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This sermon was preached on Sunday 9/12/2001 Am, by Kevin Matthews.
This morning we are going to continue our studies in the Gospel of John, with our thoughts turning specifically to the area of everlasting life. Now this message will not contain anything that is particularly clever by way of Biblical preaching or understanding, rather it will be a somewhat simple sermon about what you probably already know. Yet I think that this area of study this morning is an important one to remind ourselves of, especially given that these times in which we live are being constantly referred to as uncertain times.
Yet for us - that is those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, these times are far from uncertain, for we have a God who controls all things and that for the good of His church. He controls the big picture and the small picture (eg Joseph). We should of all people have the greatest of hope and be far from despairing as we look upon this strife ridden world. Our Lord is the sovereign Lord who controls all through His providential government, so that there is nothing that is outside of His government and sovereign purpose.
But reality also tells me that this experience of our great hope and confidence may not always be the case, for sometimes in troubled times Christians take their spiritual eyes away from the place on which they should be focussed and settle their vision upon that which will bring real despair and fear. You see, Christians can be among the most fearful and frightened of people - when they have taken their spiritual eyes away from their Rock and Refuge and have focused them on the winds and waves (like Peter) of change and life, or on some human answer to their uncertainty.
This is the sort of thing that will happen if we focus our thoughts on the September 11 terror attacks and the resulting war against terrorism without a settled trust and rest in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Kingdom to come. Fear will paralyse us and our perspective will become mundane and temporal. This is the sort of thing that may happen when a marriage breaks down, or when a job is lost, or when a husband, wife or child become seriously sick and you can do little about the situation, and so on. It is so easy to loose our confidence and become paralysed by fear when all we can see are the trials and troubles of this life.
Lord willing we will be able to think good thoughts about the future after the message this morning, thoughts that are most certainly Biblical and therefore full of hope and assurance of everlasting life. Thoughts that are strengthened by this knowledge, that no matter what may happen, in Christ I have everlasting life and He will bring me home. It’s not the complete answer to the troubles that confront us in this world, but it is a Biblical starting point from which we can begin to do battle with the doubts and fears that so often plague us. But let me tell you that the Scriptures do provide the answers to each and every problem and trial of our faith, however our focus this morning will be in the area of everlasting life. So let’s turn to this passage and consider it together.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life (John 6:47)."
Here in verse 47 Jesus reaches a point in His discussion with the leaders of the Capernaum synagogue (6:59) where He wants to stress an important truth that all can be assured of. Indeed He wants to make it abundantly clear and to establish it as an absolute fact that what He is about to say to these men is the truth of the matter. The verse basically begins by Jesus saying, ‘It is so, it is so, because I tell you it is so.’
These Jews are to believe what Jesus has to say because it is He who is actually saying it. It is He whom we have already established as being God of very God, the One who does all in obedience to His Father’s will, and the One sent by the Father to secure the lives of the elect so that not one of them would be lost, but all be raised up at the last day.
True the Jews did not believe His claims, but they are none-the-less true, and all He said did indeed came from the mouth of God as absolute truth. Here, friends, is something that you must grapple with this morning yourselves. The words spoken in this passage in John 6 that we are considering today, these come from God to you as readers of John’s gospel and as believers. These are words of absolute truth and you must therefore take heed to them. You that have ears to hear and eyes to see, hear and see the truth in this passage - for it speaks to you from God Himself. You can be absolutely certain that these words are truth and to be trusted. These are words that you can bank on, words upon which you can build your hope for a better and certain future in eternity, and these are words upon which you can build an accurate system of conviction, doctrine and theology. If you are a Christian, these words should banish all doubts regarding the subject that Jesus is addressing this morning in this passage, for He tells us the truth concerning this matter of everlasting life.
Here are words with which you can face the coming economic down turn, words with which you can face a future that appears to be plagued by incurable and horrific illness, words with which you can face the persecuting world, and words with which you can meet that last great enemy of death and enter into eternity with the greatest of confidence. Here are words with which you can confront all your doubts concerning the future life and your place in it. Here are words with which you can answer the accuser of the brethren. Brethren, these words that we consider this morning are full of grace and truth, there being no truer words spoken in the history of the universe.
And what is the truth expressed within verse 47? That "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life (Jn 6:47b)." This is the truth about everlasting life - to possess it you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you actually do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ then you do indeed have everlasting life, no matter what anybody else says about you. That is what the Lord Jesus Christ says to you this morning. It matters not who doubts your faith; it matters not what is said about Christianity by the world, for the Lord says to you that you have everlasting life.
Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as having lived and died in your place that you might inherit eternal life? Do you rest in a righteousness earned by the Lord Jesus Christ and put to your account as though it were your very own? Do you rest in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for your sin, as an appeasement of the wrath of God toward you, and as that which has reconciled the Father to you? Is the Lord Jesus Christ your sole confidence for salvation? Yes! Then this passage is saying that you have everlasting life. God Himself tells you that you have everlasting life. It’s right here in this passage - you have it! God is no liar; you have it if you believe in Jesus!
The text doesn’t say that you have it if you can you point to a past experience wherein you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? It doesn’t say you have it if you are sure that you are one of the elect. It doesn’t say you have it if you are a Baptist or a Presbyterian - but it does tell you that if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ then you have everlasting life.
If you currently believe in the Lord Jesus Christ then this is sure evidence that you have everlasting life. You are a Christian who will enjoy eternity with the Lord. Verse 40 tells us "And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day (Jn 6:40)." In that last day, when the Lord returns, your mortal bodies will be raised up immortal and inherit incorruption - eternal life. What a tremendous promise and a tremendous future!
Yet this is not something that is afar off, for the passage before us tells us that we now have everlasting life as a current possession. It is yours now Christian. You don’t have to wait until you die, and neither do you have to wait until that last great day of the Lord - this is something that you actually possess the moment you believe. If you are a believer this morning then you actually have this everlasting life now! There’s no waiting for it - you have it now, and as verse 51 clearly tells us, we shall live forever - you won’t die believer. Do you see that? You began to live this everlasting life the moment you were granted spiritual life through the work of the Holy Spirit. You are living everlasting life now!
Yes your bodies will die and be raised incorruptible at the resurrection of the righteous as the Scriptures clearly teach, yet these same Scriptures also clearly teach that you have everlasting life now and that you will live forever. What can this mean but that when you physically die you continue to live in some spiritual manner, for the Scriptures do not contradict themselves. Does it not mean what orthodox Christianity has held so strongly over the centuries, that we will be absent from the body and present with the Lord upon death, as the apostle Paul implies so clearly in 2 Corinthians 5:8?
How wonderful brethren, that no matter what may be our present lot, or what may appear to be our future lot here upon the earth, we can be certain that upon the moment of physical death we will continue to live forever, for we already have everlasting life. If we do die and do not see life until the resurrection, we fail to live forever, and then the Scriptures, and therefore God, are not true. Thankfully that is not the case. We can rest assured here that we do indeed have this everlasting life as an everlasting possession the moment we first believe. And why is that? Because the Lord Jesus Christ who cannot lie has told us that it is so.
Now where do you rest your confidence this morning? Is it in the Words of Jesus who emphasis’s the truthfulness of what He says, or do you believe in the doctrines of men with their teaching of some sort of soul sleep until the resurrection? Surely it is better to lay our confidence upon the certain foundation of Scripture, upon that which is so clearly spoken of in the Scriptures.
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (Jn 3:14-16)."
These verses in John indicate that this life is something that is possessed now. It is a life that is currently enjoyed and experienced. We have already passed from death into life in the spiritual realm. Brethren you have everlasting life now - begin to live as those in possession of that life.
Do you see what this means brethren? It means that we have no need to live in constant fear as though tomorrow may be our final day. It means that when that illness comes upon us, which we know to be terminal, there is no need to become despondent for a better world awaits you. You do not need to fear the persecuting sword for the persecutor cannot keep you from everlasting life. There is no need to be in bondage to fear, for there is liberation in the knowledge that we have everlasting life.
Now where does this life come from? Well let’s read on in John 6 for the answer.
"I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die (Jn 6:48-50)."
In previous sermons on John 6 we have seen that Jesus has been talking about a bread that satisfies that most important and greatest of human needs, that fulfils that sense of something missing in the sinners life, and that answers the problem of sin and our separation from God. Jesus has said that He can give this bread and has even identified Himself as being that bread. He has also said that it is by actually eating this bread that you gain everlasting life and spiritual satisfaction.
Now you may be thinking, ‘well, you just said that you get everlasting life by believing in Jesus, and now you’re saying something else.’ And that is exactly what I said, but I am not contradicting myself by saying what the Scriptures say at this point, for they are not contradicting themselves either. You see, believing in Jesus is the same thing as eating the bread of life, which you must remember has been identified as Jesus Himself, as even the most cursory reading of this passage makes abundantly clear. Both these things are the same, for they are synonymous terms, looking at the same truth from slightly different angles or perspectives.
