Good morning to everyone. Thank you, Mark, for leading us again. We are diverting a little bit from our normal schedule. Normally, we'd be in the Book of Galatians. We're working through that verse by verse. But last week was our communion service, the last Sunday of the month, and we were in John 6, working through the Gospel of John for our communion services. 

And because the message was going to be way too long for you if I taught it all last week, we broke it into two parts. Basically, we covered the text last week, and we're going to address a couple of issues out of the text this morning. So we began our study of John 6 in the last 30 verses or so last week. This is a long chapter with many amazing truths to study, explore, ponder, and seek to understand. 

The context is clear. Jesus is speaking to the crowds of his followers. He fed them the day before, the 5,000 men, as well as women and children, in the great creative miracle. They have followed him and found him on the other side of the sea. They are looking for more signs and wonders to get some breakfast for their bellies, and most of all, to find the Messiah for which they were searching—a king, a provider, and a political deliverer. 

We saw last week the key point that it is the crowds that bring up the bread from heaven, the manna which God gave through Moses in the wilderness wandering. Jesus takes this idea of bread—bread from heaven, of eating, of feeding—and turns to spiritual truths that become hard sayings for the people. And what we see is that when Jesus begins to speak about spiritual matters—when he talks about sin and judgment, his death, their need for a Savior, and he proclaims that he is that Savior, the only Savior sent from God, and that salvation from the wrath of God can only come by believing in him—then most will walk away.

They will say, these sayings are hard. This is not what we were looking for. We reject this Jesus as the Messiah of God. And this is, in the greatest of tragedies, what happens at the end of chapter 6—apostasy in the first degree. Rejecting Jesus to his face after receiving immense revelation, signs, healings, words of truth, and with full knowledge, they walk away. 

We're going to spend some time today exploring this idea—this term apostasy—and what it means. We see that even for Jesus himself and his ministry, many would not believe, and they walked away. And this is true in the time of the apostles and even in our time today. 

We're also going to explore some of the great mysteries of the sovereignty of God and the will of man as we see these truths highlighted in our text, emphasized again and again. Four times in our text, we see Jesus say, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws him.” And we see also six times in this chapter that Jesus highlights the truth that salvation comes by believing him. And whoever believes on him comes to him in faith, he will in no wise cast out.

So I want to take some time this morning and talk about the sovereignty of God and salvation and the responsibility of man and his will to believe or reject, because this is an issue that is so often difficult for us to grasp. I'm still trying to hold on to it. And it's vital that we understand it from the scriptures and not from men. 

So we'll pick up our outline in our text, and we're going to talk about hard sayings again, the words, our spirit, and then discuss apostasy, and finally, the words of life. And because these are weighty issues—because they are sometimes difficult to really wrap our minds around—and because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'd like to take a little time at the end of the message again for questions. 

So during the course of the message, if you have questions—which you inevitably will—I have questions, too. Maybe I'll ask you. We'll take some time for that at the end of the message. 

Let's look at our text together, and John 6 will begin at verse 60. It says, “Therefore, many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, ‘This is a hard saying. Who can understand it?’ When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples complained about this, he said to them, ‘Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who would betray him. And he said, ‘Therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by the Father.’ From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go away?’ But Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?’ He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. For it was he who would betray him, being one of the twelve.”

Well, we have five points on our outline. First, the bread from heaven. Second, hard sayings offend. Third, the words are spirit. Fourth, apostasy in the first degree. And fifth, the words of eternal life. 

Well, last week, we saw the conversation develop between Jesus and the disciples from a carnal discussion about food for their stomachs into a spiritual discussion about believing unto eternal life. Jesus turned the phrase bread from heaven and began to teach them the hard sayings—that he must die, that he must be buried and raised again in order to pay the price for their sins, that through faith in him they may be saved from the wrath of God. It was his body and blood that must be given for the salvation of the world. 

His death was necessary because of the justice and holiness of God and because of man's sin. And it is only—this is maybe a hard saying for these religious Jews—it is only by faith in him, believing—in this illustration, eating—that a man can be saved. 

Let's look at verse 47, John 6, 47. “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” 

Jesus is not literally bread. He's not asking them to literally eat him. He says in the next verse, “The words that I speak to you are spirit.” He's giving a metaphor, just as he so often did. These are spiritual words meant to show the need for his death and their need to believe in order to obtain eternal life. Again, Jesus states this clearly six times in this chapter. He who believes in me has eternal life. 

