I mentioned to you last Sunday that I love what I do. I also told you that there are times when my calling can be quite difficult, and this is one of those times. It isn’t that I don’t love and enjoy discussing God’s Word, but that I don’t like defending it to a lot of preconceived notions. You may be wondering what in the world I am talking about. You see, this text, Jesus’ discourse on the bread of life, is one of the traditional and classic texts used to support the Reformed biblical doctrines of predestination and election. Basically, these doctrines work together to simply say that God chooses for no particular reason those who will be saved and that this is worked out by a plan that God has had since before the creation of this world. What that plan looks like I have no clue, but I do believe that there is one and it has already been established. Now, I am well aware that as these words are coming out of my mouth, that red flags have shot up all over the place. I know that for many people, hopefully none in this room, that these words in-and-of-themselves are a stumbling block for many people accepting the Presbyterian view of Christianity and salvation. I remind you, also, that it isn’t as if you have to fully understand these doctrines to be a Christian and to be a part of Christ’s Church. To put it as one of the members of our men’s Bible study on Wednesday mornings put it, “this is just one of those ‘now I see through a glass darkly’ types of subjects.” In other words, this is just one of those things that many of us do not and will not ever truly and fully understand. As this same person said Wednesday, “It’s above our pay-grade.” I can recall some good friends of mine and Amy’s back in Mississippi who we tried for years to invite to church resisting at all costs, and both of them were raised in the church and had ministers as close family members. They knew us, they knew the preacher of our church, and they even knew some folks within the church, and they liked everyone out of that group. So, Amy asked them one time why they wouldn’t come to church with us. If they didn’t like our church then we would leave it alone, but they wouldn’t even really give it a chance. Their answer was, “Well, we don’t really believe in predestination and from what we understand that’s what Presbyterians primarily preach about isn’t it?” My response to that is, “only when we have to because of the text.”
For those of you who are sitting here today and you are still wondering what predestination and election even mean, well I’m going to try and give you as simple of an explanation as I can, but I am going to start with what it is not. Predestination, in the sense that we say it, is not a belief that everything that you or I am going to do is scripted by God from birth to death. Often times, that’s what people think it is, and this is evident from old sayings like, “If it’s meant to be, it will be.” Sure, I guess that’s right, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this doctrine of predestination. It isn’t as if God cares whether I have pizza or gumbo for lunch after I leave church today. The doctrines of predestination and election pertain to matters of salvation, not each and every move that we make. They are in essence more of an end-game concept instead of a play-by-play matter.
I want to pause for just a moment and look at the words of Jesus beginning in verse 35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” In other words, Jesus is all that we need to survive. The nourishment that we get from earthly bread and water is only temporary, but the nourishment given to us by Christ is eternal and everlasting. “But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.” Here Jesus is speaking to this group of people who have witnessed him do some amazing things, and yet they still doubt him, as we will see clearly in just a moment, to be the one who he claims to be. We too have been given more than enough “evidence” or reasons to believe in Christ; to believe in God. However, we don’t, at least not as a society as a whole. We only ask for more. As soon as our latest moment of clarity and closeness to God passes, we find ourselves doubting and wondering. As soon as the good times end and troubles begin, we don’t wonder how God will deliver us, but instead think that He has forsaken us. Friends, I can tell you without a doubt that God is real and is ever-present in our lives today.
Then, beginning in verse 37, Jesus begins some of the most debated statements in all of Scripture. He spends the next several verses talking about those that the Father has given him and those coming to him, and these two statements seem somewhat contradictory. Look at verse 39, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.” When we think of predestination and election we struggle with them because they make us feel like everything is already decided and that there is no hope for those currently outside of the Church. We struggle because it makes it seem as if God did not intend to save everyone with Christ’s death. We struggle because they make our God seem so exclusive. If you were a doctor and you prescribed medicine for a patient, do you cross your fingers and hope that it will have some healing impact on the patient’s life, or do you have a reasonable degree of confidence that the medication you prescribed will actually effect what you intend it to effect. Well, it would be the latter. Now, even though a doctor is highly educated, they are still moral and finite. They don’t have omniscience. They don’t know for sure that the medication they prescribe will do what they want it to do. That particular patient may be in the small number of people who have a violent reaction to that medication, and they don’t know that in advance. Nevertheless, they prescribe the medication anyway.
Now, let’s think about God. Do you think that when God planned His way of salvation that He just threw some “medication” out there and hoped that some people would take advantage of it and be healed? Or did He know the effect that it was going to have, since He had sovereignly determined that there were people who were going to be healed by the medicine of His grace, to honor His Son? You see, an overwhelming majority of Christians today think in terms of we come, we decide. After we decide then the Father recognizes our decision and makes us gifts to His Son, but that’s not what Jesus taught. “The ones whom the Father has given to Me will come to Me, every one of them.” The Father has already given, and Christ is waiting to accept them into his arms.
Feeling very much dumbfounded, much like we are today, over the words of Jesus, this group of people, this group of Jews, responds. They say that Jesus can’t be from heaven, they know who his parents are. How can this guy say that he has come down from heaven when they know where he was born and where he grew up? Jesus goes on to assure them that he is from heaven and that he is from the Father. He is the only way to eternal life; he is the bread come down from heaven. He tells them once again of the manna eaten in the wilderness and reminds them all those who received temporary nourishment from it died. They were fed for a time, but they too perished. Jesus, the bread of heaven, is the food that will nourish us and give us life everlasting. No, we do not become immortal on this earth, but we live eternally in heaven with the Father. Jesus was telling them that the way in which we have this eternal life is because of the sacrifice that he is going to make on our behalf, his very own flesh and blood.
The people are confused. They don’t understand this language of Christ being the bread of heaven and life being found in the eating of his flesh. And this isn’t an irrational thought. In the early centuries of Christianity, Christians were looked at as cannibals by outside groups because the language of eating and drinking the body and blood of their Savior didn’t make sense to other groups. Why, there are those out there today who are not Christians who still do not understand what it is we are doing when we partake of the Lord’s Supper. There is even a popular view of communion that believes that the elements of the bread and the cup are transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Christ upon partaking of them. Our view, however, in the Reformed tradition, is that the elements are merely symbols and represent the sacrifice of Christ. In our view, this sacrament commemorates Christ’s offering up of himself for our sins and it spiritually offers up to God every possible praise for that sacrifice.
As we prepare ourselves to receive these elements on this table before us, the bread and the cup, let us remember what they represent. The bread represents the body of Christ, the true food. The cup, representing the blood of Christ, is our true drink. Christ tells us that whoever partakes of these elements abides in Christ and Christ in them. Since the Father has sent him into the world and Christ lives because of the Father, those who feed upon him will live because of the Father as well. The bread that came down from heaven, Jesus Christ, is the one true nourishment that is found in this world, and I’m not talking about the elements but what they represent. When Jesus Christ is our goal, when we stop striving for the things of this world, then we are fully nourished and whole. Once God has called us to be His own and we have experienced the fullness of His glory and the richness of His love, then we will hunger and thirst no more. As Christ says of himself at the end of our text, “Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Glory be to God; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment