Let's have the Lord lead us and do his word this morning, if you'll turn to John chapter six. We want to speak this morning about the two sides of salvation. In the Gospel of John Jesus tells us seven different ways how we are to perceive him. He tells us in seven different ways exactly who he is. He says, I am the bread of life who ever comes to me, shall not hunger, and whoever believes me shall never thirst. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. I am the good shepherd and the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. I am the resurrection of the life. Whoever believes in me, though he dies yet, shall he live. I am the way and the truth in the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. I am the vine. And my Father is the vine dresser. I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I am him, he is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. These seven statements about who Jesus is, all begin with the words I am. And attendant to each one of these with rare exception is some discourse that explains what Jesus meant and some miracle that illustrates it. When Jesus says, I am the bread of life, it was because he had just fed 5,000 people bread and fish from a few loaves and a couple of little fish that he would use. He received and then there is this great discourse in John chapter 6 of which we are in the midst of that explains what he meant. When he says, I am the light of the world, right after that, he heals a man who was born blind. When he says, I am the door and I am the good shepherd. It is because he has healed a nobleman's son and brought that man into the faith, this pagan Roman official. And he is the good shepherd who goes over to Jerusalem and seeks and finds a lame man to bring him to eternal life. When he says, I am the resurrection of the life, it is because he raised Lazarus from the dead which he explains in the passage in one of his great discourses. When he says, I am the way the tooth in life, it is because he is walked on water and his own resurrection is proof that he is life. And then he explains that in a discourse known as the upper room teaching or the upper room discourse, John 13 through 17 and finding what he says, I am the vine. Well we know that Jesus has already turned water into wine and he is about in his great discourse to give them the gift of the Holy Spirit which is the wine in new wine skins. So in each of his statements there is his own witness, I am. There is the work that he does, some great miracle or sign, John calls it, that illustrates these things and then his word as he explains it in his discourses. That is what Jesus Christ said he would do, that he and his works and the Father would witness to who he was and why he came. That is why this book, this section, these first 11 chapters of John are called the Book of Signs because Jesus is giving the signs to substantiate who he says he is and explaining what he intends to do among us. Here in John 6 there are two miraculous signs, there is the miraculous multiplication of five barley loaves and two fish that feed 5,000 men and their wives and children perhaps the crowd as large as 20,000 or more. And then there is the miraculous walking on water where Jesus walks across the sea, gets into a boat and instantaneously transports that boat to the shore. And because of those two signs the people wonder about Jesus Christ, they are just like Nicodemus, they think you cannot do these signs unless God is with you. So look what the people do in John 6, verse 22. On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberius came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum seeking Jesus and when they found him on the other side of the sea they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus reads their hearts, he knows their motives and he says in verse 26, truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life which the son of man will give to you, for on him God the Father has set his seal. Then they said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? What can we do to continue to get this bread? And they had these heavenly blessings, evil knew you were gone and Jesus answers them in verse 29. This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. Now the crowd doesn't like that answer. They don't want to be called to faith and to self renouncing and to trust in Jesus Christ. They just want the free lunch and so they resist his call with this challenge in verse 30. So they said to him, what signs do you do that we may see and believe you? What works do you perform? Are fathers eight men in the wilderness? As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Now this is what they say folks, you know Moses gave us miraculous bread and quail meat from heaven every single day. We didn't have to do anything. We know that you have the ability to give us bread and fish every day. Why don't you give us this bread from heaven like Moses did? This is the work we want you to do for us to continue to give us bread and meat bread and fish. The problem is that Jesus is not Moses. He's not a prophet. He's God in the flesh and he's not come just to give us free lunch but to give us the free gift of eternal life. So Jesus answers them in verse 32. Truly I say to you it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven but my father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They said to him, sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe. All that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me 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. For this is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. Jesus says to eat the bread and to drink the blood of Jesus Christ is simply to have faith in him. Verse 29. This is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. Verse 35, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger but whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe. Verse 40. For this is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. Verse 47, truly, truly I say to you whoever believes has eternal life. So to eat the bread from heaven and live forever is to believe in Jesus Christ and to have eternal life. Jesus said all of my signs point to the same thing. You did not come here