But this saying concerning his death is a hard saying— not hard to understand, but hard to believe, to receive, especially when your goal is carnal blessings for yourself. And many of his words were hard for the carnal man, for the self-righteous religious man. And I would say even for the believer who just wants to be able to explain everything to his own satisfaction. 

Let me say that again. Even for the believer who just wants to explain everything to his own satisfaction. And my brother, my sister in Christ, I have been that man. You could be that man. The sayings of Jesus, the words, are sometimes difficult for us to understand. Or better yet, we are not always supposed to fully understand or be able to explain some of these things. 

And we see that in such a prevalent way in this great chapter, as well as in many places in the scripture. And for this reason, I want to just insert a parenthesis here to talk about this issue of divine sovereignty and the will of man in the realm of soteriology—that is, the doctrine of salvation. And specifically, in John 6, I want you to look at three phrases, the words, the hard sayings of Jesus. 

First, in verse 37. In John 6, 37, it says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me.” Verse 44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Verse 65, “And he said, therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father.” 

Now, for some of us, these verses are affirming to our theology, and we say, right on. For others of us, these words are troubling to our theology, and we say, well, wait a minute. I have some verses for you. You need to read the rest of verse 37. What I want you to see is that these two responses are wrong, because in them, our concern is our theology, when our concern should be to know what God says, to take him at his word, and to believe. 

But we have become so polarized in the church on this divine sovereignty, human responsibility issue, on Calvinism and Arminianism, and my school of thought being the right one. The end-all, we get our hackles up whenever we even read a verse that sounds like it might be working against my position. I totally understand this, because I have spent countless hours on this issue. 

And I believe the error of men in and around this issue is one of the greatest threats to the church. Why? Because when you lean into a system of man, it changes who God is. It changes who man is. It changes our view of how a man is saved. These are huge issues, important issues. But I would humbly submit to you again that our goal, our endeavor, our study should not be to prove one system over another, but to know Jesus, to grow closer to God, to find out what he says, to take it for ourselves, and to believe him. 

So my conclusion after all these years, all the debates, the thousands of emails, the letters written, the polemics and apologetics, trying to come to an understanding of divine sovereignty and human responsibility and salvation, my conclusion is that both systems of men are an equal error and equally dangerous. 

Now, I want to show you three more verses in our text that, if you notice, very much seem to correspond to the verses we read before. We looked at verse 37. Look with me at verse 36. In John 6:36, he says, “But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe.” Then he says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out.” 

We looked at verse 44 before. Look with me at verse 43. Jesus therefore answered and said to them, “Do not murmur among yourselves.” And verse 45, “Therefore, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” Verse 47, “Most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life.” 

I find verse 45 most interesting. Who is the one who's saved, who comes to Jesus? The one who heard? No. Just like Hebrews 3, we all heard the gospel. It's the one who heard and learned from the Father. The ones who heard and their hearing was mixed with faith, the author of Hebrews says.

And we looked at verse 65 before. Look at verse 64. “But there are some of you who do not believe.” Therefore, I said to you, “No one can come unless it's been granted by the Father.” Each time Jesus states the truth that no man can come to him unless the Father draws him or it is given to him or granted to him, it is in response to or in the context of their unbelief—their unwillingness to come to him. 

In these passages, as well as John 6:37 to 40—which really brings us together concisely—we see the sovereignty of God in salvation laid right beside the will of man to believe or not to believe and always with the promise that if you will believe, you will have life. 

And we have a myriad of scriptures like this that indicate that God must initiate salvation. I believe that. I wasn't out looking for him, right? He initiates. That is God who planned our salvation and the death and resurrection of Christ and brought it to pass. But even in this, man's will was active at the very same time. 

Look at Acts 22 with me. Acts 22. I'm sorry, Acts 2:22. Verse 22. Acts chapter 2, verse 22. “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves also know.” 

Look at verse 23. “Him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands and have crucified and put to death, whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be held by it.” 

