About this sermon
John 6:60-71 records the day many of Jesus’ disciples stopped following him. This sermon shows that the hard saying about eating his flesh and drinking his blood was a deliberate shock. Jesus pressed the picture of bread until it broke, so that hearers who wanted more loaves would see that he gives himself in death. The saying forced a decision. Many turned back, and Jesus asked the Twelve whether they would leave too. Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” and confessed Jesus as the Holy One of God before he understood everything. Verses 64, 65 and 70 then show that the Father grants faith and the Son chooses first. Christ holds his people through dry seasons and doubts, and he will never cast out anyone who comes to him.
Sermon transcript
Well, our text for this morning is taken from the Gospel of John. We’re continuing our series in John. John chapter 6, verses 60 through 71 this morning. The last part of chapter 6. John chapter 6, starting in verse 60. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, this is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.
And he said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the 12, do you want to go away as well? Simon Peter answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. Jesus answered them, did I not choose you, the 12? And yet one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the 12, was going to betray him. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for this, your word. For these, your words, even when you give us hard sayings.
Lord, we know that only here can we find the words of eternal life. We ask that you would open our hearts, open our ears to hear and to receive and to believe as the disciples did. We ask that you would bless this preaching and hearing of your word by your spirit for the sake of Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. I’ve titled the message this morning, To Whom Shall We Go? which was Peter’s question in verse 68. Well, when I was a kid, my dad made birthday cakes for us. And I don’t mean he bought a sheet cake. He was a skilled decorator, and each year, every one of us kids would ask for an animal, and he would build it from scratch. One year, I asked for a cobra.
I had a picture in my head. It was a flat snake, an outline, the kind you would cut out of a 9 by 13 in two dimensions. So my dad asked my mom to bake a couple of round cakes that during the day I was confused. Rounds? How do you make a snake out of rounds? Well, that evening, we gathered around the counter and watched him cutting the cake into the oddest shapes I could think of. And we swarmed him. Why are you cutting that? Why did you bake it that way? What is that going to be? He never answered a single one of our questions. He just worked silently. And I remember standing there as a birthday kid thinking, this is not going to work. But my mom would always tell us, be patient.
Trust your dad. And then there was that moment. He turned the piece, stacked a couple of pieces, fused them with icing, and suddenly he could see it. It wasn’t a flat two-dimensional snake. It was a coiled three-dimensional with its head rearing up. And I was amazed. He had taken my request and made it so much bigger than I had imagined. But I just couldn’t see it until the end. My dad had seen it all along. Now Jesus in our story isn’t silent the way my dad was. He’s been talking a lot to the Jews. But I think it still relates somewhat to the situation in John chapter 6. The crowd has been fed and they want more bread. And then Jesus starts cutting flesh, blood. Unless you eat me, you have no life in you.
And it starts looking like nothing they had asked for. Some of them leave the kitchen. And then Jesus turns to the 12. Do you want to go away as well? And Peter doesn’t say, I can see what you’re making. I see what you’re doing, Jesus. He says, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. So the first point that I want to look at from our passage this morning is the hard saying of Jesus. The hard, a hard saying. And the main idea here is that Jesus’ hard saying was a deliberate shock. It was meant to break the crowd’s physical frame so they could see that he was speaking in spiritual realities. And it also was meant to expose whether we’ll receive him on his terms. So as we begin, open this passage, we see that the disciples are now getting it.
Earlier in the chapter, the listeners were divided. Some understood and some didn’t. But by verse 60, pretty much everyone seems to understand. And they say, this is hard. Not who can understand it, but who can listen to this? Who can stay here listening to this? The word in Greek means like harsh or rough or like the hard master that Jesus tells the parable in Matthew with the talents. I knew you were a hard man, he accuses the master of being. This is a hard saying, like a path you can’t walk. It’s not that it’s complicated, but who can accept, not who can accept it, but Who can receive it? Who can listen to it? The issue is not understanding, but the issue is surrender. Now to see why it’s hard, we have to understand a little bit of what Jesus was doing.
