerful in our life that we cannot seek God unless something else comes in and helps us on our own, we are doomed.

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Paul says this in Romans 3. There is no one righteous, not even one.

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How many? No one. There's no one who understands. There's no one who seeks

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God. All have turned away. That word all is a pretty technical

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Greek term. It means everyone. That was a joke. All of them have turned away.

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They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one.

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Their throats are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit.

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The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

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Ruin and misery mark their ways and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

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Do you see why Jesus says no one can come to me? Not even.

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We're not righteous. We have no ability on our own to know God. We have no understanding to comprehend him and no spirituality.

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Paul says that we are worthless in our sin. Our throats foment death in our sin.

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Our lips and our mouths are cursed in our sin. We are the kind of people whose feet are swift to murder in our sin.

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And in case we wanna challenge that fact and say I've never murdered anyone, Jesus clarifies that and says, if you've ever been angry with your brother, then you're guilty of murder.

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If you ever looked lustfully at another person, you're guilty of adultery. Our feet most certainly have done those things and have led us into those things.

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The Bible calls sin a crushing burden that we cannot be released from. It calls it a penetrating stain that we cannot be cleansed from.

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It calls it an ever -growing debt that we cannot be loosed from. It calls it a roaring lion that we cannot be spared from.

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It calls it an infectious disease that we cannot be healed from. A wicked taskmaster that we can't be unchained from and a tyrant king that we cannot be free of.

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Jesus says no one seeks after God, no one.

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Now, we're not quoting all of those verses. We're alluding to them. They're in the scriptures and I encourage you to study all the verses in the

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Bible on sin. It will not produce confidence in your heart that you can do it on your own. The Bible describes sin as an external wicked power that has come into us and thoroughly and totally corrupted us so that we cannot seek

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God. Another layer to this is the word that Jesus uses in this passage, dunamis.

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It's an adverb in this passage. It's supporting the verb come. It's telling us what kind of coming we can do.

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And the word dunamis in this passage means ability. You have no ability to come.

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John's not only saying that you won't come, he's saying you can't come to God. So that means a decision, a prayer, a hand raised, a card filled out, and a kumbaya sung around a campfire are not enough.

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It's not. Because you can do all those in your own power and strength. You can go to a church and you can have an experience in your own power and strength because I can go to a concert and have an experience in my own power and strength.

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I can go to a symphony orchestra and experience the heights of the arts and I can weep with tears and it's not enough.

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Salvation must come from something outside of us. Salvation must come from something bigger than us, superior to us, if it's going to be accomplished in us.

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What Jesus is telling us is not just something, he's telling us about someone. Person who's the

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God man. He's powerful enough to save us because he's God, but he's positionally in the right place to save us because he came as a man.

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And we know that that man is Jesus. He says, no one can come to me.

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So John is making two claims here in this short little sentence. No one can means we have human inability.

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To Jesus means that he is our only hope. Now there's the problem. How can we come to Jesus who is our only hope if we have no power to come to Jesus?

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Do you see the problem? We can't come, but we must come. How does that work?

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I'll tell you that God has a plan. We weren't strong enough. So we needed a strong man to come and give us strength.

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We were worthless in our sin. So we needed Jesus to come and give us value. Our throats were like open graves and we needed a man who would leave the tomb empty so that you and I could be healed.

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The curse was on our lips. Think about the imagery and the beauty of that. The curse was on our lips.

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So Jesus came and drank a cup of God's wrath so that the curse would be on his lips.

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He came and took our burdens. He says, my burden is easy. My yoke is light. Do you know why

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Jesus's burden is easy and his yoke is light? Because the burden that you and I deserve that should have crushed us crushed him.

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His burden for us is easy if we're a Christian because our burden killed him. Sin left us unclean so Jesus came to purify us.

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Sin left us stained so he came to wash us white as snow. We were accosted by a roaring lion.

