All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.For I came down from heaven not to do mine own will but the will of Him that sent Me.And this is the Fathers will which hath sent Me

MEDITATION—THE FATHER’S WILL

“All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.

And this is the Father’s will which hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise Him up at the last day.” John 6. 37-40.

It is quite evident, there must be a particular significance in those words “Everyone which seeth the Son”, because the Lord Jesus Christ, in the 36th verse, is recorded as saying “That ye also have seen Me and believe not”; so there is a seeing of the Son with the natural eyes which does not of necessity mean that the person who sees Him does believe in Him. There is such a thing as seeing the Lord in the Gospel, in the natural declaration of the Word, and though the Lord may thus be seen and understood by natural reason as the Son of God or the Messiah or the Saviour in the declaration of His life, with some natural credence given to it, yet that seeing of the Lord, just in the letter of the Word of Scripture, does not, of necessity, mean that those persons do really believe. But there are some persons that see the Son and believe on Him. The seeing of the Son is not the same in those two verses. In verse 36 it is a natural seeing of Christ, a natural understanding of Christ, a natural apprehension of Christ, of that which cannot be refuted upon the ground of the natural reasoning powers of men, but, the seeing of the Son in verse 40 is something that is the gift of God Himself. It is really the outcome of a miracle that is wrought in the soul and heart of a sinner whereby he or she sees the Son by living faith.

Now there is a tremendous distinction here. Although in the English authorised version the same words are used, yet I do not think that we can over-stress the distinction that is being made between the two kinds of sight. The natural “Sight” of a man can go to tremendous lengths both in the natural knowledge of the revelation of God and also in his declaration of his adherence to that which he has learned concerning God. But, all those powers of reason, however magnificently they may have been used pertaining to the revelation of God, does not ensure that those powers will bring a sinner, with a true knowledge of sin, to Christ and, through Christ, that He will draw near to the Father. Now that, of course, is what Christ spoke of in these verses.

Notice, first of all, (and this may seem almost unnecessary to say) that these are actually the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am not one of those persons who would make a distinction
between the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in their authority and the words that the Eternal Word caused other men to say by the same authority of God. When I was up in the North of England I went to see a very aged lady and she seemed to have come under the influence of some modern teaching which was going about the district at that time, (it is not unknown today and it has not been unknown all through the ages), and she was suggesting quite openly to a number of us in the room that the words of the Gospels were of far greater value than the words of the Old Testament and, they were also of far greater value than the Epistles. As though saying, “Here you are, you take these four books out of your Bible, bind them up separately and that is the great authority of Scripture. Everything else is a sort of subordinate revelation.” The Lord Jesus Christ never deals with the Old Testament like that, and there is not the slightest suggestion, in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ that there is any difference in the authority of His Own word and the words that He gave such men as Moses or Isaiah or Elijah to speak under Divine inspiration. They both possessed the authority of God. One is spoken personally by the Son of God but the other is spoken equally by His authority, though spoken by the lips or written by the pen of men. As we turn to the words of the Apostle Paul, writing to his son in the faith, “All Scripture” — all the holy writings — “are given by inspiration of God and are profitable,” (2 Tim. 3, 16), we do not hear him saying “Now, Timothy, I will allow that there is a degree of inspiration that rests upon all the Holy Scripture, but you must remember there are portions which are more profitable than others. Therefore we must decide which is the most profitable and relegate the other portions to a condition of inferior profitability.” He does not say that. Without equivocation he writes, ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable.” He puts God’s hallmark upon inspiration and the profitability of the whole written Word of God, and whatever portion of Divine Scripture the Holy Ghost shall take, and make application of it with life-giving authority and abasing power within your spirit, with convicting and then healing power within your conscience, whatever portion of the Word of God the Holy Ghost may use, whether it be the actual words that fell from the lips of Jesus Christ or whether it be the words that Christ, the Eternal Word, caused the Prophets to speak ages ago, you will find it possesses the same Divine authority and the same Divine profitability.