Sort of like when my dad would cut the cakes, the cuts looked random at first, but they weren’t. So what is this hard saying? Well, if we look back in our passage, before our passage, what Paul spoke of last week in verse 53, you have, unless, Jesus says, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. And the hard saying is really the whole thing together, the whole bread of life discourse. But the sharpest edge comes in verses 51 through 58, which is what Paul was looking at with us last time. And Jesus is saying, unless people eat his flesh, drink his blood, then they have no life in them. And the essence, of course, is this, that eternal life is not found by receiving something from Jesus, but by receiving Jesus himself.
And specifically, Jesus given up in death. He doesn’t offer to merely teach them the way to life, or to supply bread that leads to life. Moses gave them bread. Nicodemus came saying, I know you’re a teacher who comes from God. But he says, I am the bread. And life only comes through total dependent union with Christ. So what was the saying for? Well, the reason he gives this saying is because they were stuck in the physical frame. They had followed him for the loaves. And in verse 31, they’re asking for a sign and they’re citing manna. We saw earlier in the chapter that Jesus calls them out 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. They were stuck in the physical frame.
They’re still thinking about bread. And Jesus keeps speaking of spiritual realities. And they keep saying, yeah, give us some bread. Give us this bread always. Similar to the misunderstanding the woman at the well had in chapter 4. Living in water sounds great. I’d love to not have to come back to this well anymore. So Jesus escalates in order to clarify He says in verse 35, I am the bread of life. Verse 51, the bread I will give is my flesh. And the crowd stays literal. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? In verse 52. And so verses 53 to 56, he doubles down. My flesh and blood, you must eat and drink. And he’s using, in verse 54, this graphic word of chewing or gnawing, this eating, this very visceral image, in order to shock them.
The shock is part of the point here. Because he pushes this picture of bread until it breaks. When eating my flesh starts to make no sense as a meal, They’re meant to stop them in their tracks and ask, what has he been talking about all along? He says, I’m the bread of life. Sure, give us some more bread. I’ve come down to be the bread of life. Yeah, when are you going to give us more bread? No, take a bite of my arm. Drink my blood. Whoa. What’s going on, Jesus? You’re not literally telling us to eat you, are you? And that shock was part of the point. Trying to get them to stop thinking in terms of purely the physical. What is he actually saying? sort of how Nicodemus was stuck in, Jesus says, born again, and all he can think of is how can I enter back in and be literally born again a second time.
And Jesus often uses this physical image throughout the gospels, the gospel, and lets the literal misunderstanding surface, and then uses that gap to teach. He names the key to understanding in our passage in verse 63. He states it clearly, the spirit gives life, the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. So Jesus is bringing this hard saying on purpose He’s pushing the analogy to the breaking point to confront them, to stop them in their tracks, to make them understand that they’re speaking of a spiritual reality. And not merely symbolic, but the reality being Christ himself. Christ himself, he’s saying, I am what you need, given in real death. And that is also part of the shock and can only be received by faith. Because we might see six reasons why this saying is hard, is it’s offensive on its surface.
Especially if you take it literally, that’s offensive to say that you’re offering your own flesh to be eaten is cannibalistic. But it also claims too much about Jesus, because he claims exclusivity. It says, I am the only one. Came down from heaven. I’m the bread of life. You have to come to me. And if not, there’s no life anywhere else. But also his offering his flesh and blood is pointing to his death. It points to a death. And it was extremely offensive for the Messiah to die if he was indeed the Messiah. It removes also self-sufficiency when he says, I’m the only one you can come to. You can’t make it on your own. There’s no source of life. It also exposes motives. and it leaves no middle ground. Jesus brings this hard saying to bring a confrontation, bring them to their senses.
And this is where the disciples start departing. It’s come to this point. And this is where the ones who start leaving get it wrong. They stayed in the physical frame. While Jesus was pressing them out of it, by stopping them in their tracks, they give a fleshly response to His spiritual claim. That’s why He tells them, the flesh is no help, you won’t make it staying in the physical fleshly realm, in the fleshly plane. If you remain in the flesh, giving in to your sin nature, refusing to understand things on a spiritual level, you will only respond in the way of the flesh, which is to reject the claims of Jesus. And it’s worth asking ourselves, where are we hearing Jesus as merely a provider of benefits or a helper? helpful teacher, when he’s pressing us to receive us, receive him himself, to come to him alone, not to just receive the benefits, not the peripheral benefits that come from him, but him himself.