he said because you saw signs. That's why you should have come. You should have seen that I am of God. Just as you suspect no one can do these things unless he is from God. I am from God. I have come down from heaven and I am the bread of life. To believe in me is to be nourished by me and to live for eternal life but you have come for free bread rather than for free forgiveness. Hence that's why theologians call this section of John the book of signs because there's one sign after another that is intended to bring the people to faith in Christ. Instead, these signs turn them away from him. You know, we are not much different from people in that age. Americans still like the dog and pony show. They still like life under the big tub. Hurry, hurry, hurry, step right up for that greatest show on earth entertainment, big personalities, mystical and supernatural and just stupendous things. We never think that's not usually the way that God works. In fact, I am safe to say that God often does the opposite of the way that we would do things. If we wanted a big crowd, why? If that's the measure of God with a man, we're in trouble. I just came from Germany last week where one man on repeated occasions assembled one million people carrying torches, singing hymns. Chanting phrases, giving the salute. His name was Adolf Hitler. Certainly he must have been from God. For no man could not be other than from God and assemble such a large crowd of people, so committed to the right things. Jesus will find out next week as we get to the end of this chapter has an amazing way whenever the crowd gets real big to say something hard and send them away. And here's his hard saying, I am the bread of life. I have come down from heaven, whoever eats of me will live forever and the people can accept it. You watch in just a few verses, beginning in verse 60, how Jesus Christ will boil this huge crowd of 20,000 plus down to nothing to 12 people and ask them, do you want to go away also? This is a hard saying. Free bread, lots of fish, excited crowds with all your friends, those are always much more attractive to us than repentance and faith and following Jesus Christ on the lonely road of discipleship, always more attractive. But Jesus never plays to the crowd. You know why? Because Jesus knows something, he's about to tell us. For these people to have eternal life and to go to heaven, it's not enough that they come and get something from Jesus Christ. God the Father has to do something in their life before they are ready to respond to Jesus Christ. So Jesus looks for the signs, there's that word again, the signs of true belief, rather than the falling adoration of a huge crowd, the things he's massively important. Jesus Christ will now tell us about the two sides of God's salvation, that God must draw a person to himself and that person then must re-believe in Jesus Christ. Side number one, God must draw people to Christ. Chapter 6 verse 41. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that comes down from heaven. They said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered them, do not grumble among yourselves. Listen carefully, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets and they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me, not that anyone has seen the father, except he who is from God, he has seen the father. Truly, truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life, I am the bread of life, your father's ate the man in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Jesus is expounding upon a statement he made earlier in verses 35 through 40 where he said, and this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me. All that the father has given me, he says will come to me because he has drawn them. Jesus says it is God who chooses to work in a person by the power of the Holy Spirit. And these people and these people only will begin to see me, Jesus Christ for who I really am. It is God who chooses to open up their hearts, to reveal to them the things of the Spirit. And only they will repent and believe, only they will eat the bread of heaven and gain eternal life. What he says here, do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. As is written in Isaiah, Isaiah, chapter 50, they will all be taught by God. Everyone who is heard and learned from the father comes to me. There is that deliberate statement of Jesus Christ that it is God who must draw people to him. It is not that people all of the sudden just decide that they like free bread and maybe Jesus Christ can give them something else. It is God who has to work in their life and draw them beyond the immediate benefits of Christ to the eternal benefit of redemption. If he draws us, unless he draws us to himself, is why we say that by grace you have been saved and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Now, you know where I'm heading. Why don't I just get this dirty word out in the open? I'm talking about pre-destination, election. The sovereign choice of God, the father, to bring people to himself. It is what the apostles talked about. They talked about how God had predestined Pontius Pilate and the Jews to do whatever they did to Jesus Christ in Ephesians. Paul says, Blessed be the God in Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ Jesus with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, as even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He predestined us for adoption. In fact, we are told that we were to obtain an inheritance because we were predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things out of the counsel of his will. Jesus Christ himself refers to the elect. When he's talking about the great tribulation at the end of time, he says, unless those days have been cut short for the sake of the elect, no one would be saved, but for the sake of the elect, they will be cut short. This is the standard understanding of salvation in the historic Protestant church, in the historic Catholic Church, in the historic Orthodox Church, Augustin, and Aquinas, and Luther, and Calvin, and Kranmer with the Episcopians, and Knox with the Presbyterians, Menosimans with the Anabaptists, the great Puritans and Evangelicals, Jonathan Edwards in George Whitfield, all these people accepted as fact