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So guess what? Jesus is the lion of Judah. And he came to put us free and to heal us and to rip us out of our cages.

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Jesus provided the antidote for the infection. I can go on and on. We were poor and we've been made rich. We were orphans and we've been adopted.

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We were strangers. Jesus called us friend. We were dead. He made us alive. We were blind but now we see. We were lost but now we're found.

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We had hearts of stone. Now we have hearts of flesh. Our behavior in Ezekiel is called the poison fruit of Sodom.

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And now in Jesus Christ, we produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It's an external power that has come into us that's not of us.

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It's not our power. We saw what our power produces. It produces death.

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But when an external power comes in, that is the only cure. That's why Jesus can say, no one can come to me unless, unless no one can come to the only cure unless God the

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Father draws them. Unless God the

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Father pulls you. Unless God the Father drags you. This word, it's fun to say, elkuo.

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You can say it. I know you want to. Elkuo. It's words used six times in the

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Bible. Five times in the book of John. One time in the book of Acts.

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And it means to draw or to drag. But that's not the whole story of this word. This word has some beautiful complexity to it that I want to show you.

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Because I want you to see what Jesus is doing in your salvation. I want you to see what he's actually accomplishing in us who were dead in our sins.

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So let's look at the first example, John 18. Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's slave and cut off his ear.

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Like, why are you citing that verse? Because Peter had a sword that could not draw itself.

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And that sword was made out of inanimate metal. It didn't have a soul. It didn't have thoughts.

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It didn't have opinions. It was dead and lifeless in his sheath. And Peter does not look at his sword and woo it towards himself.

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Peter does not look at his sword and magnetically draw it towards himself. Peter grabs the sword and rips it out of its sheath and he lifts it up in the air and then it's useful for his purpose.

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Now, his purpose was sin. He cut off someone's ear. God's purpose in your life is not sin.

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Think about the same word draw is used for you. You were that dead and lifeless sword stuck in the sheaths of sin and had it not been for God reaching down, grabbing you, yanking you, pulling you, lifting you, raising you up for his purposes, you and I would still be dead.

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But in the hand of God, we are a tool for the master's purpose. We did nothing in this analogy.

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God did everything. That's what I'm talking about when the Bible talks about salvation. We were grabbed and pulled.

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We didn't come to Jesus. He grabbed us. My favorite example is

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Acts 16, 19. This is so clear. Same word. I'm gonna read actually 16 through 19.

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It happened when we were going, oh, let me give you a little context here. Paul and Silas are preaching the gospel.

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A demon -possessed woman who told the future, get saved. Her slave masters get angry.

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And this is what happens. It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl having a spirit of divination met us who was bringing her master as much profit by fortune telling.

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Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out saying, these men are bond servants of the

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Most High who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation. And she continued doing this for many days.

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But Paul was greatly annoyed. I love the honesty there. And I love Paul's patience.

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I wouldn't have made it a couple of days. And turned and said to the spirit,

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I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very moment.

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But when her masters saw that their hope of the prophet was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and they dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.

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It doesn't say that they grabbed the pipe like Pied Piper and wooed them out of the city, like blind mice.

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It doesn't say that they convinced them to walk alongside of them out of the city. It says that they laid their hands on them and violently dragged them out of the city.

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Probably kicking and screaming. Now, what I love about this is that this shows us what this word means.

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When Jesus says that no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them. He's saying, no one can come to me unless the

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Father drags them. Kicking and screaming out of our sin.

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Because in our sin, we would never run to Jesus. In our sin, we would never accept

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Him. Jesus doesn't come to us and negotiate the terms of our salvation. We say, you know what?

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That sounds good. I think I'll take it. Jesus grabs us and He drags us and He pulls us and He brings us to the foot of the cross because that is where we will see

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Him. Think about it like this.

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You're in a coma. Out in the middle of a snowstorm. Somebody gets you.

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They grab you. They drag you to their truck. They throw you in the bed of it.