God determined, made the plan of salvation before time began in a meeting of the Trinity. And God, by his determined purpose and foreknowledge, brought it to pass in the person and work of Jesus Christ. But in this very same event, we see that lawless hands—men by their own volition and will—took Jesus and put him to death on the cross. 

I believe with all my heart that the problems come at the very point where we try to explain these things to our own satisfaction. And in so doing, undermine either the clear teaching of the sovereignty of God in salvation, or the clear teaching of the will of man to believe. And what happens is men begin to design theologies and frameworks and systems to put everything into a neat little box that attempts to unscrew the inscrutable. 

And men build false premises, presuppositions, then launch their arguments off of them at the expense of the clear revelation of the Scriptures. I'll see if I can offend everyone here. We touched on this last week. The clearest and most abundant teaching in the New Testament is that salvation is by God's grace through faith alone in Jesus alone. 

Verse after verse after verse after verse says clearly, a man hears, he believes, and he is saved. Now if my goal is to see what God says, take it for myself, and believe him, then I must come to the conclusion that the way a man is saved is by hearing a message about Jesus and believing, that that salvation comes through faith, as it says 150 times in the New Testament. 

And then all that goes with it—salvation, regeneration, sealing, baptism into the body, so forth—comes with salvation. But we'll pick on the Calvinists here for a minute because I believe a false premise is established—a presupposition—whereby these theologians equate spiritual death and sins to physical death and understand total depravity by the definition of the Stoics and Manicheans rather than by the Bible. 

Then they must deny all of these scores of verses that clearly teach hearing, faith, salvation in order to preserve their system of thought. And they turn them around and say God's order is first salvation or regeneration, then hearing, and then faith. And come up with all kinds of teachings that I believe fly in the face of the revealed Word of God. 

I've heard Calvinists, I've sat in churches where they had a youth group, a retreat, and a service after that, and children have—young teenagers—stood up and expressed a great desire to believe—have been moved by the word that they heard. And they told them to pray and pray and pray to God that he would grant you the gift of faith to believe. Pray and beg God that he would regenerate you so that you can believe. 

My friends, these things are nowhere found in the pages of Scripture. When the Philippian jailer asked Paul, what must I do to be saved? He did not tell him to pray to God for anything. He did not tell him to beg God to regenerate him or give him any gift. He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. 

And so this system that so emphasizes the sovereignty of God does so to the point that it undermines the equally clear teaching of the Scripture concerning man's ability to believe. In this same damaging way, the systems of theology that so emphasize man's will to the exclusion of God's sovereignty do immeasurable damage to the church, to the gospel, to the character and nature of God in our understanding of salvation. 

If my salvation is up to me in some way, if I must be the one who initiates my own salvation, or if my salvation or security is somehow dependent on me and my performance, my works, then I have, by my doctrines, done tremendous damage to the truths of the sovereignty of God and salvation according to the Scriptures, to the nature of the salvation that Jesus provides, and again, who God is and who man is. 

For example, if my salvation, my justification or sanctification is somehow dependent on my performance, my living up to a law or standard to meet it, or else I can lose this salvation, then I have wholly undermined the teaching of the Scriptures concerning the sovereignty of God in salvation, and particularly in sanctification—for those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. This is sanctification. This is a promise. 

Do you ever notice that all these statements are meant for your assurance? And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That's a done deal in God's mind. When I lose sight of what the Scriptures teach about salvation and God's sovereignty in it and his purposes in saving me, then I am in opposite but equal error. 

So what is the answer to this great conundrum over which so many trees have been killed and even men have been burned at the stake? It's a discipline, and I mean a discipline, to never seek to explain where the two meet. This is exactly the position of Spurgeon. He said both doctrines are taught in the Word, they are equally valid, and we should not even seek to reconcile them to know where they meet, for God does not intend that we should know but that we should believe. 

This is much harder than we might like to admit. We should believe them both, believe them with equal faith, because God has revealed them both on the pages of Scripture, even as we see here in John chapter 6. No tension in God's mind, no problem. And our conclusion must be, having studied the Scriptures and seen these truths again and again—too numerous to go through in our time here—our conclusion must be that each of these systems of men, what we call Calvinism, what we call Arminianism, though opposite, are equal in error according to the Scriptures. 

