From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, Do you also want to go away? But Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 

John 6:66-68 

Peter articulates a critical rhetorical question when he asks, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go?’ Christ is the unique Speaker of truth. What He declares is fundamentally different at its’ foundation from other speakers. Peter understood this sufficiently to exclude all other sources by saying, ‘to whom shall we go?’ Humanity has expended its’ time, effort, and energy in the pursuit of truth. Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Hume, Sartre, and Rand are examples of a vast number of pursuers of truth. For the most part, they have failed. The religionists of Christ’s day and many others before or since have labored to articulate their version of truth. They have said some things that are true and many things that are false. At the end of it Christ still stands above all. Their philosophies ultimately fail to deliver the answers to eternal questions. Many of the religious speculations are wide of the mark. When Peter asked, ‘to whom shall we go?’ he was excluding all other erstwhile fountains of truth in contrast to Christ. No one else delivers as He does.  

Our Great God and our Savior, 
We rejoice that You are the great storehouse of truth. 
We praise You that we need  
look no further than You. 
 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.  

John 6:66 

Those who begin to follow Christ do not always continue. Our text speaks of some of them. Christ had been teaching large groups. He had fed the 5,000. He had also said some things that were hard for them to hear. When He spoke of eating His flesh,  drinking His blood, and living forever some complained. Christ challenged them, and said, ‘Does this offend you?’ He followed with, ‘What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.’ His next remark was, ‘Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.’  After that, some of His followers ‘walked with Him no more.’ We witness this even now. These are times when we encounter those who seem vitally interested in Christ. They absorb all they can about Him for a while. At a certain point, they encounter something He says which they deem too hard to hear or understand. At that juncture they cease to follow Him. In effect, they ‘walk no more with Him.’ Instead they pursue whatever else catches their attention, and dedicate themselves to something other than Christ. This will not end well. If we have embraced what is best, forsaken it and pursued what is less, how shall we arrive at a good place?  

Our kind and merciful God, 
we rejoice that You appeal to us at the deepest level. 
We praise You that even in the face of rejection, 
You remain good and kind.  

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. 

John 6:44 

Salvation is from start to finish, the work of God. In the passage from which our text derives, Christ makes this quite clear. Earlier in the chapter He said, ‘All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.’ In our text, He bluntly declares, ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.’ Thus, the Father has given to Christ a people and the Father draws them to Christ. We know from elsewhere in the Scripture that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to regenerate, give repentance, faith and to draw Christ’s people to Him. Every member of the Trinity participates in the completion of redemption. It is also important for us to recognize that this redemption applies to ‘a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, people and tongues.’ That redemption is all of grace and all of God does not mean it is not broad. Rather, the implication is it is a wide salvation encompassing a huge number of people. God the Father is doing this work today. He is drawing people to Christ and Christ will, according to His word, raise them up at the last day.  

Our Glorious Living God, 
we rejoice that You are saving many. 
We praise You that You will not cease 
until all are gathered in. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning