“For this is the will of My Father” John 6:35-40

Around July 1st of 2011 I by the will of the Lord began to memorize the gospel of John a verse at a time, I am now in John chapter 6. Often I have endeavored to share the thoughts that the Lord has given me as I memorize and meditate on this wonderful gospel of our Lord. I would like to talk about John 6:35-40 today. I am not a theologian; in fact I have no seminary training whatsoever. But what I do have is a love for my Lord and savior Jesus Christ and His word.

Jesus had walked across the sea to Capernaum after feeding the 5,000. He got into a discussion with the people whom He feed on the other side of the sea and the people in Capernaum. In verse 35 Jesus makes an incredible declaration; He declares Himself God and Life when He says to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst”. Then He goes on to tell the people, “But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe”. He declares that He is life itself but this life is not theirs because they do not believe. Like my daughter would say, “Wait, what?” You heard it right, Jesus says that He is life, and states metaphorically that whoever comes to Him and believes in Him will have life. Wait a minute, what happened to repeat this prayer after me, now if you said that prayer you are saved? What happened to you have a God sized hole in your heart that only Jesus can fill so except Him into your heart? Exactly, none of those clichés are in scripture, they are manmade! What we do find in scripture repeatedly is to have “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Acts 20:21) Now, Jesus told these people that even though they had seen Him with their eyes they didn’t believe. So who then can believe?

Verse 37 tells us how a person comes to believe, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” So what is a believer? A believer is a gift from God the Father to God the Son. And He says that all that the Father gives Him will come to Him. He doesn’t say that they might come to Him; it says they will come to Him. He doesn’t say I am standing with my arms wide open hoping that you will come, in very plain language He states, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me.” He also states what will happen to those who come to Him, He will keep them, “and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” Now I have to tell you, this statement by Christ is one of the greatest in scripture. It lets us know who He is and who we are.

I have no delusions of who I am in this world; I am a man of little importance. If the Lord took me tonight there would be few people to even notice or even give a second thought to my departure from this world, except maybe my family and a couple of friends. But I and everyone who has come to Jesus by faith is a gift from God the Father to God the Son. Just think about that for a moment, let that sink in. You may be going through a time of depression and may feel insignificant in this world but if you have come to Jesus Christ by faith you are a gift from God the Father to God the Son, and Jesus says that He will keep you. I personally can’t think of anything more wonderful and amazing than that.

Jesus goes on to say in verse 38, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” Every believer is a gift from God the Father to God the Son, and God the Son was sent by God the Father to redeem His gift. And in verse 39 He tells us, “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.” Then He summarizes in verse 40 stating, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” So let us summarize. Jesus Christ was sent by God the Father to redeem those who God the Father gave Him as a gift. All that the Father gives Him will come to Him and everyone who comes to Jesus Christ by faith did so because they were given to Him by God the Father. Everyone who comes to Jesus Christ by faith Jesus Himself will raise up on the last day. How awesome is that? What an absolutely wonderful and amazing God that He would save a wretch like me.


Mike Peek a slave of Jesus Christ

God Used FireProof

Just the other night I decided to watch the movie “FireProof” I hadn’t seen the movie for quite some time. I have indicated on this blog before that the Lord used that movie to bring me to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. So before watching the movie again I spent time in prayer and asked God to reveal to me what it was in the movie that He used to bring me to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17); so my question was, what did I hear?

I do not want to go into detail to tell you what this movie is about, so I hope you have seen it and if you have not seen it I suggest you do, it’s an excellent movie. The movie had reached the scene where (Kirk Cameron’s character) Caleb Holt was walking a trail with his father John Holt. John Holt was sharing the law and the gospel with his son Caleb Holt. Caleb was attempting to justify himself when he realized his sinful state before God and came to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. The next scene was at the fire house. Caleb Holt (Kirk Cameron) comes to his friend and confidant Michael Simmons (Ken Bevel) and tells him that they both now shared the same faith. Caleb and Michael begin a discussion about marriage and divorce and Michael said; “You’ve got to beg God to teach you how to be a good husband and don’t just follow your heart because your heart can be deceived, you’ve got to lead your heart!” I realized that was it, which was what God had used to bring me to the knowledge of sin, to shut my mouth, to leave me guilty before him, and to bring me to the foot of the cross. I then remembered that the line had such an effect on me that I had written it down in my phone. So I began to scroll through my phone quickly and I knew that it was on December 19th, 2009 that I had watched this movie. So I get to the bottom of the list of notes on my phone. In fact it was the very first note that I had ever put on this phone. I made a copy of it for you to see.

As you can see there are three statements, dated December 26th, 12:05 PM. I can’t tell you what a treasure it is to find this note. Three statements! I know that morning while in Sunday School I had come to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ writing down on a paper two statements, as the class was writing down goals for the coming year. I wrote:

1. I would give God complete Lordship, I would follow Jesus were ever He lead me.
2. I would love my neighbor as myself.

Given the time of the note on my phone of 12:05 I evidently wrote this note on my phone after Sunday school while sitting in the church service, three things.

1. The quote from the movie, which was what God had used to bring me to the knowledge of sin, to shut my mouth, to leave me guilty before him, and to bring me to the foot of the cross. “You’ve got to beg God to teach you how to be a good husband and don’t just follow your heart because your heart can be deceived you’ve got to lead your heart!”
2. “Good enough!” I’m not absolutely sure what I was saying here, put I’m pretty confident that I was indicating that I was not good enough.
3. “I resolve to let Jesus be the Lord of my life, everyday!”

Yes this is a beautiful gift from the Lord and a wonderful memory from the day the Lord saved me. I give you but a caveat to this. While this is a nice find and a treasure to have and keep, my faith is not in the fact that on that day I wrote these things down, my faith then and now is alone in the Son of God Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. I have one thing to say to you all, repent (turn from your sins and turn to God) and by faith alone receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.


Mike Peek a slave of Jesus Christ

Do Not Be Deceived

There is something that has been bothering me as of late and up until now I haven’t put it into words or rather the Lord has not granted it. In my daily bible reading I have been reading “The Gospel According to Matthew”. The greatest sermon ever preached is in Matthew 5-7, “The Sermon on the Mount” by God incarnate Jesus Christ. There is so much in this message that it just boggles the mind, I have been particularly drawn to chapter 7. The other night I was reading and Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:21-23) Now lawlessness is defined in scripture as sin, to be lawless is to be one who is not following the law specifically in this case the laws of God. So lawlessness is doing what you want despite what the law says. “Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness.” (1 John 3:4)

While I was reading this passage and meditating on it the Lord drew me to another passage, this one an Epistle written by Brother Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the church at Corinth. “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) Do this passage in 1 Corinthians and the passage in Matthew chapter 7 go together? I think so and that is very frightening indeed. Now let’s go back a little further in Matthew 7 to verses 13 & 14. “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14) The narrow gate has been accepted throughout church history as faith in the Son of God Jesus Christ, and the narrow way as an obedient life. That being said, can you be lawless and obedient at the same time? The two are opposed to one another.

There is a system that has cropped up in our culture and I believe that it has come out of American indulgence. Have you ever heard the term, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”? But this system that has cropped up says that you can. Often times it is not outwardly spoken but has become common practice. The system that I speak of is the thought that you can live like the world, indulge yourself in sin, but if you ever at one time in your life said a prayer asking Jesus into your heart you have eternal life. That my friend is a lie from Satan, who cannot tell the truth, he has never told the truth. He lied to our Father Adam and our Mother Eve in the garden and has been lying to their children ever since. The bible does not say that. What does the bible say, what did the Apostle Paul say he preached? “Solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15) Before ascending to the Father He said, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:46-47) Isn’t that what Brother Paul did and said as we saw in Acts 20:21?