The idea behind the bread of life metaphor is that bread is life giving, so that when you eat the bread you are actually gaining the everlasting life from it. In other words, Jesus is saying that He is the one that imparts life to the believer through the act of believing, which is likened in this passage to eating bread, and specifically to eating the bread of life. By eating this bread of life, or by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, death is banished from the believer in the spiritual sense immediately, everlasting life gained immediately, a resurrected body assured at the resurrection, and the second death avoided.
Nothing else compares to this great provision of God for believers, not even the miraculous, as Jesus pointed out to the Jews before Him. Yes their forefathers had enjoyed what they called bread from heaven, yet this manna was just a temporal fix to a temporal problem, even though that manna came about from a miracle. Their fathers had still died, there being nothing spiritual about this manna. Yes a great miracle for the benefit of national Israel had occurred over the space of many years in the wilderness, yet they still died, for it was not intended as an everlasting and spiritual deliverance. If these people died without the hope of everlasting life then they will continue to experience death in all of its Biblical fullness, for they never passed into spiritual life, remaining dead in their sin. There is just no comparison between the manna of Moses’ day and the bread of life offered by Jesus.
The same is true of all other things that man may look to that have never been designed as bread to give everlasting life. These ‘breads’ of mans making have included all manner of things including baptism, good works, parental upbringing, service, and so on - food which perishes (Jn 6:27).
But this true bread from heaven, even the Lord Jesus Christ who came from glory to the place of men, He is the bread that gives everlasting life. By eating of this bread you gain everlasting life without a doubt and immediately.
How do you eat of this bread then? You eat of it by believing or trusting in Jesus. Now when you do this our passage tells us that you will not die, or in other words, you have everlasting life.
"I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world (Jn 6:51)."
Jesus is the spiritual bread of which all men must eat if they are to live forever. We must believe in He who is the Source of all life, in Him who is the bread of life. Perhaps you are asking ‘But what exactly are we to eat? What exactly are we to believe that we might have this life of which the Scriptures speak?’
The bread that Jesus gives is identified by verse 51 as His flesh. He is speaking of His own body in this passage. Yet it does not mean that you need to look for any physical substance today. To look for His flesh in any physical thing is just foolishness at best and blasphemy at worst. His flesh is not to be found in any Roman mass or in the Lord‘s Supper. The word for flesh here is different to that word used for body in the Lord’s Supper. The bread of the Lord’s Supper is just ordinary bread, yet symbolic of the body of Christ and of what this passage in John 6 is speaking about. This passage is talking about what He did with His flesh for the life of the world. What was it that He did for the life of the world? That is the key to this verse.
Clearly Jesus is thinking of a particular act that He had not yet performed, but which is yet future to the time of John 6, for He says, "and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world (Jn 6:51c)." There is a specific act in mind here, and that act would be an act of giving His flesh. What is He talking about? Maybe these passages will shed some light on this verse.
"Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father (Jn 10:17,18)."
"Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour (Eph 5:1,2)."
Now there you have it - He is specifically thinking of His act of sacrifice in the place of sinners, whereby He gave or offered Himself up in the place of sinners, bearing the wrath of God in the place of sinners for the sin which kept them separated from God, thereby bringing sinners unto the Father and into possession of everlasting life. It is through the flesh of Jesus Christ then that sinners are brought into possession of eternal life. It is through that which He accomplished in the flesh upon the cross that brings life to sinners, appropriated for the individual sinner’s benefit through the means of faith.
This is the bread of which we must eat, this is the bread of which we must have a part and own as for ourselves if we would have everlasting life. You must eat of it my friend; that is, you must appropriate this sacrifice for yourself by faith. Faith is the means whereby this bread of life is eaten by the sinner, bringing the sinner from the place of death into everlasting life.
If you know not the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore have not this everlasting life, you need to be more than just in the same location as the bread of life, or to have seen others eat of this bread of life by faith, you must eat it yourself by faith or you will die. Eat it sinner, and you will have this everlasting life of which we have spoken this day, and you will have it now. It will be most certainly yours and no one will be able to take it away from you.
This bread of life was not given for just a small part of the world, not just for the Jews and people of Jesus’ day, but for the life of the world. If you will eat of this bread, exercising faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, be assured that you will have this everlasting life. He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1:29,35). Will you not believe sinner? This is the way of life.
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