Now everyone heard the same shocking words Some were pushed out of the physical and into trust. And others were pushed away. So what did they do? Which brings us to the second point, which is the choice that they made. The choice they made, number two. And the main idea here is that Jesus’ words force a decision. Many walk away. The twelve are asked to choose consciously. Peter’s answer is not, we understand it all, but we have tasted life in your words and there’s nowhere else to find it. So we see in verse 66, this begins after this. or from this time. This hard saying right here is the dividing line and two paths then open up. Neutrality is no longer possible and this clarity that Jesus brings forces a decision upon his audience. And even not choosing itself is a choice.
So we look at the first path that some chose is that many turned back. Now notice it says who these are in verse 61, verses 60, throughout the passage. These are the disciples. These are followers. These are not the hecklers. These are not the Pharisees trying to trip him up. But these are disciples. These are those who have followed Jesus. Now, of course, Jesus had many disciples throughout his ministry. We think of the 12 who were then made apostles, but Jesus had many disciples who were following him. So these are people who had followed, listened, they had believed to some extent, but proximity is not the same as faith. And that’s what Jesus is calling them out throughout our passage as we see. John describes it as they turned back, literally, to the things that were behind them, and they no longer walked with Him.
Interestingly enough, the Bible throughout the New Testament, in the epistles especially, speaks of walking as living, as our life. And these no longer walked with Jesus. They were offended in some way. They couldn’t accept his claims. They couldn’t agree with him. They didn’t want what it might cost, and so they turned back. They no longer walked with him. Now, the text doesn’t give us a specific reason of why they left, but it could have been a loss of interest. The novelty, the miracles, the momentum were gone. Jesus was no longer giving them what they had come for. He’s pressing them to come to himself. Some of them may have turned back from disgust. They refused to see his words in any other way except purely the physical realm. And that was just too much to stomach.
That guy is crazy. Some of them were rejecting his claims. We see in verse 42, they said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus says, I’ve come down from heaven. That’s my origin. We kind of know this guy. We grew up around his parents. We’ve seen him. What is he talking about? And they won’t give any inch. They won’t believe that there’s anything special about him. So for him to be claiming such extensive, glorious claims about himself, his relationship with his father, his origin from heaven, his own deity, his own being, the thing that we need for life, is just too much to handle. All of the reasons may have differed among these people, but the result was the same.
They had the opportunity to embrace Jesus and they chose their old lives over Him. They decided, I’m going to go back to the familiar. I don’t want any more of this Jesus. And so then Jesus turns and asks this question to the 12 in verse 67. That’s where we have the distinguishing mark. The disciples generally would have been the crowds who were following him, but then Jesus talks to the 12 that we know as the disciples. And in the English here, it says, do you want to go away as well? That’s because the question is actually a little bit hard to translate fully from the Greek. The Greek has sort of a no thrown in there, like an expected answer. Do you not want to go away as well? Don’t you not want to follow?
And this is a very tender, vulnerable sort of question, putting the disciples in a place. Jesus is not saying, I’m forcing you to follow me, but he’s giving them that openness, but also asking them to make this choice. He says you can’t keep just hanging around without making a decision. Everyone else is making decisions, and even the 12 here. You can’t just stay by default, by habit, because everyone else does. Discipleship is not inherited or drifted into or assumed. And there’s a sense in which every one of us hears this question. Especially if you grow up in church, maybe your parents made you come to these sort of things. Maybe you do it to respect the people you know and love. But there comes a point when Jesus says, are you going to leave too when things are hard?
