Why Do Some Believe
Tom Shrader walks through the raising of Lazarus in John 11 as the climactic sign miracle of John's gospel, using it as a physical picture of the spiritual truth that all people are dead in sin and need divine life. Drawing on Ephesians 2, Romans 3, and 1 Corinthians 2, he explains that natural man cannot understand or respond to the gospel on his own, because spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The teaching concludes with John 6:44 and Acts 13:48 to show that God sovereignly draws and appoints those who believe, grounding gratitude, humility, and bold evangelism in the doctrine of election.
“You got it because God at some point in time opened your eyes. It's the simple sentence we use: God saves sinners.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2005)
Recorded: 2005 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 53 min
Themes: election, salvation, evangelism, faith, humility, gratitude, spiritual death, resurrection, new believer, questioning faith, struggling to share the gospel, seeker, young adult, doubting God's sovereignty, evangelist, spiritually curious
Scripture: John 11:1-45, John 11:3, John 11:5, John 11:6, John 11:11, John 11:14, John 11:21, John 11:22, John 11:23, John 11:26, John 11:32, John 11:35, John 11:37, John 11:39, John 11:40, John 11:43-44, John 11:45, John 3:7, John 3:16, John 6:44, John 10, Ephesians 2:1-10, Ephesians 1, 1 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Luke 12:16-21, Luke 16:19-31, Romans 3:10-12, 2 Chronicles 6:36, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Numbers 23:19, 2 Timothy 1:9, Acts 9:16, Acts 13:48, Acts 16:19, James 2, Ephesians 1
Theological Themes: doctrine of election, total depravity, dead in sin, divine sovereignty, regeneration, irresistible grace, spiritual discernment, monergism
Full Transcript
Background and Setting
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to John chapter 11. We are examining the seventh of the seven miracles recorded in John's gospel. John told us why he hand-selected these miracles: so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that in believing in Him, we would have eternal life.
I want to take you through the background and make certain that we are on the same page. Primarily in this story, we have Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Jesus. There are also a group called the crowd, some Jews who are friends of the family, and the Pharisees and Sadducees. Our focus to this point has really been on those four people, along with the disciples who are also present.
There is a great affinity among them. In fact, verse 5 tells us that Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. As Jesus is out teaching and traveling with the disciples, a word comes to Him in verse 3: "Lord, He whom you love is sick." It is an indication of that special relationship Jesus has.
Jesus' Strange Response
Jesus said, "Don't be alarmed. It is not a sickness to death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified by this." And Jesus had a strange response. Remember that? Look at verse 6. It says, "When therefore He heard that Lazarus was sick, Jesus stayed there two days longer in the place where He was."
That is contrary to every instinct we have. If somebody we love is sick, we are dialing 911. If somebody we love is sick, we are moving to the hospital right away. We want to take immediate action — we want to see lights flashing, we want to see sirens. That is just instinctively how we would respond if there was somebody we loved who was ill. Yet Jesus waits two days. There is a purpose in that.
Look at the discussion in verse 11. Jesus said to the disciples, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go that I may awaken him out of the sleep." The disciples therefore said, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover." If he has fallen asleep, he is going to wake up — there is no need to worry. But Jesus had spoken this of death, and they thought He was speaking of literal sleep.
We need to be reminded of this over and over again as we look at this miracle. What we see is a historical event, but it becomes a physical picture that carries a spiritual meaning. Jesus is trying to communicate to them that Lazarus has died, and they are missing it entirely. Well, they cannot miss it now. Look at verse 14: "Lazarus is dead."
Glad for Our Sake
The response is strange again. "Lazarus is dead, and I am glad." What an odd response. One would think: I thought you loved him — why would you be glad that Lazarus is dead? We do not have to wonder, because He tells us. "Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe. Let us go to him."
All of this is about a physical picture of a spiritual truth. Behind it is not just the raising of Lazarus from the dead — though that is significant and important and something his family and friends are grateful for. It is about something larger than that. It is about Jesus manifesting who He truly is. It is about you and me, and again, why John recorded these seven miracles: that you and I might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that believing in Him, we might have eternal life.