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They take you to the hospital. They hook you up to the IVs and the medicine. And when you're there and you open your eyes, you see who saved you.

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That's kind of what salvation is like. You were more than comatose, you were dead. Christ came.

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He dragged you. And He pulled you. And He placed you in front of the gospel so that when your ears heard it, you would believe.

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Behind every single salvation in this room is evidence of the dragging of God. Behind every one of us.

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Maybe God got you to go to church. Maybe somebody tricked you with a Hot Pocket and said, let's go, I'm gonna get you lunch. Maybe your friend wouldn't shut up about Jesus until finally the truth of it awakened you.

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I remember I was awakened to the gospel at a Red Robin. That's exactly where it happened.

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I'm not gonna lie about that. I was so blown away by grace that I couldn't even finish my burger.

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My friend was telling me about it and I said, but what must I do to be saved? And he was like, nothing, you can't do anything.

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Maybe God won't even save you. And I was like, but I need some power in this.

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I need some control in this. I need to figure it out. I mean, what's the formula? And he said, nothing, you really are that hopeless and pointless.

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And I was like, but this isn't like any other message I've ever heard. And he was like, look, it's by the

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Lord's grace alone. And I started asking him, what is grace? And he started telling me what is grace. And I said, so you're telling me there's nothing that I can do to earn it?

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And he goes, no, that's not what grace is. And when he said that sentence, all of a sudden it clicked and it dawned on me,

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I can't do anything to manipulate God. I can't do anything to earn my own salvation. I can't do anything to impress him.

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I'm that low and he is that good. And if it were not for his grace, picking me up and dragging me, kicking and screaming to the foot of the cross,

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I would not come. I could be a religious person my whole life and not be saved.

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I can be a person who claims the name of Jesus my whole life and not be saved. It's not about our seeking. It's about his dragging and his pulling.

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And if he has not dragged and pulled you, you're not in. And the location of the dragging is important.

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He does not drag us to religion. If someone claims to know Jesus and they're finding their justification in their performance and their ability,

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God did not drag them there. He doesn't drag them to false gospels.

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He doesn't drag them to smugness and pride and religiosity. He drags them to Christ. He drags them to the one that he sent.

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Do you see how God's involved in every single aspect of our salvation? He draws us to the one he sent.

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He is involved in everything. We don't do anything. Now, what

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I want us to do just for a moment is I want us to fill in the gaps a little bit because John 6 44 tells us that it was

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God who dragged us. But I want us to understand what that means a little bit more fully.

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I want us when we walk out of here today to understand what God has done, both past, present, and future in your life because what

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I want more than anything is when you think about the gospel, I want you to have joy. I want you to have hope.

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I want you to have confidence. I want you to not rest in you. I want you to rest in God. And I want it to inform even the way that you share the gospel.

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So let's for a moment take a step away from John 6 and let's look at what does the dragging of God look like for the person who's saved.

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First, it begins in eternity. It doesn't begin when you come to know

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Jesus. It began before the world was even created. Look at what Paul says in Ephesians.

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He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. He was dragging us to Jesus before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us.

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That means he predetermined our direction to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.

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He is saying that before time and space began, he chose to drag us to Jesus.

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And while we don't know that, we don't figure that out until God's plan intersects with our life. That is what he's done.

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He decided for us long before we decided for him. His plan predates and outdates you, which means that it's bigger than you and it's better than you.

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We also know that in time and space, God paid for his choice. When I choose to buy a car, eventually

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I'm gonna get the bill. When God chose to purchase you and I, he paid for that on the cross.

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That was Jesus coming to settle the account, to pay for the choice that God made.

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This is what Galatians 4, 3 -5 says. So we too, when we were children, were held in bondage under the elementary principles of the world.

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But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons and daughters.

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Do you see what's happening here? The eternal plan of God for Paul's life intersected with Paul's time and space circumstances and he realized that he was redeemed, although God had redeemed him already before the foundation of the world.