Or will you stick with? Will you make that decision? And we also hear this question, I think, terms of the daily life, not always in terms of a crisis of doubt, but sometimes in seasons of dryness or seasons of extra cost or disappointment. Are you going to leave too when things are not going quite as well? when it just is more challenging than you thought, when Jesus is asking you to give up more than you counted on. So it’s better to answer it deliberately than to drift into an answer that you might not want to. So Peter gives the answer, though, in response to Jesus’s question, Lord, to whom shall we go? It’s not a triumphant answer. Peter doesn’t say, no problem, Jesus, we understand it completely. This is easy. I don’t know what they’re talking about.
He says, where else can we go? There’s nowhere else. Peter’s faith is not a mastery, but a recognition that all of the other alternatives, when I look around, he says, then I don’t know where else. They’re all emptier. Nothing else seems to quite add up. You have the words of eternal life. And this, of course, connects with what Jesus had just said in verse 63. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. Peter is saying, I hear that. I don’t know all what you were saying. Maybe you’re talking about a death and I don’t understand and I’m not sure that you should be talking about your death. But I know there’s nowhere else that I can find these words of life. The twelve probably couldn’t have explained this flesh and blood saying that Jesus was just discussing, and yet they heard, they saw, they sensed, they tasted that there’s something different in these words.
This man who is speaking has something unique. Other teachers give advice or insight or techniques, but his words, the words of this man, give what they describe. He says, I am the bread of life and these words feed. Matthew describes in the Sermon on the Mount how at the end of the sermon the people are listening and their main reaction is amazement at the authority that Jesus is teaching with. The scribes had come saying, here’s the law, here’s the word, and they’re teaching a derived authority. To the extent that they were teaching correctly, they are teaching the Old Testament. But Jesus comes and says, I’m not just going to tell you about the things of eternal life. I am. I am the one. I am the source of life. I am the one you must come to, the one you must trust in, believe in, feed on.
And Peter says, you are the holy one of God. Peter confesses who Jesus is, not just what he says. Nicodemus had thought he was giving Jesus a compliment. You’re a teacher who’s come from God. And Jesus says, no. I’m God who’s come to teach. And Peter says, I get it. You’re the holy one of God. The words carry life because of the one who is speaking them. And he says, we have believed and come to know. Come to understand. Come to recognize. with a settled conviction and a history behind it. He doesn’t say, you just really impressed us just now. We have believed, we’ve come to know. This has been a process. We’ve gotten to know you, Jesus, and your words ring true. There’s something different, unique. And belief leads and knowledge follows as they walk with him.
He says, we come to embrace you and as we’re walking we start to understand. And you don’t have to understand everything in the Bible to recognize the words of life here. Maybe you’re here this morning and you’re not sure about all of what the Bible says. You don’t have to be an expert, you don’t have to know everything. to know that there’s life in this book. Come first. Come to hear the words. And as you come, your understanding will grow. Where do people go when Jesus’ words are hard, when his claims are too much, when what he asks is too difficult? Sometimes people will turn to success or relationships, or ideology, or self-help books. The culture is full of these alternatives. And they might have words for Monday morning and for Tuesday, but none of them has words for the hospital room, for the end of life.
None of them has words for the next life. None of them can give us peace with God. But Peter’s answer is available to all of us. To people with, feel like you’re hanging on by the last shred of faith. You don’t need to feel victorious on top of your religious game to say, where else should I go? I’m seeing emptiness everywhere and I see that you’ve got the words of eternal life. For a sinking, if you’re on a sinking ship, the ship’s going down and a person offers you a lifeboat, you’re not going to be examining the design, critiquing the paint job. You’re going to say, where else can I go and jump in? And that’s what it means to choose to follow Jesus, as the disciples did. Now, Peter’s answer is beautiful, but did Peter stay because he was wiser, stronger, or more spiritual than the ones who were leaving?
John, of course, says no. And he wants us to see why. So number three, this morning, we see that the choice was not ultimately theirs. The choice was not ultimately theirs. Peter’s, to whom shall we go, is a beautiful answer, but verses 64, 65, and 70 refuse to let him take credit for it. John pulls back the curtain, and the staying and the leaving were never only about human decision. Rather, something older and deeper was at work. And the first thing we see in 64 is that Jesus is not surprised. We see here, John says, Jesus knew from the beginning, in verse 64, who those were who did not believe and who it was that would betray him. Jesus knew before he brought the crisis to this point, before he says this hard saying, he’s not surprised.