These are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ is here speaking out of the infinite knowledge of relationship between Himself and His Father. “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” Perhaps some of you may be rather amazed that the Lord Jesus Christ did not say “All that My Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” Now, there is an important distinction to be made here. Of course, it would be true, “All that My Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” Here we have the definite article “All that THE Father giveth Me shall come to Me.”

In the first place, I want you to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking concerning His Own Father, the first Person in the glorious Trinity, because He is spoken of in the Scriptures as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He teaches that there is None like unto His Father. He is the Father above ALL Fathers. There is none like unto Him in heaven above or in earth beneath. I do not wonder, that the Scriptures teach us to call no man “Father” on earth. Do not forget that. In this matter of solemn, divine, holy association, it is a wrong thing to call a person ‘Father’ in that sense. Oh! I know the Papists do it.

I was once coming across an open space in Rochdale where some young boys were playing and evidently they must have heard their mother or father say as I went across there every day, “That’s a minister” or “That’s a priest.” Of course they were Roman Catholics. As I went across the ground one of the boys said “Good morning. Father.” What distress it occasioned my spirit. Oh! says the Lord Jesus Christ, “All that THE Father, THE Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” The glib way in which this word is used by some persons, even in prayer, gives me great distress. Here is One Who has a perfect right, a right by reason of eternal relationship, a right by reason of the great work of redemption given Him to do, a right by reason of His position as Surety in the Eternal Covenant, here is One Who has a perfect right to say “My Father.” Before He ascends to His Father after His suffering and death upon this earth, you will remember he said, “I ascend unto MY Father and your Father; and to My God, and your God.” (John 20. 17). This is a word of wonderful condescension to the sinner to whom it is addressed. Think of the person who hears that word. I do not mean originally the one to whom it was spoken (it must have been so in that case) but to all others to whom such a word as that is spoken with the authority of the Holy Ghost, bringing comfort and peace and joy in the midst of the trouble of their soul as the Lord says “I ascend unto My Father and your Father.” Oh! the condescension of Christ to speak like that to a sinful man. Oh! the great grace of the Father that He should authorise His Own dear Son to speak concerning Himself to sinners like that. “I ascend unto My Father and your Father.”

“All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” So then, there is, in the use of the article here, a setting before us of the great superiority, the tremendous, eternal, infinite superiority of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to all others, except, of course. His Own dear Son and the Holy Spirit in the Eternal Godhead.

In anticipation of the other passage that I quoted to you where Christ said “I ascend unto My Father and your Father” the Lord is saying to His disciples, and those around Him, at this time, “My Father is the Father of others as well. I and My Father are One in the purposes of Divine revelation. My Father will shew and I will shew that there are poor sinners upon this earth whom

My Father will address in such terms so that they shall know there is a relationship between themselves and Him, the relationship of a Father to a child.” You may say, “Well, how can this relationship be known? You have said that your spirit is ashamed and appalled at the glib way in which people talk of God as being their Father,” and I insist that it does cause me distress on occasions when that happens. When the Lord enlarges my heart, when love is found there and faith is drawn out of my breast it is a blessed privilege, a glorious privilege to be able to address Him as God and Father, but the glib way in which this word is often used must of necessity offend an exercised soul.

But you see in this case the Lord Jesus Christ says to His people, “There are some upon this earth as well as Myself who will be able to call My Father their Father.” He has other children. That is the wonder of it. The wonder grows greater and greater as you examine the nature of these children and you see Divine grace bestowed upon these children, the depths to which they sank and the heights to which they will be lifted by Divine grace. You will see the wonder of this relationship. But oh how may it be known? First of all, I will tell you how it will not be known. It will not be known just by reading about it or hearing about it. That is not how you will learn this relationship. You will not know it, simply because other people have told you that, if you have this, that and the other, then you can claim relationship. There is only one way in which this relationship can be known and that is by the spirit of adoption. So the Scripture teaches. We are shut up to this gift of God, to know the relationship with God the Father in and through His Own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the spirit of adoption, the spirit of adoption given to the heart of a sinner by the Holy Ghost whereby the Eternal God shall be called “Abba, Father”.

What will mark the spirit of adoption when you have it? There will be abasement of spirit before the Lord, there will be a very deep consciousness of your guilt and unworthiness. I do not feel that my words there can ever really express the lowness, the contrition, the penitence of the soul that will be known when the spirit of adoption is granted whereby we cry “Abba, Father.” I do not think any words of mine, can ever really express the lowliness of that person’s spirit when that spirit of adoption is granted to them. Lower, lower, lower;—that is the position.

“They never think they’re laid too low,

If Jesus on them pity show.”

And surely there can be no greater act of pity than for Jesus to shew to them that, in and through Himself by reason of His position as Surety and Mediator of the Covenant, He has shed His blood and made atonement for the sins of such unworthy wrath-deserving creatures as they are. Surely, in that way they will never think they are laid too low, if only Jesus shews that pity upon them, so through Him and by the power of the Holy Ghost in their souls
they are enabled to cry “Abba, Father”. This is not any act or cry associated with human pride at all. If and when this spirit of adoption is known, it will be one of the seasons in your life when you will know at least a good deal of relief from human pride, that awful plague that naturally is in your spirit and mine. You will then thank God for such a season when the Lord has shewn His love and shed it abroad in your heart in such a way that even for a little time in some measure you have been delivered from the prevailings of human pride, that accursed foe that dwelleth in everyone of us!

“All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me.” So, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given certain persons to His Son, a great “number that no man can number.” The Scriptures declare it, and God forbid that I should minimise what the Lord has spoken. Let us be faithful to what the Lord does say and if we think today “I only am left and they seek my life to take it away” (1 Kings 19, 14), it will be a good thing if the Lord should come to us and say “Yet I have left Me seven thousand in Israel all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal and every mouth which hath not kissed him.” (1 Kings 19, 18.) I am thankful to find that in unexpected places there are some whose lips have not kissed Baal, who have to hang and depend for everything upon a precious Christ and find that their dear Redeemer, that dying Lamb, is more precious to them than all beside. I have gone to the bedside of some obscure woman in a cottage somewhere and found that Christ is so precious to her soul that there is something in me, that admires, wonders and covets the best gifts, because I feel to lack the degree in which they are present in that person.

“All that the Father giveth Me.” “Giveth Me”, and the value of the gift. But there is another aspect of it I know and I will attempt to put the two aspects before you of the nature of the gift.

Hosea, (Chapter 3), married a certain woman who left her husband and went off with somebody else. Her husband and his children all besought the wife and mother to come back but she would not. The Lord much later, commands His servant Hosea to go down to the market and buy her. She is exposed for sale. The one who had her has tired of her and cast her off. Now she is down in the market for sale and Hosea, obedient to the Word of God, goes to the market to buy this woman and what does he buy her for? I am informed the price at which he bought her was half the price of a normal slave. Because of her sin and the consequence of it in her person, she was no good to anybody and so he got her “half price.” Is that our state? Is that what we were? I remember coming out of a chapel, a good many years ago now, and a young woman came out just behind me and as I turned round to see who she was and with tears streaming down her face she said. “I am no good to God nor man.” Half price, Ah! less than that.

“My best is stained and dyed with sin

My all is nothing worth.”

Look at my heart. I have not a vestige of love to the Lord. Look at my will. There is not a desire for holiness there. Look at my mind. My thoughts are vile and filthy and iniquitous. Look at my conversation. No godly person will ever want anything to do with me. Half price—less than that.

And yet, there is another aspect. So great is the debt that the price is exceedingly great. Do not forget that in Hosea’s prophecy is taught the worthlessness of the sinner, the worthlessness of guilty men and women in the sight of God, fallen in their ruin and sin, under the very curse of God, with the law proclaiming condemnation. There we see that aspect of the truth, and when God sets His love upon a poor sinner it is not temporary. It is eternal. It was done before man was made or worlds were settled. The whole election of the love of God precedes everything else concerning this world and its affairs. God set His love, in eternal foreknowledge, upon a great “number that no man can number” and gave them to His Son. God could say to His Son, “My Son, because I love these people there is nothing more valuable in all My creation than these.” Although they are so valueless and their debt is so great yet the Love of God is so great to them and they are so valuable in the Father’s sight. Of course it is a paradox.