Jesus is saying: I am glad. I waited deliberately. Why? Because I want you to see Me glorified. I want you to understand My power and My might and My majesty. I want you to understand who I really am.
Martha Comes Out to Meet Him
So away He goes. Martha hears that He is coming and comes out to meet Him. Verse 21: "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." I do not think she is rebuking Him. She is not saying, "Where were You? Why did You not get here?" She is simply stating what she believes, and in fact it is almost a demonstration of her faith. She is saying: if You had been here, You could have done something.
Look at verse 22. She said, "Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give." We could read that at first glance and think she is suggesting that Jesus could still bring Lazarus back. But there is nothing in the text that indicates that. In fact, when Jesus says in verse 23, "Your brother shall rise again," she replies, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." There is no expectation in her mind that Jesus is going to raise him from the dead at that very moment.
I Am the Resurrection and the Life
Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and the life. If you believe in Me, you will live even if you die, and whoever believes in Me shall never die." Now, obviously He is not saying to you and me that if we believe in Him we will never die physically. We regularly stand on this platform and celebrate the lives of people who have died — people who loved Him, people who called Him Lord and Savior and Master, followers of His — and they have died.
Jesus is not speaking of the physical picture here; He is speaking of the spiritual picture. If you believe in Him, you will live. Even though you die physically, you will live spiritually. If you believe in Him, you will never die spiritually. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That is the promise, over and over again. That is what we saw in John chapter 10: "My sheep hear Me, I know them, they follow Me, and I will give them eternal life. No one, nothing can snatch them out of My Father's hand."
The Questions Jesus Asks
These are words of great comfort. "I am the resurrection" — He is speaking of the future. "I am the life" — also here and now. All of a sudden, what He is saying is: if you come to Him in repentance and faith, you are going to have a life that has meaning and purpose. You are going to have a life that is worth living.
Have you ever wondered if life is worth living? Not in some suicidal way — just sitting there saying, I don't know if it's worth all this hassle and all this pain. It is worth it. Not because life in and of itself has great value, but because life for Christ has great meaning.
Then He asks the question in verse 26: "Do you believe this?" So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you the same. Do you believe Jesus is who He said He was? Do you believe He died on the cross for your sin? Do you believe He rose from the dead, that He will come again, and that if you have faith and trust in Him, your sin is forgiven and you will live forever? Those are the promises He has made to you and me.
Martha did believe. Look at her response: "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God. I believe you are who you said you were." Then she runs and gets Mary, telling her that Jesus wants to meet her.
Mary Comes to Jesus
Mary runs out to meet Jesus, and those who are weeping and mourning with her follow, thinking she is going to the tomb. She goes to meet Jesus in verse 32 and falls at His feet. Look at what she says — it is identical to the words Martha spoke in verse 21: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
My suspicion is that those two sisters probably said that to one another many times as they presided over Lazarus's decline. My guess is they were caring for him, loving on him, and on more than one occasion said to each other, "If Jesus were here, Lazarus wouldn't die." That thought was so ingrained in them that at that moment, it was the first thing that came out. "If you had only been here."
Jesus is touched. Verse 35: Jesus weeps. The Jews said, "Behold how He loved him." You can see it. There is a manifestation of His love that is present — we see His weeping, we see His broken heart. Some in the crowd said, in verse 37, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have kept this man also from dying?"
The Stone Is Removed
Jesus, moved, goes to the cave where Lazarus has been buried and says in verse 39, "Remove the stone." There is no indication at all that Martha is expecting anything close to a miracle. Look at her response: "Lord, by now he stinks. By now there is a stench. He has been dead four days. His body is decaying." There is not any anticipation in her that Jesus is about to do something special.
Jesus says in verse 40, "Did I not say to you, if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" They removed the stone. Jesus raised His eyes and prayed — not a prayer of petition, but of thanksgiving. "Father, I thank You that You heard Me. I know that You always hear Me. But because of these people I said this, that they may believe."