So what am I saying? There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent (turn from their sin and turn to God) and, by faith alone receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. My friends you don’t get to keep your sins and have eternal life too. Sin is death, Jesus is life. The sins listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 are very specific and anyone practicing those will not inherit the kingdom of God. Verse 11 of 1 Corinthians 6 tells us what the Corinthians did to be saved. It says, “Such were some of you”, meaning they had stopped doing those sins, “but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” So they stopped doing those sins and put their faith alone in Jesus Christ, His shed blood on the cross paid for their crimes and they were justified before God, and you can be too. The author of the book of Hebrews tells us, “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.” (Hebrews 10:26-27) Is this to say that a Christian does not sin? No this is not to say that a Christian does not sin, unfortunately a Christian does sin. So what is the difference? The difference as stated in Hebrews 10:26 to “go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth.” The true believer from time to time falls into sin but cannot stay in a continual state of carnality, the Father will not allow him to. As a loving Father he disciplines his children, if the child of God falls off the narrow path the Father God disciplines him and directs him back onto the narrow path. The true believer cannot and will not remain willfully in sin because the pressure from God will be more than he is able to bear. The false convert can and will remain in a continued state of carnality. How many people do you know that say they are Christians but are living in fornication (sex outside of marriage), Adultery, drunkards, or thieves, and yet the bible tells us that anyone practicing these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. So what are you to do? Repent (turn from your sins and turn to God) and, by faith alone receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and you will be washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Now I realize that this makes people mad for one if two reasons; either they themselves are willfully sinning or they have a family member or friend who is willfully sinning. For them they know that what I and the word of God are saying is true, but they love their sin, so this angers them. For others, they would rather remain deluded that their carnate family members and friends are saved than face the fact that they may be headed to hell. But remember these words of our Lord, “If you right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 5:29) Do you think Jesus regarded sin as serious? So why talk about this? What do I care? I care because I was one of those people who said he was a Christian and lived in a continual state of carnality sinning willfully but by the grace of God he saved me, I was born again, receiving His Spirit, repenting from my sins, and trusting alone in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I was truly dead in my sins and He gave me life. Also I know that the majority of people around me; family, friends, coworkers, my community, my country, and the world will die separated from God for all eternity unless they repent (turn from sin and turn to God) and by faith alone receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That is the motivating factor for writing this blog and for going into all the world and preaching the gospel to every creature. I cannot save anyone but God has chosen to use preaching as the means to bring people to faith. “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14) “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17)


Mike Peek a slave of Jesus Christ

Why do you seek Jesus

Why do you seek Jesus? I would like to talk with you today about John 6:26-34. Jesus had just fed five thousand men with five barley loaves and two fish. He sent His disciples away on a boat, slipped away from the people, met His disciples out at sea by walking out to them on the water. The people came looking for Him and found Him on the other side of the sea and asked Him how He got there; and so He answers them and has a discussion with the people, revealing their hearts, and why they truly came seeking Him.

So why do you seek Jesus? These were seeking Him because He fed them, and they wanted more food. Is this not what the prosperity gospel does today? Prosperity preachers attract men and women to come to Jesus to fulfill the desires of their hearts, which is health, wealth, and fame. This is just awful, and Jesus distances Himself from men such as these that desire to use Him for worldly gain. These men have taken the worldly American dream of being rich, healthy, and powerful and simply brought that into the church. Saying come to Jesus and you will have no problems, come to Jesus and you will have riches, come to Jesus and He will make you famous. Really!? You read the bible, you read the words of Christ and you get that out of it, seriously! When I read the bible, when I read the words of Christ, this is what I hear clearly and repeatedly; forsake all that this world has to offer and you will have riches in heaven, not the kind of riches this world offers, the Lord Himself is the pearl of great price, the Lord Himself is the treasure hidden in the field and He is worthy of selling everything for.

So these people came to Jesus seeking worldly things, and so He tells them “do not work for food which perishes, but for food which endures to eternal life.” Which you don’t have to work for at all, because if you come to the Son of God He will give it to you, nor can you work for, it is grace (unmerited favor), a gift. So they ask Him “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus said something that no man in his self-righteousness wants to hear, something that no man centered religion on earth can accept. “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” Then they prove that they did not get it when they again basically say, prove yourself by bringing bread down from heaven. Moses said, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.” These people wrongly thought that Moses had brought the manna down from heaven, “it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven.” So they thought when Messiah comes He would give them bread. Jesus repeatedly shows throughout His ministry that while the things that occurred in the past were a representation of Him, the things themselves are not. “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.” The manna was a representation of Christ coming down from heaven to give life. Christ wasn’t there to feed them food; He was there to give life everlasting through the sacrifice of His own body on the cross for the sins of men, for all who believe. So I ask you again, why do you seek Jesus? In meditating on these scriptures I have considered my own motives, I suggest that you do the same.


Mike Peek a slave of Jesus Christ

Quotes: (John 6:26-34, Deuteronomy 18:15, Matthew 9:16)