The Sovereign Drawing of God | Sermon 03/26/2023

John 6:41-47

After finishing Jesus’s glorious Bread of Life and I AM statements the Jews listening started to grumble about Him. They reject His claims of being from heaven. Like their fathers before them in the wilderness, so have they also spurned the provision of God. They only see the earthly parentage of Jesus but not the virgin birth or the eternal sonship He has with the Father. The irony is that they actually have no clue who He is. He commands them to stop grumbling. Moses told the people the Lord has heard your grumbling and rebuked them. This time the Lord has heard their grumbling and rebuked them Himself.

Jesus then demonstrates that the people following and coming to Him are not actually truly doing so. For “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Not a single person can come to Jesus apart from the giving and drawing of the Father. This word “draw” in the Greek demonstrates a pulling of an object, a dragging, that is not done of itself. One must drag or draw other than what is being propelled. The Bible makes it clear though that the Triune God is the both the Author and Perfector or Completer of our faith. He who began or started a good work in you will [telos] complete or perfect it until the day Jesus returns.

And Jesus reports that those drawn by the Father, who come to Jesus, “hear” and are “taught” by God. This prophecy from Isaiah in verse 45 is being fulfilled real time as Messianic fulfillment in Jesus coming and the Spirit being poured out. And then our Lord makes claim that He is authorized to teach from the Father because He is from God and has alone seen the Father. Essentially, there is no going to God, learning from God, being saved by God, hearing God, or seeing God apart from Jesus Christ. And it is all of this that one must believe to have eternal life. Believe/come is mysteriously tied to the sovereign giving/drawing of God.