the statement of our Westminster Confession of Faith, God from all eternity did by the most wise, and Holy Council of His own free will, unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass yet. So as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to will of the creature, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away but rather established. In other words, God predestines what's going to happen, but not to make us sin, not to rob us of our choices, the exercise of our will, and not to do away with cause and effect. In that same chapter, the confession of faith says, by the decree of God for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life and some are for ordained to everlasting death. It cannot be denied, folks, that election, predestination, God's choosing, God's drawing, God's sovereign act of saving us by His grace through the gift of faith and not according to our own efforts is undeniably taught in the Scripture. Jesus Himself establishes the truth in this passage. Now, I know that there is no doctrine as repugnant to the American psyche as this one for five reasons, number one. It shatters the illusion that we have free access by our own will to all of the benefits that God offers in this life. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and none are preferred by God, but that is not true. This is not a matter of our choice, of our access. This is a matter of God's working in our life. Number two, it shatters the American myth of self-determination that we are the captains of our faith. That is not true. Third, it leaves only God with all the glory for any person's salvation. We can't say, yep, I'm a sinner like everybody else, but at least I repented and believed there is no at least. It is the gift of God that receives the glory. Fourthly, it calls us to utter abandonment in faith and it makes us totally dependent upon God's grace. There is nothing but the sovereign mercy of God standing between us and eternal death. And last of all, this is where it becomes most hard, most difficult. It scares us. Because we ask ourselves, what if my son is not elect? What if my daughter is never drawn by God? What if my spouse is not chosen by God the Father for the gift of eternal life? And that, my friend, is a frightening thought. But we can't deny it is difficult and unpleasant as it is, kind of like the doctrine of hell. That's a difficult and unpleasant thing, and there are books coming out, published even this past month, that simply by evangelical sense, well, hell doesn't exist. Nobody goes there because it's so unpleasant for us to think about. One of the things that we need in the American Church is the ability to face unpleasant truth with the grace of Jesus Christ. And this is an unpleasant truth. When it comes to eternal life, we are not in control. We have more than enough witnesses loved ones to believe this. We have the words of Jesus Christ here. That no one will come to me unless the Father draws him. That all that the Father has given to me and only those will not perish. We have the witness of the apostles. They clearly teach this. That all things work together for the good of those who love God and who have been chosen according to His purpose. For those whom He loved, He forenew and whom He forenew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the first born among many brothers. We have the witness of the church. We had time this morning. I could take us to the 39 articles of the Anglican Church. I could take us to the London Confession of 1689. They became the Philadelphia Confession of 1706 for American Baptists. I could take us to the Augsburg Confession of the Germans, to the Westminster Confession of Faith, to the Heidelburg Catechism, to the Belgium Confession, and on and on and on all these wonderful and frightening statements about God's elective grace and power in eternal life. There's a fourth witness and that is that it's demonstrated in human life. How is it, folks, that a family will come here, a husband, a wife, four children? They will sit under the same preaching in the same church, the same word, the same Holy Spirit working through the same means of grace, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, one life after one life, after another life. And some will believe and some will not. Same genes, same intelligence, same work of God, and yet three children will be drawn to Christ and one will not. How do you explain that? You mean someone chooses hell over heaven? They logically make that choice? There's a fifth and more powerful witness of this truth and that's your own life. You ever noticed when you first became a Christian and you gave your testimony, it was a lot more exciting than when you get older. Because you told of all the horrible things you did, what a wretched young man you were, but then you chose Jesus Christ. If you're not careful, you go back and listen. You were the hero in your early testimony. You were the star, but as you get older, you don't focus on what you were, but what you are. And the more you tell that story, the more God becomes the hero. It was God who drew you. It was God who gave you Christ and it was God who's made you the person you are today. We struggle with this doctrine. And so did the people here. Jesus said unless God gives you the bread of life and you won't live forever. And they said, you know, we can't accept this. We know where you're from, young man. You're from Nazareth and you're not from heaven. We know your mom and dad and there were nothing specials that don't put on airs with us. And we know who we are. All we need is a little bread from God, a fish now and then, little help from heaven. And we can handle the rest. And Jesus says, my beloved friends, that's simply not true. But that's only half the story. Now let's turn to the half we like. Here's what we call the good news. I call the other good news because when it comes to being in charge of my salvation, I'd rather God have his hands on the wheel than me. I'm a complete theological and spiritual bozo. God knows how to save. But he doesn't save apart from me. He does call me to make a choice. That's the second side of salvation. People must believe in Jesus Christ, verse 52. The Jews then disputed