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It's unbelievable when you think about it. He's saying that God predestined those who are saved to be dragged to Jesus.

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That happened in eternity. It was paid for at Calvary and I think that's glorious.

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Now, maybe you're asking yourself, how do we come to know

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Jesus in time and space? Ephesians is clear. I don't think we can argue with it. Galatians is clear.

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I don't think we can argue with it. So how then in time and space do we come to know Jesus? What's through the preaching of the gospel? This is what

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Paul says in Romans 10, 14. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed and how will they believe in him whom they have not heard and how will they hear without a preacher?

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Paul's not denying the eternal calling of God. He's the one who wrote about it. Paul knows that God called

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Christians before the foundation of the world. He's not denying that. He's saying in time and space. How you come to Jesus is through God's ordained means and God's ordained means is preaching the gospel.

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That's saying that God, if you're a Christian in this room, God predestined you, he drug you and he put you in front of the gospel and the gospel awakened you.

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That's what he's saying. Now you might ask yourself, why doesn't everyone wake up to the gospel? Well, that's like saying, why doesn't my car keys work on every car?

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They just don't. I can go outside and I can push the button and no car but mine will chirp with life because the key was made and fitted for a specific hole.

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The gospel was made, created and fitted for specific souls. We can go to Disney World, which is awful.

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We're in cancel culture. I'm gonna cancel Disney. I don't know if you've ever seen their parking lot.

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It's like a million spaces big and you go outside and you push your car alarm button.

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Thank God for those keyless entry things. You go outside and you press it and you're straining against the atmosphere to try to hear your car chirp to life.

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The same is true for us. The gospel call at some point in your life went out and you responded and maybe the person beside you didn't respond but you responded because you were made for that gospel.

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That gospel was made to wake you up just like the key fob was made to wake up the car and when we preach the gospel over the lot of sinful men and women, we don't get discouraged and we don't get frustrated when everyone doesn't wake up to the gospel.

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We celebrate the fact that God made that gospel to wake up his people and his people will wake up when the gospel is preached and we preach that gospel like dying people over dying people, knowing that God can be trusted with the results.

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We ask ourselves questions like, well, if everyone's not saved, how is that fair? We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. If you're saved, how is that fair?

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You know you and I know me. That's not fair. Justice would demand that you and I go to hell.

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Grace gives us salvation. We have nothing in us to impress

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God with. The fact that anyone is saved is a miracle of God's grace.

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Those who are called by the gospel are regenerated by the gospel. Look at John 5, 24.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death to life.

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He's not saying that everyone who physically with their ears hears the preaching of the gospel will come to faith.

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He's saying that everyone who hears and obeys and turns from their sin and loves the

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Savior and hates worldliness but loves Jesus, those people are the people who have heard the gospel.

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It's come into them and it's awakened them and it's changed them. It's transferred them out of death to life. So if we're tracking here, in eternity past, you were chosen by God.

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On Calvary, you were paid for by God. In space and time, the gospel of God intersected with your life and it made you brand new.

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It transferred you out of darkness and into life, out of the kingdom of sin and to the kingdom of heaven.

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See the order of salvation and how things are playing out both past and present? We're not just regenerated.

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We're not just made new, we're justified. It's a theological term that I think every Christian should know.

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Justification means that we were not only converted and that we were not only regenerated, but that God took away our sin and that he didn't just take away our sin, he gave us

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Jesus's righteousness. We just passed maybe,

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I think, a $1 .9 trillion COVID relief package. Let's just say that that was your debt to pay and you were not

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Jeff Bezos, you're incapable of paying that debt.

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You could work 10 ,000 lifetimes and you'd probably never pay off that debt. Justification means that Jesus Christ has taken your entire debt upon himself and not just taken your debt, he's deposited inside of you the treasures of heaven.

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He's taken what you deserve to pay and he's given you what you never could have discerned to hold.