We should, as we do with the Trinity and the oneness of God, as we do with the deity and the humanity of Christ, stop trying to explain these things to the satisfaction of our own minds and rather believe what God says and let it be. And my friends, I would submit this to you for very practical application. You never have to worry about God being faithful to His purpose and plan in salvation. God will be faithful. Much better that we take what He has revealed to us, believe it, and focus on obeying what He has told us to do. 

I'm not worried about God's part. I need to be worried about my part. When Jesus said in John 3, “God so loved the world,” we don't have to get our defenses up. God so loved the world. That's what it means. When John says, “Christ died for our sins only, not for our sins only, but the sins of the whole world,” we don't have to come up with some fancy explanation that no one would ever come to reading the text. 

Romans 3:21 bears this same truth. And when Jesus says, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws him,” we don't have to recoil. When Paul says, “God chose us for salvation” in 2 Thessalonians, we don't have to go into a tizzy. We can read the Scriptures plainly. We can take them for what they say. We can study them in their context, look at the words and the intent and audience and all that, and we can pray for understanding and know that if it is our will to do His will, we will know if the doctrine is from Him. 

But we can believe what God says, and we can trust Him. And we can let the secret things belong to the Lord. But it's a discipline. It's a discipline all the time because I'm always wanting to... Understand, my friends, this means that these systems are highly flawed. And they undermine either the sovereignty of God or the will of man and do not do justice to the Scriptures. 

My prayer is that here, through our continued study of God's Word, we would come to a place where there are no Calvinists and there are no Arminians, and we could drop the systems and just believe what God says and seek to know Jesus through the words through the Spirit. 

Now listen, and form our system of understanding from the Word and always be willing to tweak it as we go. Because you know what? It turns out I was wrong about some things before. Right? But I have to be willing to take what God says from His Word as I study and I grow and change my thinking to align with His. 

Because as we see next in our text, it is the words that are Spirit. It is the words that are life. And I absolutely love this verse, and I think it's key to our understanding this passage. If you look at verse 63, Jesus says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life.” 

We've talked a lot before about how the people—and the people today—hate the words. The people love the works. They love to be fed. They love to be healed. They loved all the works that Jesus did, but they hated the words. And Jesus says, “But the words are life.” 

In John 12:32, Jesus said, “If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to myself.” Jesus didn't say all men. He didn't say all peoples. These words are supplied by the interpreters. What Jesus said was—“I will draw all to myself.” When He's lifted up at the cross, he would draw all to Himself. 

Now this is interesting to me because the question comes, what is the drawing of God? No one can come to me unless the Father draws him. What is the drawing? How does God draw men? If I must be drawn by the Father in order to believe Jesus, then how is it that God draws? Jesus said in John 12, when I'm lifted up, I will draw all to myself. Same word for draw that we see in John 6. 

In our text, he says it's the words that are spirit. It's the words that are life. Paul tells us that it is the gospel, that it is the words about the cross and Jesus' death that are the power of God unto salvation. In Romans 10, he tells us that faith comes by hearing—that is, hearing the message about Jesus, his death, burial, and resurrection, the gospel. It is the words they hated—the message of his death and resurrection—that was hard to hear to believe. 

It is the gospel, the words that a man must hear in order to come to faith in Jesus. Faith comes by hearing. I believe it is the words that God uses, the gospel, the message about the cross to draw men. And I believe what the author of Hebrews said, that the hearing must be mixed with faith to be profitable to enter God's rest. 

And what Jesus said in John 6:45—those who hear and learn from the Father may come to Jesus and believe. One must hear and learn. Jesus perhaps captures the meaning here in Matthew 11:29. He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.” Learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. 

So it’s the words that are life; it’s the words through which faith may come if we hear and are willing to learn to believe. But the very sad truth, the tragedy, is that many, most in fact, will not. They hear, but they do not learn from the Father. They will not believe. And for this reason, they are condemned forever. We looked at that last week, John 3:18, why is a man condemned? Because he has not, he stands condemned already, it says, because he will not or has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 

The greatest example of apostasy sits before us in our text at the end of John 6. Let's read that again, beginning in verse 60. “Therefore, many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, ‘This is a hard saying. Who can understand it?’ When Jesus knew it himself that his disciples complained about this, he said to them, ‘Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? Would you believe then? No.’ Verse 63, ‘It's the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who would betray him. And he said, therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father.’ 