That is what this is all about. This is a miracle, and this is a sign. What does a sign do? It points you in the direction of something else. If you are driving down the freeway and you see a billboard for Coca-Cola, they do not want you to come and stand by the billboard — they want you to go buy the product. The sign points you toward the real thing. This moment of Lazarus being raised is glorious, but it is pointing to something bigger than itself.
Lazarus, Come Forth
When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." And he who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go."
I want to focus on this section and pull out the spiritual truths that are here, then look at the reaction of the people who witnessed it. James Boyce writes this: "The raising of Lazarus from the dead is the climactic miracle of John's gospel. By any standard of measure, its position in the gospel alone indicates this, for it is the last of the seven miracles and is inserted just before the beginning of the final week of Jesus' earthly ministry. The length of the narrative — 46 verses — and its detail also reveal its importance. It is the longest and most elaborately described of the miracles."
Boyce continues: "The results of this miracle are also momentous, more so than any of the other signs, primarily in the increase of the determination of the religious leaders to eliminate Jesus." One of the things that comes out of this miracle is that the religious leaders are now unified in a way they never were before, resolved to bring Jesus down.
Boyce writes finally, and most importantly: "The deeper or spiritual meaning of the miracle is striking and essential to the book's theology." We said this is a physical picture of a spiritual truth. And what is that spiritual truth? The spiritual truth is that you and I, in our natural state, are dead, and we need life.
Dead in Trespasses and Sin
I want you to mark that place in John's gospel, turn to the right through Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and Galatians, to the book of Ephesians, chapter two. Paul is writing to this church, and in the first chapter he has laid on them some glorious truths. He is building toward a point, and he arrives at it in verse one: "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins."
Stop there. He is writing to believers, and he is telling them what they once were — dead in trespasses and sins.
Dead in Trespasses and Sins
To these men and women who were lost and now found, who are now Christians and part of the body of Christ, here is what Paul said: you were dead. MacArthur writes that men apart from God are spiritual zombies, the walking dead who don't know they're dead. They go through the motions of life, but they don't possess life. We're looking at this physically but thinking spiritually, and it can be very deceiving. You can be here today very much alive, very active, very healthy — you can be looking good — but you're dead spiritually.
That's sometimes hard to accept. Those of you who didn't take communion, those of you who say you're not a follower of Christ, that is your condition. It's hard to get your arms around it because you feel so good. We hear something similar even in the physical realm: you go to the doctor and he says it's really serious, and you say, "It can't be, because I feel fine." He says, "There's something there. You can't see it, but it's deadly." In the same way, you may look alive, you may look fine, but the problem is you're dead spiritually.
You are dead in your trespasses — those missteps, those stumbles, those sins, those direct violations of God's law. You fall short. You don't make it. That is what we were. We'll use the phrase "natural man" or "fallen man" a couple of times today. Any boy, girl, student, man, or woman who doesn't have Christ as their Lord and Savior is dead in their sins and trespasses, and then they begin to live like it.
Paul says in verse two: "in which you once walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh." That word "lust" is not just sexual — it refers to an inclination toward all sorts of fleshly things, a strong, diligent pursuit of fleshly and worldly things. "You are by nature children of wrath." That is who you were.
The Nature We're Born With
That is a magnificent description, and it has something to say even about the babies we dedicated today — both in the conference center and here in the chapel. You look at those children and you go goo-goo, gah-gah, and they're all cute, but God says, "Let me tell you what they are. They are children of wrath. Sons of disobedience." We don't have to sit down with the parents and say, "When they get to be three or four, you'll have to teach them how to lie, teach them how to sneak around." We don't do that, do we? They seem to do it instinctively. You can walk down the hallway and see a two-year-old just playing, minding his own business, and another one comes over and takes what he has — "Mine." It is an amazing thing. It's a picture of natural man. It's a picture of who we really are.