This is not catching him off guard. Suddenly I’m losing my popularity. And it means that the cross as well that Jesus was referring to in this passage was not plan B either. Judas was not an unforeseen glitch. The exodus of the disciples is not evidence that Jesus misjudged his audience or failed as a communicator. He said the hard saying knowing exactly what it would sift. And this is actually comforting, not cold. We can think of Jesus’ understanding as, well, if he already knew everything, then That sounds cold and harsh, deterministic. But we’re going to see that Jesus chose Judas knowing he would never believe, showed him love, washed his feet, and cared for him despite what he knew about him in the end. I think this can provide some comfort for parents, pastors, Those who watch people walk away from the faith can take heart that the one who sent is not panicking.
God still knows and He can still bring them back. The second thing we see in verse 65 is that faith is granted. And he said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father. This is Jesus’ own explanation of the desertion and he offers it to actually the very people that are starting to turn away and grumble. He uses the word granted. which is like a gift, is being given. Unless it has been given by my Father. The gift precedes the coming, he says. We see this also in verse 37. All that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. The giving comes first, he says, and then the coming follows. And so he says, if you’ve not been given this faith, then you’ll hear with deaf ears.
You won’t hear. And in a sense, this reinforces the hardness of the saying because it reinforces the aspect that we’re not ultimately in charge. but that grace is a gift, a gift from God. Because those given by the Father will come. And Jesus will never cast them out, He says, as we just read in verse 37. And no one can come, He says, unless the Father draws him. And Jesus will raise him up on the last day, in verse 44. And no one can come unless it is granted, verse 65. The crowd’s problem was their self-reliance. And Jesus’ answer is that self-reliance is precisely why they cannot come. Why they’ve been unable to come. They’re unwilling to give up their own self-dependent, self-reliance and come and receive Him as bread. And so Jesus says, You must be given this to break their self-reliance, to prompt them to see eating is receiving, faith is receiving, and even the hand that reaches out to receive is a gift from God.
What it also makes the point Jesus is saying, that we looked at last time, is that all whom the Father gives will come. There’s not a single one who has been drawn, given by the father, granted, who will fail to come in the end. The giving, the drawing, the raising up are all the father’s work. And the text never says that the father’s gift will fail. Jesus says that his words are this spirit and the life. The spirit works through these words that he’s speaking to awaken the dead. Peter’s response in verse 68, you have the words of eternal life, is the spirit given answer to the claim that Jesus makes. The very words that offended some give life to others. Same words, same place, Different result, and the difference is the Father’s gift. We could think of, as an illustration, the man Lazarus, Jesus’ friend, who we’ll see him raise in a few chapters.
And Jesus doesn’t ask dead Lazarus to try harder. He speaks. He commands him. And at that moment of command, he is utterly unable to respond, to come out. And yet in Jesus’ words of command, life is given the dead man and he obeys. He walks out. And so the word that calls is the word that enables. And Peter’s faith is like Lazarus walking out of the tomb, responding to the word of Christ when he says, come to me. And when you come, it will be evidence that you were granted faith by my Father. And he says, in verse 70, we see that their choice reflected his choice. He says, did I not choose you, the 12? Peter speaks, expressing faith, and Jesus says, yes. You have faith because I chose you. I chose you first.
Disciples chose to follow Jesus, but Jesus makes clear the sequence. He chose first. He’ll reiterate this later in the gospel, John 15, 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And that’s actually the comfort. Because Peter’s staying is a reflection of what has happened first. We have believed, we have come to know, describes a settled state, but that state rests upon the earlier verse 65, it has been given and the gift lies behind the confession. And this is what makes Peter’s faith durable. Peter will deny Jesus within a year, and yet his faith will hold in the end. It will look like it has failed, but Jesus says, I have prayed for you. And in the end, he restores him. Because what held Peter was not the strength of his faith, but Christ’s grip on Peter.