Now verse 66, just as Mark read that earlier, I thought, wow, here's a picture of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. I'm sorry, that's not the verse I was thinking of. Look down to verse 71. He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. I'm sorry, verse 70, I'm going to find it here eventually. 

Verse 70, Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And one of you is a devil?” I mean, that's profound. His disciples walked with him no more. They rejected Jesus. It was apostasy in the first degree. The definition of apostasy is rejection with full knowledge. It's not just more than simple unbelief, right? Some men don't believe; they don't know. It's a willful rejection with a full understanding. 

These people had been with Jesus. They were followers—believing learners by definition. They had been seeing countless miracles, they'd watched him, they'd heard him teach, been with Jesus; and yet when the rubber met the road, when Jesus made clear their need for a Savior and his death to accomplish that salvation, rather than taking over Rome and feeding their bellies for every meal, they walked away. Salvation from sin and death and hell was not what they wanted. A suffering Messiah was not what they were looking for, and they walked away. They followed Jesus no longer. 

I want to look at Hebrews because this is really interesting to me. We have great instructive examples of apostasy in the book of Hebrews. So I want to take a little time and look at a couple of the warning passages, warning against turning from Jesus. In the case of the Hebrews at that time, they were in danger of going back to the law, back to Judaism, to the temple and the sacrifices as their way of salvation. 

In this congregation of Hebrews, to which this letter's written, there were those who had believed who were truly saved, and there were those who were only professors of faith who were now wavering, who were leaning back toward Judaism and leaving Jesus and the church fellowship. The book of Hebrews is written to encourage the believers to continue in their faith, but also to warn those who had not come all the way to faith, who were at a point of decision and were in danger of turning away from Christ and back to religion. 

These warnings are interspersed throughout the book—five different warnings. Hebrews 10 at verse 26 is one of these warning passages. And there’s a firm pattern established in this epistle. The author teaches about Jesus, comparing and contrasting him and the New Covenant to the various precepts of the Old Covenant, showing Jesus as superior in every way, and the New Covenant as better than the Old. 

In chapter 8, he says this is the main point of the things we're saying. And he talks about Jesus being the high priest and the mediator of a better covenant built on better promises. And the Old Covenant becoming obsolete, verse 13. And then these sections of teaching are followed by exhortation to continue to believe and then warnings against apostasy and unbelief. 

Such is the case in chapter 10, look at verse 26. “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord, and again the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” 

The willful sin here is unbelief. Having full knowledge, having experienced the drawing work of the Holy Spirit, being set apart with revelation, understanding instruction about Jesus, these people were part of a fellowship in the church. They had been taught by those who had been with Christ. They had experienced the power and seen the transformation of those who believed Jesus; even experiencing persecution with them for their association with the church. And yet they had not been saved; they had not gone on to perfection, to faith in Jesus Christ. 

Now they were in danger of turning away and going back, and the author says if you determine that Jesus’ blood, his death is just the common death of a criminal—that he’s not really the Messiah, the way, the truth, and the life—if you insult the Spirit of grace by which God has set you apart with revelation and blessing and worked in your heart, if after all of this you choose to reject Jesus, then know that there is no other way. 

There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins; you will perish in judgment. If you choose any other way than Jesus and faith alone in him, then you will experience the wrath of God for your sins and eternity in the lake of fire. 

Believe it or not, we see an even harsher warning in Hebrews 6. Hebrews chapter 6, verse 1, he's been teaching again about Christ, encouraging them. In Hebrews 6:1, he says, “Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of the Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.” 

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, have tasted the heavenly gift, have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame. For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated receives blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.” 

Well, we don't have time to do a proper exegesis here, but I want you to see the beauty of this passage. The author exhorts them to leave behind and utterly forsake the elementary principles of the Christ. And then he lists several Old Testament ABCs about the Christ—things taught about the Messiah in the Old Testament about the future, the basic principles from the Old Covenant. 

This cannot be referring to the gospel, as some often teach, because the word translated leaving is such a strong and powerful word. It means to utterly forsake, to leave behind in order to move on to something else. My friends, we never leave the gospel. He's talking to Jews, to Hebrews in danger of going back to the law. Leave it, he says. Go on to perfection, that is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. 