Such Were Some of You
And this is really important — it's also a picture of who you *used* to be. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter six, while staying in Ephesians, because Paul writes to that church and says, "Let me tell you a little bit about yourselves." 1 Corinthians chapter six, verse nine: "Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexual, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers, they will not inherit the kingdom of God."
Then he says in verse eleven: "Such were some of you." It's past tense, and it appears in that verse four times. Mark it some way. "Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified." It was done. It happened. This is who you used to be — you aren't that anymore. This is how you used to live — you're not living that way anymore. You've been washed and cleansed. You've been sanctified. You've been justified. You've been declared righteous in the sight of God.
The Old Self and the New
Many of us in this room were saved by God at a later age and saw various levels and amounts of sin over the years. God saved me when I was thirty. I spent thirty years living and breathing for nothing else but myself. I was convinced that any person, place, or thing placed on this planet was here for one reason — to serve me and make me happy — and when I was done with it, so be it. That's a tough way to live. There are a lot of broken relationships in that game, a lot of people offended, a lot of sin, a lot of hurt, a lot of pain, a lot of self-inflicted pain.
Sometimes I could look back and be almost overwhelmed by how bad that was — but here is the thing: that's not me anymore. That's the old Tom. Now there is a new Tom. I was washed. I was cleansed. I was sanctified. I was justified — and so were you, if you know Christ as Lord and Savior. You are not lugging that around anymore. You're not walking around with that guilt and that burden and that sin anymore. You've been freed, just like Lazarus, when Jesus said, "Unbind him." You've been unbound.
You don't have to live that way anymore, and there's no excuse. When you sin now, you simply say, "That's me doing what I know is wrong." It's not the devil made me do it. It's not your socioeconomic background. None of those excuses apply anymore. You were washed. You were cleansed. You are a new creature in Christ. You've been forgiven.
You Were Dead, But God Made You Alive
"But God, being rich in mercy, and because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive with Christ." That was you — but God. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not a result of works, that any man should boast. You were dead, but He made you alive.
Let me ask you a question on the physical plane. If you are physically dead, what do you need? You don't need money. You don't need a master's degree. You don't need a PhD. You don't need booze or drugs or sex or a new house or a new car. There is only one thing you need if you are dead, and that is life. That is why Jesus said in John 3:7, "You must be born again."
So maybe you are here today saying, "I'm not a Christian, and my problem is I have a temper, an anger problem, a drinking problem. I like to gossip. I'm cynical and critical. I'm lazy. I'm a worrier. I'm a glutton. I'm greedy. I can't keep relationships." No — those are not your problem. Those are symptoms of your problem. Your problem is that you are lost, a sinner separated from God. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and the wage of sin is death.
Here is what makes this so hideous: you may not even realize it until this moment. You walk along thinking, "I just have an anger problem — I need anger management." No. You need a new heart. You are dead to the things of God, and you need to be made alive spiritually.
A Grandfather, a Funeral Home, and One Overriding Problem
I have told this story many times. The first person I ever saw who was dead was my grandfather. I walked into Beardsley Funeral Home in Sheraton Isle, looked at him, and came back out. It was just — boom — stuck in my mind. My mom and my aunt were standing on the porch, and my aunt said to my mom, "Didn't Dad look good?" I thought I had better go back in, because I must have missed something. I went in, and he did look pretty good. But as I studied and analyzed it — even as a ten- or eleven-year-old kid — it was very clear to me that my grandpa had one overriding problem: he was dead. He did not need one other thing at that moment. He needed life.
For those of you who did not take communion today, for those of you who say you are not a Christian, I want you to understand what Paul is saying here. He is saying that without Christ, you live in an illusion, an almost mythical world, believing that if you can just get this or have this, then you will find real life.
The Parable of the Rich Fool
In fact, Jesus tells a story about exactly that. Turn to Luke chapter 12, verse 16. Jesus tells this parable. There is a certain rich man who is very productive. He had been successful before, and now he is extraordinarily successful. He needs counsel, so he goes to his favorite counselor — himself.