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Paul describes this in Romans 5, 6 through 10, where he's talking about Jesus exchanging our curse for his blessing.

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He says, you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

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Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person and for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us. And since we've now been justified by his blood, meaning we've been cleansed from our unrighteousness, given

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Jesus's righteousness, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? Which means that we can have assurance and we can have hope because as sinful and as ugly as we are, we know that Christ's righteousness is so pure and so beautiful that it has to cleanse us.

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And when God looks at us, he sees Jesus. He says, for while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son.

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How much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through this life?

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You can have confidence in your salvation because you're a terrible sinner and so am I, but Jesus is so much better and so much more powerful that he can cleanse even us.

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It would be like trying to send a nuclear bomb to the sun. Nuclear bombs are powerful, but the sun would liquidate it.

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The sun has liquidated your sin. No matter what sins you've hurled at God, that's how powerful he is.

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Now, I'm gonna make a side point really quickly here that we can be patient as Christians with our family members and our bosses and our coworkers and our friends and the people that we ride on the bus to work beside us.

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We can be patient with them because God's been patient with us. There's maybe someone in this room right now who's not saved, and by saved,

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I mean you haven't been grabbed by God and drugged to Christ. There may be someone here who has the calling of God on their life for salvation, but they haven't woken up in time and space.

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That's okay. I would just tell you to be encouraged. Don't stop sharing the gospel.

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When you go home with your family member who doesn't know Christ or with your friend who doesn't know Christ, share it with them.

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Share it with them until they're ready to kick you out of the house. Do it with kindness and love and gentleness, but share it because we're not

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God. We don't know who God has determined to save, and we don't know who's gonna wake up in time and space.

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It might be today, it might be tomorrow, it might be on their deathbed, but God will save those who are his.

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It is a guaranteed promise. He says it in John 6, I will raise them up. It is guaranteed.

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But what I love about the passage is that God uses us to preach the gospel so that when they come to faith, it's through the preaching of the gospel.

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What a privilege it might be that God would use you in someone's life to share that glorious gospel that wakes them up.

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They were chosen before the foundation of the world, but you get to be there when they finally wake up like the matrix, the plug gets unpulled, and you're like, here it is, here's the reality.

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Here's the world. We don't give up because we don't know who

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God has chosen. So we share the gospel faithfully. There's this tradition or there's this opinion that says that if you believe in God's sovereignty over salvation, then you don't have to share the gospel because God's in control.

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Why does he need to use you? Well, first, he commanded us. Second, he gave us that privilege.

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It is a privilege that God would bring us into his kingdom at all, and it's a privilege that he would use us.

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You think about a toddler who comes into the kitchen to help their mom make cookies and how they do nothing but make mistakes.

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They spill the flour, they break the sugar bowl, they do everything wrong, and yet the mother is pleased in her grace.

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She's pleased because the child just wants to help. That's us. God has pulled us and dragged us and brought us to the cross.

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He's brought us to the gospel. He's woken us up, and he plans to use us in the lives of those around us.

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Not everyone will come to know Jesus, but those who do are because, not because you were good at sharing the gospel.

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It's because his gospel was good at waking up sinners. So I just want to remind us of that.

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Now let's get back to John 6. We're gonna look at the final element of what salvation is.

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He says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up on the last day.

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Jesus is saying that I will raise them up. I will do this. I'm gonna take ownership of them. Look at what it's saying.

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In eternity past, God claimed you. He drug you. Jesus claimed you. You are in Jesus' hand, and he will raise you up.

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That means that you cannot be lost. The passage does not say, and I want to hit this forcefully right now because there's so many who have such lack of confidence in their salvation.

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I want to kill that right now and show you what Jesus has done. It says, John does not say, no one can come to me unless the

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Father who sent me draws them and if they keep walking with me, then I'm gonna raise them up. He says, no, I will raise them up because I'm the one who did the work.

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What Jesus is saying is that if you're in my hand, you cannot get out of it.