The word perfection in the book of Hebrews is synonymous with salvation. What I want you to notice is the work of God, the revelation, the power of the Holy Spirit that they had experienced in their lives. Verse 4, “Those who were once enlightened, have tasted the heavenly gift, have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” None of these things are indicative of salvation. 

Think about the phrase tasted used twice here. Tasted the heavenly gift, tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. They had tasted. What did Jesus just tell us in John 6? You must eat, you must consume, you must feed—not just taste. They were partakers of the Holy Spirit in the sense that God had drawn them by the word. The Spirit had given them understanding—so much so that they had left Judaism, professed faith in Christ, become part of the church and suffered persecution with the believers. 

And yet it says they were not saved, they had not gone on to perfection; they had not believed Jesus for salvation, and now under pressure from Judaizing Jews and further persecution, they were in danger of apostatizing—going back, walking with Jesus no more. And if this is the choice they make, if they reject Jesus with full knowledge and go back to the temple sacrifices, you know, this is a knowledge that really even can't be replicated today.

As the disciples had in John 6—even seeing and knowing Jesus, these Hebrews who knew those who knew Jesus and lived in the context of the temple worship in Jerusalem—that's not what we have here today, right? But if they go back, if they reject Jesus, they can no longer be saved. They cannot be renewed to repentance. 

But having hardened their hearts in this way would experience a judicial hardening from God—a final sentence to death. They stand condemned already because they will not believe on the name of the only begotten Son of God. 

Now one more thing that's important here, and it affirms much of what we've been talking about. I always pay attention to the illustrations because they'll affirm your interpretation. Look at verse 7. “For if the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned.” 

What's the author saying here? It's the same thing we looked at last week in Hebrews 3 and 4. The rain here represents revelation—the words of God. The whole congregation had received the word of God, teaching, explanation, exhortation. They had understanding by the work of the Holy Spirit. 

This is the whole congregation of Israel in Hebrews 3 and 4 had heard the gospel, he says. But only some who hear choose to believe. Those who believe bear fruit and receive blessing from God. But those who reject have received the same rain, the same revelation, and yet they bear thorns and briars, are rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. 

It's all about the words, my friends. And that's why the twelve did not walk away. Because as Peter said, “Where would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” For those whose concern is not earthly and carnal, who are concerned with eternal life and sin and death and judgment and salvation, where else would we go? Jesus is the only way. 

And thus those who believe remain; they abide; they stay with Jesus; they do not turn away. And the sayings of Jesus for us are not hard. They're not a stumbling block; rather, they are life and joy and peace and encouragement. Does it encourage you that no one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws them and I will raise Him up at the last day? That's encouraging to me, that he's going to raise me up at the last day. The words are salvation. 

Jesus is our life and our assurance and our hope regardless of what happens in this world. We will not walk away because we have believed Jesus. We have entered that rest. We are saved forever, transformed and kept by the power and the promise of God. John said they went out from us because they were not of us. Had they been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out from us that it might be made manifest that they never were of us. The believer continues because we believe Jesus. And where else would we go? 

Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we’re thankful for the simplicity that is in Christ—the gospel—that Jesus died for our sins, that he was buried, that he was risen the third day, and that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Thank you for that truth. Thank you that I can believe Jesus and know that I have eternal life. And thank you for the salvation work you do in each one of us who believes—to transform us, to make us like Christ, to use us for your purposes, to be witnesses, to live holy lives, to show the great power and love of Jesus. We thank you; we praise you; and we pray for wisdom. We pray for understanding in the things which are hard. We thank you for them just the same. In Jesus' name, amen. 

All right. Well, that was a heavy one, hey? So in lieu of listening to me sing without Diane here, let's see if anybody has any questions. Questions, comments? Everybody got that all figured out? 

Yeah, Michael. 

I grip every moment of it. If it's miles I spend, it's miles I lie in since classes at L&L all very complete, all every time I read it. I'll be back. Every time I read it. 

Cool. 

Yeah, Mike, got a question basically about someone who appears to come to faith, is involved, manifests that in their lives and in the church, and then they walk away. I would just say two things about that. One is believers can fall, right? Believers can fall into sin. They can fall into all kinds of bad thinking or bad teaching or whatever, and can fall away for a time. 