If you have your pens out, beginning in verses 17 through 19, I want you to circle the singular personal pronouns, because they give us a glimpse into his problem. "He began reasoning to himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?' And he said, 'This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry."'"
What he said, in essence, was: I have arrived. I have it all. My barns cannot hold it, so I will build bigger ones. He thought he was going to find life in stuff. You may think you will find it in a person, a relationship, or a thing — if you just had that car, that job, that promotion. Many people would look at this man and say he is wise. He would be on the cover of Fortune or Forbes. He might be Time's Person of the Year. He has arrived. He is the man you want to be.
Jesus said in verse 20, "You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?" In Mark's gospel, Jesus puts it this way: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?"
Stuff Will Never Be Enough
We tend to think that way, don't we? Here is a test. How many of you, in the last two weeks, said, "If I won the Powerball — if I won that $314 million — I would do a lot of things for God"? Now be honest: you would do a whole lot more for yourself. Isn't that amazing? Here we are with our Bibles, and we know this. You know that stuff is not going to make you happy. You have that all figured out. And yet the minute you hear the jackpot number on the news, you think, "I bet if I had that, I'd be happy." No. Because life does not consist of stuff. That is exactly what Jesus is saying.
Believing Is Seeing
Now let us go back to the story in John 11, verse 40. There is an old saying you have heard many times: seeing is believing. We use it in a human sense. You make a promise to someone and they say, "We'll see about that." You might even bond the people you hire, because we do not really trust without proof. Seeing is believing.
Jesus flips that entirely. Look at verse 40: "Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" Jesus does not say seeing is believing. He says believing is seeing. If you believe in Him, you will see His glory. Numbers 23:19 tells us, "God is not a man, that He should lie." James Boyce writes, God —
Believe and Act
God has never made a promise that He has not fulfilled fully. Consequently, to believe God is to place oneself into the place of blessing from which one will certainly see all that is promised in due time. God has made extraordinary promises to His people, to you. They are promises to you, and He is faithful, and He will fulfill them.
I want to be careful here, but Jesus says this — He says, "I told you if you believe, you would see the glory of God." And the only person in this whole scene who seems to be believing is Jesus Himself. It is not Martha. It is not Mary. It is not the crowd.
Sometimes we do not dream big enough. I do not want us to suddenly start believing God only for extraordinary material things. But I was talking to someone this week — I will keep it gender neutral so you are not trying to figure out who it is — and this person has been sick, with a disease whose symptoms are physically visible. They had been to many doctors, had been prescribed medicine they did not want to take, and it occurred to them that they had not yet prayed for themselves. They began to pray, and by every indication, the majority of the disease appears to be gone. They will go to the doctor this week for confirmation.
Am I saying simply believe and it will happen? No. But I think sometimes we are afraid to even pray and ask God, because if He does not do it, it feels like a smear on His reputation. We think: if I cry out and say, "Oh God, would You save this, would You heal this?" and then He does not, it reflects poorly on Him. But God is not worried about His reputation. He brought you into His family — that is enough of a risk on His reputation right there.
I am not talking about name-it-and-claim-it health and prosperity. But there is nothing wrong with asking God to take East Valley Bible Church in Gilbert, Arizona, and turn the town of Gilbert — let us get bold — and even the entire East Valley upside down for the cause of Jesus Christ. He says this: if you believe Him, you will see extraordinary things.
Does that mean everyone who gets sick gets healed? No. Does that mean every deal I put in escrow closes? No. What you may see that will astound you might be nothing more than a change in your own view, your own heart, your own attitude. There is something there. Believe. And then act. I am not saying He cannot move the stone Himself — He has the people to do it. He does not unwrap Jesus Himself — He has the people to do it. I want you to take that, think about it, and pray about it, and see what God does with it in your heart, as I will in mine as well.
The Reaction of the Crowd
Now I want to focus on the reaction of the people. Verse 45: "Many, therefore, of the Jews who had come to Mary and beheld what He had done believed in Him. But some of them went away to the Pharisees and told them the things that Jesus had done."
I remember reading through the Gospels before I had any theological training or background to speak of, and I was stunned when I read these verses. Here is what has happened: Jesus went out to the tomb, said to take away the stone, they removed it, and Jesus said, "Lazarus, come forth," and out he came. How would you respond to that? I would think that if you were a doubter, you might now believe, and if you were already a believer, you would have just become devout.
But that is not what the text says. The text does not say that all of them rejoiced, all of them believed in Jesus, that they were faithful followers of His forever. It says many of them did. I do not know what "many" means in terms of a percentage or a number. I am not troubled by the many who believed — that makes sense. What I do not understand is the ones who did not believe. How can you not believe? What more do you need to see?
Jesus Had Already Prepared Them
Jesus had actually spoken about this. Keep your place in John 10 and turn back to Luke chapter 16, because Jesus had really prepared them for this moment, if they were listening. Jesus tells a story in Luke chapter 16, verse 19: "There is a certain rich man, habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, gaily living in splendor every day." Everyone could see him — there was a rich man, you could tell by the way he dressed, by what he drove, by where he lived.
"There is a certain poor man. His name happened to be Lazarus" — a different Lazarus — "and he laid at the gate. He was covered with sores. He longed to be fed from the crumbs that were falling from the rich man's table. The dogs were even coming and licking his sores." Then it came about that the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.
"In Hades, the rich man lifted his eyes up, being tormented, saw Abraham far away, Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus, that he might dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'" And Abraham said, "Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, likewise Lazarus bad things, but now he is being comforted here and you are in agony."
The Condition of Man
I don't want you for a second to think that this man is in hell because he is rich, or that Lazarus is in heaven because he is poor. He is poor in the things of God; the rich man is rich in the things of God. One's heart has been repented and broken. That is not the emphasis of what we are looking at here.
Besides all this, the rich man said there is a big gulf, a great chasm between us. Verse 27: "Then I beg you, Father, that you send him to my father's house. I have five brothers, that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment." Abraham said, "They have Moses and they have the prophets. They have the Scripture. Let them hear them." But he said, "No, Father Abraham, if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent." But Abraham said to him, "If they don't listen to Moses and they don't listen to the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead."
It is a magnificent moment, and I believe that is the cry. I have done a lot of funerals, and I always say, if this dead man could come back right now, you think he would run to his family and friends? I don't think so. I think he would run to those who aren't Christians and say, you better understand, there is a hell — it is a real thing. This man has given up mercy for himself and says, at least warn my brothers so they shouldn't come here. And Abraham says, they are not going to believe even if they see a man rise from the dead.
Why Some Believe and Others Don't
That is exactly what we have in front of us here in John chapter 11. They all saw the same thing. They all heard the same testimony. They were all exposed to essentially the same identical information and experience. Why didn't they all believe? There has to be an explanation, and the Scripture gives it to us.
Why is it that for a long time you didn't believe and then all of a sudden you did? Why is it that perhaps you believe and your sister doesn't, or your brother doesn't, or someone else you love doesn't? How is it that you and a roommate were in college at the same time, the same person shared the same truth with both of you, you responded, and they didn't? The Bible has an answer to this question, and to really understand it, we have to focus on the condition of man.
Let me mention a resource. I do a series every other year called God's Plan for Salvation. You can purchase it in the bookstore or download it free from the internet. It was recorded in October of last year. Go to the messages section, find God's Plan for Salvation, and you will find seven or eight lessons there. What I want to share now is part of the answer to this question — though not the entirety of that series.
Here is the reason that one of these people responded and the other did not: God opened the eyes of one man and not the eyes of the other. It had nothing to do with the person. It had everything to do with God. Now, almost instinctively, if that is new to you, you may be flinching. You may not want to hear about predestination, election, and all those things. That is fine. I just want you to know that there is a biblical answer. You can scratch your head over why this happened, or you can go to the Scripture and find that answer.