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Now we see all throughout the world, and we see in Christianity today that people say, I used to be a believer and then

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I left Jesus. No, if you're in Jesus' hand, you cannot be lost. But there's a lot of people who are standing on his fingers.

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There's a lot of people who are standing on his knuckles. And when the first shift in life happens, and when the first problem in life happens, or when the world tells you that God doesn't exist because of evolution or because of whatever else, they fall because they were never in.

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If you're in Jesus' hand, you cannot be lost. Verse 39 in John 6, we just covered this a couple weeks ago, says this, it says, this is the will of Him who sent me that all that He has given to me,

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I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. That means if you were given to Jesus, by God, you cannot be lost.

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You, my friend, are not that powerful. Jesus said, I have the same authority as the

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Father. So the same Father who created the universe created the speck of dust known as you, and you're not powerful enough to extricate yourself from His grasp.

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John 10, 26, we've got this verse, one of them plastered on the wall.

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But if you do not believe, it's because you're not my sheep. If you don't believe, it's because you're not my sheep.

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But my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life.

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And they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the

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Father's hand, and I and the Father are one. If you're saved, you are secure.

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Don't wake up tomorrow morning and say, gosh, because I sinned last night, or because I did this last night, or because I did that last night, that I'm somehow now disqualified from the kingdom of God.

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If it's God who did it to you, then you can't undo it. In the military, there's an example of this, kind of.

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There's some schools in the army that it's almost impossible to fail. It really is, you'd have to work very hard to fail.

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And the reason is because they've invested so much in you. They paid a lot of money to send me through basic training in 2001.

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It's really hard not to finish if you have a pulse. Seriously.

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They will grab you, and they will drag you, and they will pull you to the finish line, because they're not willing to waste the resources that they invested in you.

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How much more the Father, who chose you before eternity, who bought and paid for you on Calvary, why would

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He waste His precious Son's blood if He were gonna let you be lost? He's invested more in you than you could ever possibly imagine.

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He's not gonna lose you. The same God who drug you to the gospel, the same

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God who brought someone in your life to share the gospel, the same God who regenerated you, and who justified you, and who now is sanctifying you by the power of the

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Holy Spirit, why would God send His Spirit to take up residence in a home that wasn't gonna be His?

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He wouldn't. Paul gives us even more clarity. Let's end with these verses.

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Some of the best verses in the Bible. There's like 66 books of good verses.

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Did you know that? Here's a couple of them. Romans 8, one.

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Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.

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The argument continues down in verse 31. What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, then who can possibly be against us?

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He did not spare His own Son, but He delivered Him over for us all. How will He not also freely give us all things?

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Who will bring a charge against God's elect? For God is the one who justifies. And who is the one who condemns?

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Christ Jesus is He who died. Yes, rather, He was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us.

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Who will separate us from the love of Jesus Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

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Just as it is written, for your sake we are being put to death all day long, and we are considered like sheep to be slaughtered.

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But in all these things, we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

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Memorize this verse. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

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What we're saying, and what Jesus is saying, is that our salvation was chosen before the foundation of the world.

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Our salvation was paid for by Jesus on the cross. We were drugged to the gospel. At the gospel, our eyes were awakened, and we saw

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Jesus, and we fell in love with Him. And that God who did all of that is still working in you today.

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He who began the good work in you will see it through to the day of completion, have hope, and have confidence, and have joy, and celebrate in that.

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Amen? Let's pray.

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Lord Jesus, thank you. You've done everything. We've done nothing.

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We contributed nothing to our salvation except the sin that made it necessary. Yet, God, you've done everything.

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Lord, let us, when we think about salvation, not think about it as though it's an elementary principle that we get to move on from and go into the more esoteric and intellectually stimulating doctrines.

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Lord, let us rejoice. This is the cornerstone of our faith, that you saved us.

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Lord, let that message be ever sweet. Let it be ever satisfying. And Lord, let it ever motivate us to go and share it with the world.