But if they walk away and reject Christ, I think is what we see in apostasy. In other words, they have had knowledge. They've had full knowledge and sat under teaching in the Bible and professed faith and all that, and then they wholly reject Christ. I've known a lot of believers who have fallen into sin and they're broken, but when you talk to them, it's never, I don't believe Jesus. I don't believe any of that garbage I used to say. It's never that. It's always a brokenness, right? It's always just maybe not knowing what to do or being so distraught with their circumstances or whatever. 

But when a man says, “I don't believe anything about that, Jesus is nothing to me,” walks away from it, I think that's representative of what we're seeing here. 

As far as like the greater commandment... Yes, greater commandment. Yep. He talks about his death. Yeah, there's imagery there. Certainly in his death is tied to that, right? Dies on the Passover. He’s a lot of different metaphor. We talked about that last week and I had my notes today, but it was excessively long, so I cut a bunch of stuff. 

But we don't have a church today that says I'm the first church of the door, and they got a big door up front and you walk through it every week to obtain your salvation. Or I'm the living water. We don't have living water that we drink to obtain. But we do have a church that says you have to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to be saved. And they believe that Jesus is killed again and again and again every mass. So I think there's a lot of metaphor. As far as the Passover, yeah, I mean, that's all rich in imagery in here, I think. Right? 

Right, the words are life, right? The words are life. And he says the words I speak to you about his death, about eating his flesh and blood, are spirit, right? 

Yeah, that's good, Nate. Good job. 

Yes, Mitch. 

Um, we're all products of the Church of Jesus Christ. The pastor of Jesus Christ. I appreciate the Church that listens to Jesus Christ. I think that, open to looking at scripture together, working together, how much does that say there? The scripture that comes to mind to me, I've heard it a hundred times. Romans 11, down in the end of the chapter, “All the depths, riches, knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, how unscrutable his ways. From the mind of the Lord has been his counsel. For who is given a gift that he might be revealed? For from him is truth in all things.” 

And so many of the discussions that I've had with my brothers and sisters in Christ in the past, we've had to go back to that verse in the end. 

Yeah. 

Yeah, we're searching out the mind of God. Right. And who can do that? Right. There are things we can help. 

Yeah. 

Right? 

Yeah, I think that humility—that's what came to my mind as you were talking—that humility before God is appreciating who God is, right? And he says, Deuteronomy 29:29, the secret things belong to the Lord. And we quote it. We stop there very often. But then it says, “But that which he has revealed to us belongs to us and our children forever.” Meaning it’s incumbent upon us to seek God out, to seek Jesus and who he is. And that's what my heart in this message was, was we can read the scriptures and we can take what God says and we can believe him and we can take all those things for ourselves that he revealed. 

And if there's things we don't understand, if there's mysteries, that's OK. But the problem is if we try and make it all fit into some system, then we start doing violence to who God is, to who man is, to how salvation works. So. 

That's called AI. 

Yeah. 

So anyway. 

Yeah, Dave. 

Predestination. We've had our talks and our studies on predestination. And I have this belief of predestination—more knowledge of things to do with God. And it was in our teaching time, Martin had taught us that predestination is related to the glorification of our God. 

 But the scriptures are crying out of what commands my interpretation of predestination. God foreknew. That all of that, he knew about God. But why were the scriptures so conflicting with what were being taught right now? Now, I understand that we're just taking God's word and trying not to figure it out. 

Yep. 

I can see why there's such a large population of people who have all had beliefs the way that I have had beliefs. 

Yeah. 

It's like, I just don't understand. It's one of those topics that why do we have minds that are told to do things? Minds that don't know how to do things? Why is there more to explain than more? Because I never knew. I mean, we take the world as our defining definition. 

OK. So Dave's question is surrounding this idea of predestination. What does predestination mean? And I would agree with Mark that when you look up predestination as it's used in the scriptures, it is always for the encouragement of the believers. See, like Augustine taught double predestination. He taught that for salvation. 

So he taught that God chooses some to save, and he also chooses and sends them to hell. Now, most Calvinists today have kind of backed off of that other side of that, but that he just chooses some. He doesn't damn some, that they damn themselves by their will or whatever. But when you look in the scriptures at predestination, in particular, it's always written to believers, always with the purpose of encouraging them. 