Just what it was like with him walking on the water and being saved from drowning And this ultimately for us as well is a fraying implication because if your faith depended upon you, every hard season would be a threat. But because it rests on the prior choice, he has chosen you. We are chosen first by God. The dry season is not the end. Your to whom shall we go is both the answer and the evidence that he’s already laid hold of you. Before we close our passage, we find the troubling verse of verse 71. He spoke of Judas Simon Iscariot, for he was one of the 12. We’ll describe verse 70, and yet one of you is a devil, speaking of Judas. And Jesus puts some of that tension in the text. I chose you, the twelve.
That’s why you’re able to believe. And yet, there’s also a sense in which this choice at this point is, he’s speaking on two levels. He has chosen those who will believe, but he’s also chosen to have one of his close disciples be one of those who will not believe. Judas was chosen for the apostolic company. He did miracles. People were amazed at Judas’ authority and power. And yet, he was never one of those to whom the Father gave the Son. Judas will say later, I lost none of those that you gave me, Father, except the Son of Perdition, who was destined to Destruction. We see that Jesus holds, the scriptures, Jesus holds unbelief against unbelievers. He says, 64, there are some of you who do not believe. You have every reason, humanly speaking, you ought to believe, and yet you don’t.
And of course, that is because of God’s sovereign gift. And there’s a tension here that we feel. Responsibility is real and so is grace. And it’s meant to humble us and also give us comfort and not to give up or despair. And the reason we have Judas here as an example, I think, is that we’re meant to understand that proximity is not belonging. Judas heard every sermon, saw every miracle, ate at the table. And this warning here is for the comfortable, for people who assume that association, that mere church attendance Hanging out with religious activities can settle things, can make us right with God without an inward change. But Judas is not meant to be a source of paranoia. Judas is not a trapdoor beneath anxious believers making us question every second our faith is wobbly whether we’re truly saved.
Because people who fear have that concern that they’re not truly saved are actually rarely in Judas’ position. It’s often that concern which is precisely what meant to drive us to Christ. For Judas, it drove him away. And Jesus clearly says, whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Judas’ problem was he never came truly to Jesus. And if you come, it’s a sign of the Father’s drawing. So as we conclude, we see that Jesus said some hard things. And he said it on purpose. To break our picture of bread and show us that he himself is the life. Many heard it and walked away. The 12, though were asked to choose. And Peter answered in response, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And yet even that answer that he gave was a gift.
Because the father had given him, the son chose him and keeps him. So if you’re tempted to leave, your staying power was never the foundation. of your faith. Bring your weak faith to the one who chose you. He’s not surprised at your doubts, at your temptations, and He’s not leaving. If you’ve drifted or you’re grieving over someone who has, understand Jesus is not surprised either. Jesus knew, and the Father is still drawing people to the Son. Peter’s own story, his example shows us that stumbling is not the end necessarily. And if you’re standing firm this morning, nobody here earned a seat. You are the Holy One of God is a confession that we have been granted by free grace. That’s where Jesus’ hard saying turns tender. Jesus who says, no one can come to me unless it’s granted.
It’s the same Jesus who says, whoever comes to me, come and I will never cast him out. I never understood what my dad was doing when he would cut those cakes in the strange shapes. My mom didn’t ask me to. She just said, trust your dad. And that’s Peter’s answer. That’s the hymn that we’re going to sing in response in a moment. It doesn’t say, I understand everything. It says, I know whom I have believed. We may not grasp every hard saying from Jesus or from in the Bible, but we know the one who speaks them and that he’s able to keep us. holding on until that day. Let’s pray and then sing. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you draw people to yourself. We thank you that you chose us before we chose you.
For Lord, if you waited for us to choose you, we would be forever lost. And yet, You did not wait, but you overcame with your irresistible grace, overcame our hard and stubborn fleshly hearts by your great and glorious grace. So we praise you and thank you. And Lord, we ask that if there are any here who are still resisting, tempted to turn away, that you would draw them to yourself as well. and assure them that whoever comes will never be cast out. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, in response, let’s turn and sing hymn 517. Let’s stand and sing hymn 517, I Know Whom I Have Believed.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.