“Mine’s a paradox too hard

Rich of mercy (but) poor of grace.”

Right down to this day the paradox still remains. The poverty of my person, but the wonders, the riches of God’s grace toward guilty men. There is the wonder, there is the paradox. Because of this, what do we read? “He gave His back to the smiters, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him.” I wish when we read the 53rd Isaiah we always read it tearfully. I wish we knew a far greater grief in thinking about this.

Not so very long ago a person was telling me most pathetically a story about a little boy who stole his school mate’s dinner. Because of certain rules that had been made in that school, he had to be punished and when he was going to have his punishment they told him to take his jacket off. He had no shirt and the poor lad was so thin that his ribs were shewing. The boy from whom the dinner had been stolen—a big, hefty lad—said to the master, ‘You whip me instead. You whip me instead.’ It was so pathetic, that I was not surprised that I heard my friend by my side almost choke.

But what is that compared with what Christ suffered? He did it for you? Is it true? For this people it is true. “All that the Father giveth Me”. “They are given to Me. I am the responsible Person I bear them upon My Shoulder”, but, also, blessed be His Holy Name, He bears them upon His heart. He hath said “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” (Heb. 13, 5).

A man had a hundred sheep, all very valuable, but one is lost.
He leaves the ninety and nine and goes into the wilderness to seek that which was lost and he finds it. What does He do with it? Places it upon His shoulder and brings it back again. He will repair the hedges and exercise more preventing mercies than He has done before. Such will be painful to your nature when you are not allowed to do things you want to do. He would be a foolish sheep farmer who did not fill the holes in the hedges. The sheep may think the next pasture has a little better grass in it, and some of you may think like that, but, remember that if God has put some preventing thing in your way, it is not wisdom to try and get out into the neighbour’s pasture. The devil is there. The danger is there. The temptation is there. The sin is there. Rebellion against God is a solemn thing, my friends, and particularly in those who know something of the tender fear of God within their heart. “To obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams.” (1 Sam. 15, 22). It certainly is!

“All that the Father giveth Me” says Christ. “I receive them so willingly. The love that the Father has to them is the love that I have to them.” No distinction. Have you ever thought about that? The Lord Jesus Christ speaks about a man who returned a talent to the one who gave it him saying, ‘I knew that thou wast a hard man’. There are many people today who think of God like that— a hard man “reaping where He has not sown and gathering where He has not strawed.” (Matt. 25, 24.) What did the Lord Jesus Christ say to one of His disciples? “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, How sayest thou then Shew us the Father. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father also” (John 14.9). No difference. Exactly the same heart of love, exactly the same eternal purpose of redemption and of salvation and of favour and mercy, exactly the same. Did Christ my Lord suffer? Does it mean to say that the Father does not sympathise with the Son in His sufferings? Have you ever had a dear one go into hospital. Have you ever known that they have to have an operation? Have you known, by your own experience in the past in similar circumstances, the pain that will be occasioned after the operation, and do you mean to tell me that there is no feeling in your heart? Dare we say concerning the Eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that He is a hard Man? Listen to the great declaration, of the love, the tender compassion, the mercy of God the Father when we read “God so loved that He gave His Only Begotten Son” His gift, out of His Own heart with all that it implies to the Father as well as to the Son. “I and My Father are One.” Yes. The physical, mental, spiritual sufferings of Christ indeed were intense, but oh my friends, how the Father followed them in love. Every step of the journey the Father loved His Own dear Son, His heart is love toward Him. Does it mean nothing to the Father when later the Son groaned out under darkness of soul in desertion “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27, 46). There is only one explanation of the sufferings of the Son, one explanation of the hiding of the Father’s face,—MY SIN, MY SIN—the only explanation.

But you say “What of the Holy Ghost?” That is the added yonder is it not, that the One who is Eternal God as well as the Son and the Father should be willing to come and take up His abode in my heart, “Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. 6, 19). Have we learned that lesson? If we were really taught it by the Spirit of God, we should walk very much more tenderly before our God than we do. “Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.” That is where He will abide, poor sinner. You may not always be sensible of His abiding. The Puritans made this point very clearly. They used to speak about the real presence and the sensible presence of the Lord with them. They said “Here is the real presence. It is the Lord Who says ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee’ (Heb. 13, 5). He is the God of His Word. He never will. That is the real presence of the Lord with His people.” But there is the sensible presence of the Lord with His people. That is when, within our soul, within our heart, we are sensible of the loving presence of the Lord with us, and there are times when that is withholden from us, sometimes to try our faith, but on another occasion to be an answer, a correction to our poor sinful spirit.

“All that the Father giveth Me.” Yes, He gave them to Him, and what about the reception by the Son of the gift? Oh! the value that Christ placed upon this people. Who can speak of it but Himself? All our words would never really explain the value that Christ sets upon the people for whom He suffered, bled and died. Again and again Christ speaks about the love wherewith He loves His people,—the love He bears to them—the unchanging nature of that love. See, how He bears with them in their follies. These things are written for our instruction.

Here is a man called Peter. Be careful about throwing stones at Peter, you may have one come back at your own head tomorrow. “Boasting Peter” you say. Peter was a very lovable and loving man. I wish I had some of the things that Peter possessed. I wish I had the same zeal for the good and glory of my Master that he had. His great zeal and love to Jesus Christ was shown very clearly. That man falls under temptation to sin. The Lord has already warned him, “Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22, 31 and 32). “No Lord, no. I will go to death, to punishment, to judgment, to prison, whatever it be, I will go anywhere for Thy sake. Lord.” Doubtless in his heart he felt like that but he did not know himself. It was a good thing that the Lord taught him what he was, for Peter was then able to teach others. Are not the 1st and 2nd Epistles of Peter, the outcome of this. That is the way the Lord prepares His people to do what He will have them to do, the kind of school He takes them into. It is not by sitting behind a desk and poring over your books that the Lord teaches. He teaches His people by taking them into this school of painful experience, the humbling experience in which pride is revealed and brought low, and where the grace of humility is planted in the soul growing there under these painful
dispensations of divine teaching. But Peter is not left to despair. Look at the difference between Judas and Peter. Judas goes out and hangs himself. Peter goes out and weeps bitterly. These were not crocodile tears—they were tears of real pain of soul and sorrow of heart. The man is now where the Lord purposed to bring him; to a deeper knowledge of his sin, a deeper knowledge of the infirmity that is within him, a deeper knowledge of the depth of the depravity that has come by the fall of man. Peter had not known this until this experience. Has the Lord cast him off? “The Lord will not cast off His people” (Psalm 94, 14), and Peter is one of them. It is a wonder above wonders he was, but it is a greater wonder I am. We do well to bring these things home to our own case. It is all very well to say, “Well Peter was a wonder of divine grace—a miracle of grace”—but how does it affect ourselves? That is the question. The Apostle Paul declared. “Of whom I am chief.” That is where the Lord brings His people. They have no stones to throw at “boasting Peter” then, not when they feel to be the chief of sinners. The Lord sends a message and then He comes to see Peter and speaks to him. I like the way that Christ spoke to him at the Sea of Galilee, “Lovest thou Me,” (John 21.), three times. He had denied the Lord three times. There may be some connection between the three questions and the three denials. Here is a man who was a disciple, an apostle, a follower of Christ, a man who had quite a number of commissions given to him by the Lord to accomplish, a man who was sent out with others ‘two and two’ (Luke 10.1). The Lord told him wonderful things that he would do and he did them, not in his own strength, but by the grace of God granted to him. Now he has sinned against his God. “Feed My sheep. Feed My Iambs. Feed My sheep.” “What me. Lord? Me, Lord?” “Feed My lambs”. “It must be a mistake; it must be a mistake. It must mean John. He was not as bad as I was. I know he did forsake Thee and turn his back upon Thee, but he did not deny thee. Lord. It must be a mistake. Perhaps it is James.” “Feed My sheep.” Peter is re-commissioned. It is a proven thing from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ. “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” The words of the Lord are true, and they are truth in Peter’s experience. “I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.” Why, the very tears are significant of this. Oh wonderful restoration!

Yes, the Father gave this people to Christ and a precious Christ hath received with love, with delight, with joy the gift of the Father to Him—the precious church of Christ—and, says the Lord Jesus Christ “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me.”

You will have heard much about the “shalls” and “wills” of God, so I need not enlarge upon that, except to say that there is nothing more sure. If you have an interest in a “shall” or “will” of God, you can commit everything into His hand. It is one of the most wonderful antidotes of worry to hear and to know the application of a “shall” or “will” of the living God to our soul, and, see the Speaker by faith with that great sceptre of Divine
Sovereignty held in that Hand that was wounded for us.

“They shall come to Me.” It does not say that they shall come to a chapel, although many do, and it does not say that they will come to a certain church, though many do. It does not say that all these people will come to a particular place of a particular kind, bearing a particular name although, blessed be the Name of God, many of them do, but, actually, those things are not the essential. They are perhaps a blessed consequence but they are not the essential. I say this for this purpose, I want to be faithful in love to you, and this is a matter of tremendous concern to my soul, because I am so associated with the things I am speaking of. I am afraid there may be many persons who will come to the place where they will rest in this “We have always gone to the right kind of chapel, and we have always heard the right kind of preaching and we have always adhered to the right kind of doctrine.” All those things are good things, but they are not the great essential. Here is the great Speaker and the great essential. It is consistent with what Christ said to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again” (John 3, 7). You must have life, and, if you have life, then you will seek the one who is life and the Source of life and the Supply of life. You will not be destitute of life. “Except the branch abide in the Vine” (John 15, 4) and so there is this word here as an all important one “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, come to Me.”

They must of necessity come to Christ. Well, you say, ‘I do not understand this coming to Christ.’ There is only one kind of person or people that really do understand it, and that is those who have come there. If you have not been there you just do not understand the meaning of it. But, once you have been there then, you will want to come again and again and again, and you will not be content unless you are there. Some people seem to think that when Christ is speaking like this what He means is this. You just simply come to the Word of God and accept the testimony of the Gospel and receive Christ and then—well the whole thing is done, you are religious and you will be all right for time and for eternity. As long as you live a fairly good life and try to obey the Word of God, at least, in some degree, then everything will be all right. But, that is not what is taught here. This word “Come” is not just simply one isolated action of a person’s soul once in their lifetime. This word is continuous, it is going on and on and on, I should be distressed and surprised if a person who first came to the Lord Jesus Christ by living faith and under the constraint of His love in helplessness, need and shame, under condemnation of sin with that soul so deeply convicted of guilt that they have to cry “None but Jesus can do my helpless soul good,”—I should be surprised and dismayed if as they get older they do not find they have to come with increased frequency to the Lord Jesus Christ with their soul and their personal needs to find (there is the wonder of this), that in Christ there is a fullness of supply for their every need. “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me.”

It has been my happy duty and my sad duty sometimes to read accounts that people have given of what they believe the Lord has done for them and in some cases I have noticed the person that is writing is 60 or 70 years old and they go back to the time when they were about 20 years of age telling what they thought was the beginning of things; when they were called by grace, or regenerated, we should say, or converted; they tell of this and,—that is the end. But now they are 60. How many meals have you had since you were 20 some of you 60-year-olds? Do you mean to tell me, friends, that your body needs more food than your soul? Oh! you say, “If I did not have plenty of food for my body I should simply die.” But it is equally true of the soul. So this word must be a continuous one, must it not? “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me,” and come and come and continue to come, and keep on coming, and they will come right to the end, and “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.” Ah! friends, the preciousness of that word.

But do you notice the dual miracle here? First of all the miracle of their coming despite all, the opposition and infidelity and hatred and sin and uncleanness that is in their nature? The miracle of regeneration and grace within the soul of a guilty, helpless, hell-deserving sinner who is nothing but opposition to God and to Christ? You see the miracle of that. And then, the miracle that, despite what they are even after they have come, why the Lord still says ” I will not cast them out.” But, surely, it may be said, that applies to the first coming, when they first went to the mercy seat and cried “Oh God have mercy upon me, miserable sinner that I am”, like the poor publican did. Surely it is in that hour they shall prove that “Him that cometh to Me