among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, as you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. I will raise him up on the last day for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living father sent me, I live because of the father. So whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. Now he turns right around and says, look, the father is drawing you but you must eat. It's as if someone had sit down a meal in front of you, you're responsible to take it and eat it and be healthy and live. Eating my flesh and drinking my blood according to Jesus Christ is all about believing because he alternately says unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in yourself. If you believe in me, you have life in yourself so that believing becomes synonymous with eating and drinking. This passage really has very little to do with the Lord's supper. Jesus is not saying unless you come and take the bread and wine which are symbols of the body and blood of Christ you will not have life in yourself. That word of the case than salvation would be a matter of attending church occasionally and taking a sacrament. But the question is which church? The Catholic church and transubstantiation, the Lutheran church and consubstantiation, the Baptist and their memorial view, the Presbyterians and their sacramental view, which one really saves? We've argued about that for 2,000 years now and how often, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, how about just once after I'm born and once before I die as some saints did in the early days of the church? And what about the person who administers it? Does he have to be a priest or a pastor or a layman? Can I take virtual communion over the internet? Can I go to an emergent church that has communion 24-7? There are emergent churches that lead the bread and the wine out, 24 hours every day and whenever you want to go in and take it you can do that by yourself. I don't know what's co-union about that by yourself but that's what they do. I mean which way is the right way to do this? And if it's all about communion then are we not being saved apart from Christ according to our religious rituals? This isn't about communion. Jesus said, I, I and the bread of life, I have come down from heaven. The bread of life is he whom God has sent. Jesus is the bread of life. What he's talking about is that when you eat food and you ingest it, it abides in you. It becomes part of you. You and the food become one. In fact the food going in becomes life in you. This is Jesus' way of describing the doctrine of the mystical union of Christ and the believer. They come to Christ and receive him and he enters into their life through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and that spirit gives them life. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of man who loved me and gave himself up for me. Certainly the Lord's Supper is a picture of what Jesus is saying. Another sign and symbol of the covenant of grace, the bread, his flesh, the wine, his blood. What Jesus is saying is that you have to come to the point where you're convinced that uniting yourself to me through faith is all you need to do to live forever. That I will, a tone for and pay for all your sins, that I will remove the wrath of God from you, that I will give you my righteousness so that you have favor with God, that my spirit will adopt you to be a child of God as I am, that you will be in our family and my father will love you as he loves me forever and never forsake you even in the hour of death. That's a lot to ask us to believe. In fact, it's impossible for us to believe that think of what Christ is asking us to do to trust in him alone. What if he's wrong? What if he's not all that he says he is? What if he cannot do all that he said he could do? What if Jesus really meant that we should receive him and join the church and take the sacraments and keep the Ten Commandments and live by the church's law and when all of that was done, faith and sacraments and church membership and good works, then maybe we'd have eternal life. What if that's what he really meant, then he would have said so. But here's all he says, whoever believes in me shall have eternal life. Trusting Christ alone for all of those things we mentioned, trusting Christ for good works, trusting Christ for forgiveness, trusting Christ for righteousness, trusting Christ to escape the wrath of God, trusting Christ to become a child of God. You know, we ask people to trust in Christ all the time. Don't you think it's right for preachers to tell you what you're trusting in? You're trusting in Jesus Christ for everything you lack to make you right with God. You're trusting Jesus Christ to fill up your death, your spiritual death with his eternal and living spirit who will give you eternal life. That is not virtual communion or some ancient ritual. That is a living and abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. Here's what he's saying, God has given you the bread of life. God has sent his spirit out among you to draw you to that. He's opened up your minds to see that there is no other way to heaven but through Jesus Christ. Everything else will fail. And he's given you the gifts of repentance and faith. And therefore alongside of God's sovereign choice is your deliberate choice to believe, to receive, to trust, to surrender, to follow Jesus Christ. So that it's not just a matter of God's choice, you must believe too. You know, it's a blessing that God didn't send preachers to preach predestination. That'd be a miserable calling. We mention it when it's in the text. What he sent us to preach is this, that in Jesus Christ God offers you eternal life, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You said, preacher, you just contradict yourself, I never contradict myself. Ask Jane. It does sound contradict if you don't. But it's not. Because we wouldn't believe in Jesus Christ unless we were chosen by the Father. What's the evidence that we are elect? That we believe in Jesus Christ. That's the ceiling proof. Only those whom the Father draws will believe in me. Therefore, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you were drawn by God the Father. This doctrine of election is not given to unsettle you, but rather once you put your