And it is always talking about sanctification, undeglorification. OK. But we also have election—choosing. You know, it's not just predestination. But I want to, I'll give you my understanding of this four new thing. 

All right. So that's called the prescience view, pre-science, pre-knowledge. He knew ahead of time. So it's as if—in that view—God looked down through the future and he said, oh, Mike's going to believe and Dave's going to believe, so I'll choose them. To me, that's exactly what we're talking about here this morning. That does not do justice to what those scriptures are saying, because what it does is it elevates the will of man to the expense of the sovereignty of God. 

So when Paul says in 2 Thessalonians, God chose us for salvation, or he talks about election to salvation, or we read, I mean, to explain away, think about this. And I'll use a Calvinist line here. When Adam knew his wife and she bore a son, does that mean he just knew about her? When he said, only Israel I have known among all the nations, does that mean he didn't know there were any Hittites? 

So the idea of knowing and foreknowing carries something more than that—in my opinion—in the scriptures. But I do believe predestination is associated with sanctification. I think election, choosing, those are a little harder to explain. Or Mark and I were talking yesterday because I'm studying John 6. So sometimes I can get in there in these scriptures that maybe I don't like as much, and I can kind of look at the Greek, and I can look at the voice, and I can maybe squirrel away through there, and explain them. 

But this is what I'm talking about we shouldn't be doing. So when you look at John 6:44, is it 44? I think it was 44, Mark. The word there for draw means to drag. You cannot come to Jesus unless the Father drags you. It's used of them seizing Paul in the temple and dragging him. It's used of them seizing Stephen and dragging him out of town. It's used of them pulling in their nets when they couldn't get him to the shore because there were so many fish. 

All I'm saying is, let it be. I mean, God is sovereign. I believe fully man has a will. And this is where we come to a major disagreement with many, is I believe the scriptures clearly teach that faith precedes regeneration. That's the crux of the whole matter. 

That total depravity does not mean, as Augustine taught from his Stoic and Manichean background, that man was so corrupted by original sin that he cannot even believe. I don't believe that the man dead in his trespasses and sins is the same as being physically dead. And it's like kicking a corpse. 

Because in Ephesians 2, the passage that's loved so much, it says he conducted himself. It said he walked about. Well, physical corpses don't conduct. They don't walk about. They don't make choices. So you understand what I'm getting at, Dave? The foreknew what God did in salvation. He didn't just look down and see, hey, John's going to believe. That's not what the choosing means, I don't think. 

But I do think the predestination itself, those verses do refer to sanctification, and they're meant for the believer's encouragement. They're not meant to talk about how a man is justified. They're meant to tell him that Jesus is going to continue the work, God's going to conform us to Christ, and he's going to glorify us. 

Does that make sense? 

Well, I'm here to write. I'm going to stop. I'm just going to trust the Lord. And like I said, just let it be. 

Well, and in the end, for you as a believer—and this is what I was talking about before—when we start designing these systems or we read all these books or we follow these men, then what does that do to our witnessing? What does that do to our holy living? What does that do to our view of men? 

That's what I meant when I said I don't have to worry about God's part. I mean, I'm going to study this to the depth of my ability and pray the Holy Spirit will reveal to me the truth, and I'll speak with wisdom and not do anything in error. But what I really need—it’s kind of like when people really get caught up in eschatology and the timing of the rapture or something, and they’ve got all kinds of problems at home, and it’s all they want to talk about. And I’m like, well, let’s maybe master Romans 6 before we get all worried about the timing. 

You see what I’m saying? We have all these things that God has revealed to us that he’s told us to do that we should be consumed with. We don’t need to worry so much about his part. He’s going to take care of that. He keeps ordering our footsteps as we go. 

That's where I can buy the books we read. 

It's really the interactions. 

Yeah, yeah, through the Word, yep. 

Well, I hope this is profitable. To be perfectly honest with you, I was not looking forward to this. I’d rather just teach nice, feel-good messages about the Gospel, and everybody walks out and says, great message, and everybody's happy. But this is an important issue in the church, and I think the answer is believe them both. Spurgeon said there are like two railroad tracks. They run parallel, and they never meet. But if you look off in the distance, they come together, right? 

Anything else burning in your crawl? 

All right. 

All right. Well, thank you for coming and have a good week.