Dead in Sin: The Biblical View of Mankind
We have to understand that when Adam sinned, we were plunged into darkness. That is what the Scripture says. We were dead in our sins and trespasses — deaf and blind to the message of salvation. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wage of sin is death. Natural man is a sinful man. 2 Chronicles 6:36 says there is no man who does not sin. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says there is no just man on earth who does good. You have to get your arms around this if you want to understand that question.
Turn to the book of Romans, chapter 3, while keeping your place in John's Gospel, because we will return there. Here is how God sees man. Romans chapter 3, verse 10: "There is none righteous, no not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. Together they have become unprofitable. There is none who does good." Here is God's summary statement of His view of mankind — every person who has ever lived. "There is none who does good, no not one." There is no exception. It is all-inclusive language.
Now we fight against that, because we say we see good people. But we tend to measure things humanly. Consider a battlefield — I read a great deal about the Civil War, and the accounts describe the fields after the fighting. You might walk onto a battlefield and see twenty corpses. One was shot just before you arrived; the others have been lying there for three or four days. The one who just died is just as dead as the man who has been lying there for four or five days. There are various levels of decay, but they are all dead. In the same way, you might take fifty people down to Tempe Town Lake and say, jump across —
No One Can Come on Their Own
Natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. This is First Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. Natural man will never understand a spiritual truth. He cannot. They are spiritually discerned.
Can natural man understand spiritual things? No. Is the gospel a spiritual matter? Yes. Is natural man ever going to understand the gospel on his own? No. You can talk to him and preach to him. You can show him miracles. You can do everything you want. It is not going to make any difference. Because he is dead. And what he needs is life. He is not sick and needs healing. He is dead and he needs life.
All of us are lost in our sin and trespasses. There is no good in us. We may seek God in the sense that we seek our own God. We may try to pursue spirituality. We may pursue God in our own image.
That is what Voltaire said. Voltaire said, "God has made man in his own image and man has been returning the favor ever since." We create gods as we like them to be. You may use phrases like, "My God would never..." — and when you do, you are worshipping a false God. You may be going to church, reading some Bible, going through all sorts of exercises, praying and fasting and all these different things. But do you know Him? Naturally, you do not. Natural man cannot understand spiritual things. Something has to happen.
The Father Must Draw
What has to happen? This brings us to John chapter 6, verse 44. "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." This is Jesus speaking. This is not Calvin, this is not Luther, this is not Augustine, Sproul, or MacArthur — not even Paul. This is Jesus.
What we are talking about here is not permission. We are talking about ability. Someone might say, "Wait, what about John 3:16?" Well, what about John 3:16? "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." That has nothing to do with what we are talking about. All that says is, if you believe, you have eternal life. That is all it says. We are not questioning that. We are asking, why do you believe?
Whoever believes has eternal life — amen, we all agree with that. The question is, why do you believe? Remember, we are going back to why did some of these men believe while others ran to the Pharisees and said, let us get Him. No one — not one person, and we are speaking now not of permission but of ability — no one has the ability to come to Him. No one has the ability to believe, to repent, to walk an aisle or pray a prayer or whatever terminology you want to use. No one has the ability to come to Him in repentance and faith unless a necessary condition is first met.
The word "unless" is an important word. It points to a necessary condition. Something has to happen before this other thing can take place. What is it in verse 44? The Father must draw. The word means to compel.
It is used two other times in the New Testament. James chapter 2 refers to the rich who oppose you and personally drag you into court — this is not wooing. He is dragging you. Acts chapter 16, verse 19 says they seized Paul and Silas and dragged him into the marketplace. No one is ever going to get it. No eye is ever going to be opened. No one is ever going to understand the gospel. You can watch dead man after dead man rise, and you are never going to get it unless the Father opens your eyes.
God Saves Sinners
You believed because God at some point in time opened your eyes. It comes down to a simple sentence: God saves sinners. God — the subject, the noun, the actor. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father before the foundations of the earth chose those that He would save. The Son died at the appointed time for that specific group of people. The Holy Spirit comes along and opens your heart and applies it to your life.
God saves — that is the verb. Sinners — that is the direct object. The direct object does nothing in a sentence but receive whatever that verb is. You are saved not based on anything that you can do, would do, will do, or any variation thereof. None of it matters.
Election Is Not Foreknowledge of Our Choice
Some would explain election this way: God looks down the corridors of time and He sees those that are going to choose Him, and then He elects them. But it cannot be that. If He looks down the corridors of time, can natural man ever choose Him? No. If He looks down those corridors, there are seven billion people who do not care and are never going to respond. They cannot believe.
Ephesians chapter 1 tells us He chose us before the foundations of the earth. Second Timothy chapter 1, verse 9 says He saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His purpose and grace.
Responding to God's Sovereignty in Salvation
Romans chapter 9, verse 16 makes clear that salvation "does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs but on God who has mercy." Of Acts 13:48, John MacArthur writes that it is one of Scripture's clearest statements on the sovereignty of God in salvation. The message had been delivered, and Luke records that "as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed."
How should you respond to that? If you are a believer, your heart ought to be filled with thanksgiving, joy, and gratitude. We are coming up on Thanksgiving, when people say they are thankful for their house, their clothes, their car. But those things are nothing compared to this. If you are a believer, you are thankful that He took your destination and changed it from hell to heaven, changed your designation from sinner to saint, and gave you eternal life in Christ Jesus.
That is a source of great thanksgiving and gratitude, and it deepens your love for Him. This is not just some theology that puffs you up — it deepens your love for Him. He saved you in spite of you, not because of you. While you were a sinner with no inclination or desire for redemption, He chose you and He saved you. How much did He love you?
A Word to Those Who Are Not Yet Christians
What does this mean if you are here and you are not a Christian? If all of a sudden the gospel is making sense to you, that is your way of understanding that God is putting His hand on you. God is opening your eyes. God is softening your heart.
He may use circumstances. Your life may be at an all-time low right now, and that makes you easier to reach. The tough situation is actually when life is at an all-time high — that is when a person gets a little cocky and becomes harder to deal with. It may be that God has brought you to this point, broken you and shattered you, and nobody even knows it. You have it all together on the outside, but inside you are completely empty, and you know it — you are pursuing and doing and still coming up with nothing. That is God opening your eyes.
So what do you do? Run to Him. You do not need to come forward to an altar. This is not business between you and this church. This is between you and God. Even by the last statistics available, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association estimated that ninety percent of people who come forward at a crusade are not saved — coming forward is simply how they follow up with people. Walking an aisle is not what saves you.
You can do this right where you are sitting. Open your heart to Him, pray to Him, acknowledge your sin, acknowledge that you are lost, and accept Jesus Christ as the only remedy. He does not need you to walk an aisle. Your heart will change. Your life will change.
The Freedom It Gives Us in Evangelism
This truth also transforms how we approach evangelism. The common criticism of those who hold to God's sovereignty in salvation is that they do not evangelize. But we ought to be the most evangelistic people of all — and we evangelize with great freedom, because we know that the response does not depend upon us.
Our mission is singular: present the gospel and declare the truth. We do not have to compromise it. We do not have to water it down or coat it in sugar to make it go down easier. We simply tell the truth. You are a sinner. You are lost. Salvation is through Christ, and in Christ alone — there is no other way.
At that point, we have been obedient. We have done what God has called us to do. It is then up to those people to respond, and God receives the glory either way. It is a magnificent truth.
For some of you who have been around these doctrines for a while, this is a resounding amen. For others, you need a little more time with it. And for some, this is a great deal to take in. If you are wrestling with it, that is a good struggle. The doctrines of grace class is available, and these truths are worth pursuing until they settle deeply in your heart.
Father, help us see this truth and let it transform our lives. Let us leave this place as people whose lives have been transformed and changed by You, the living God. We pray to You in Jesus' name, amen.