faith in Jesus Christ to give you an assurance of salvation. Our confession says that, speaking I think to ministers, that this high and holy doctrine and divine mystery of predestination is given for the comfort of the saints and should be preached with much discretion and wisdom. Unless people become discouraged and not trust in Christ. I remember one time I was having lunch with a with a Methodist friend of mine. He's a Methodist pastor and theologian. He teaches at the Wesley Biblical seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, a wonderful man named Bill Uri. And I figured it was going to be several weeks until he got and finally he got around. He said, I'd like to talk to you about predestination. I said, I really don't want to talk to you about that. He said, well, I want to talk about it. I said, okay, let's talk about it. Well, we had an hour long discussion. And then in the end, I said, Bill, we're never going to agree upon this doctrine. I think in this life. But let me, let me ask you if we can agree upon this. Do you believe that the only way for someone to come to Jesus Christ and be saved is for God to choose to work in their life. He said, I do. I said, then, you know, we agree. I call that predestination. You call it prevenient grace. I really don't care what you call it. The fact is God by his grace must work in our life and give us repentance and faith or we won't be saved. And he said, that is right. Sometimes it's the labels that turn us off. But listen to what Jesus is saying. God is on your side. God is not some angry, wrathful being sitting there in heaven, just waiting for you to get your comeuppance. And you've got a time clock. And if you don't believe in Jesus, I got you. I'll get even with you. No. God has preceded Jesus Christ, Jesus says. He was drawing people to Christ, preparing them through the Holy Spirit to understand what it was to live in Christ and receive the bread of life. And Jesus Christ was simply coming to seal the deal to give them the choice to repent and believe. And in so doing, they would give evidence and have the assurance that they were chosen and loved and saved by God forever and for always. These two sides of salvation are the two sides of the golden coin of redemption. God working on your behalf, you responding to Christ. And so I offer you an exhortation, a warning and an invitation. The exhortation is that you not be like the Jews. There were things about this they couldn't understand and there are things about predestination. We don't understand. I've talked to my friend Mike Milton and other theologians as he far better theologians than I am. And you know, none of us ever really understand all this mystery predestination. It is what we call an antinomy. God's sovereign choice and our choices, living intention with each other but it's at that point of biblical tension that Christ inserts himself and brings the will of God and the need of man together in sovereign mercy. I can't understand at all and I probably raise more questions in your mind than I'm able to answer but I know this that God is at work in this room right now because God desires none to perish but all to come to repentance. He takes no delight in the destruction of wicked but wishes that all would be saved. He wants to draw you to Jesus Christ. He's doing that now. The exhortation is do not reject what you can understand. God isn't saying that you're saved by understanding you're saved by faith. Trust in Jesus Christ you can see who he is and understand what he's done for you and that is all you're asked to believe in. The warning is this. Don't use predestination as an excuse for unbelief because it isn't. You haven't responded to what the Bible has said. How can you blame God for your non-response? After all, isn't the argument that you're free to choose whatever you want? Why not now? Why not stop arguing about the sovereignty of God and talk about your repentance and faith? You see loved ones that's the real issue. So here's the invitation. God has sent his only begotten son into the world that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. Will you be among that whomever? That's what Jesus said. All that the Father has given to me will come to me and whoever comes to me. I will not cast him out but I will give him the gift of eternal life. All the Father has chosen whoever wants to believe, pick your side of the coin. They both lead to the central tension of Christ and the cross. That is where you choose to believe or not to believe. I could be wrong about predestination, although I don't think so. But I'm not wrong about this, that there is salvation of no one else, where there was no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You and your household. This is the Word of the Lord. Amen. Let's pray, Father. There are a lot of things in the Bible. We don't understand. Of course you tell us that in Isaiah you say that your ways are higher than our ways and your thoughts far above ours. And yet your Word never goes out that it doesn't accomplish what it purposes as it's sent forth. And that is draw us step by step closer and closer to an understanding of who Jesus is and what he has done for us and to have faith in the free offer you give us. A forgiveness, righteousness and eternal life and adoption into your forever family if we simply surrender in faith to Jesus Christ. There are those in this room who have not done that yet. And I pray that this morning, even as I pray here, you would open up their hearts and give them the understanding that they need to turn from themselves in their sins and turn in complete reliance and trust upon Jesus Christ. And that he alone is enough to save them from the wrath to come and to give them the gift of eternal life. Help us to believe and to receive that Jesus is the bread that comes down from heaven that will give us and keep us alive forever more. And once we have received that truth, we have exercised our choices to repent and believe, then give us the assurance that it was you working all the time to God be the glory great things he has done in saving us by a sovereign mercy. For this Father, we praise you and thank you and we will do so forever because you have given us Christ and with him the gift of eternal life. Amen.