Thank you, Adam. Good morning. Faith is not presumptuous. It
is believing all that God has said and all that he's done and
pray the Lord will be pleased to bless us with his spirit and
and give us the gift of faith today as we meet. We're going
to be in Sixth chapter of John, this morning. If you'd like to
turn with me there in your Bibles, John chapter six. Let's pray together. Our merciful heavenly father,
Thank you for the gift of faith. Lord, if you've not. Chosen us
and called us and redeemed us. Or we would not. Believe we would
not have any way of. Approaching you and. Finding
your mercy and your grace. Thank you for that dear son.
Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would bless your word
and power, Lord, that you would open our hearts and that you
would speak truth and hope and comfort and peace to your people. Lord, if there be one that is
still a stranger to your grace, Lord, we pray that you would
call them and cause them to find all their salvation in Christ. We ask it in his name. Amen. You have your Bibles open to
John chapter 7. John chapter 6, I'm sorry, the
end of John chapter 6. I've titled this message, How
Do I Know If I'm One of God's Chosen? How do I know that? It's a most important question
and an interest that God's people have to know whether or not the
Lord has chosen them. In verse 70 of John chapter 6,
Jesus answered them, have not I chosen you? Before we try to answer that
question as to whether or not I've been chosen, let me ask
another question. Is salvation a choice? And the answer to that question
is absolutely it is. It is a choice. It's God's choice. It's not our choice. If anyone
is to be saved, it must be that way. It must be that way. If the Lord left us to ourselves,
we would never choose him. We could never choose him. We
have no desire. In our natural born state, we
have no desire or interest in Christ. Not the Christ who is. He must choose us and he must
call us and regenerate us. If we're to have any hope of
salvation, he's got to do it. Sometimes people conclude wrongly
that electing sovereign grace closes the door to heaven. But the truth is just the opposite.
Sovereign electing grace is, in fact, the only open door that
there is to heaven. If the Lord did not choose a
particular people according to his own will and his own purpose,
no one would be saved. We would all be shut out of heaven. The Lord is responding or answering
the confession that Peter makes in verse 68 and 69 And he's explaining to us why
it is that Peter was able to make such a confession. It is
because I've chosen you. It's because I've chosen you. That's why you made the confession
that you made. That's why you believe what you
believe. The evidence of you having been
chosen of God is this confession. Some might read these verses
and say, well, the Lord's referring to having chosen the 12, the
apostles. Well, if you'll turn back with
me to verse 40 in this same chapter. I'm verse 44. I'm sorry. The Lord makes it
clear that this is not just for the 12, but this is for all for
he says in verse 44 no man can come to me except the father
which has sent me draw him and I will raise him up at the last
day we have no ability to come to Christ unless the father which
sent Christ draw us call us make his call irresistible to us. In John chapter 15, at verse
16, the Lord says, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen
you. And then, of course, in Romans chapter
8, we read, all that he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of his son. That's what predestinating chosen
sovereign grace is all about, conforming his children to the
image of his son. If we're not made in the image
of Christ, then we have no hope of standing in the presence of
a holy God. We must be. We must be perfect. We must be without sin. And so the Lord goes on to tell us,
many are called, and that's the reference, I believe, to the
outward call. Many are called, but few are
chosen. Unless God chooses us, we'll
not hear the call. The call becomes effectual because
we've been chosen. Back to Romans chapter 8, all
that he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of his son. And all that he did predestinate,
he called. And all that he called, he justified. And all that he justified, he
glorified. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 5,
having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ unto himself according to his will and his purpose. I must be chosen How do I know if I've been chosen? Obviously, we cannot peer into
the book of life, the Lamb's book of life, and find our name. If we had an opportunity to look
at that book, would we not go straight to looking for our name? Even if we found our name there,
who's to say that that name didn't refer to someone else by the
same name? So we can't go to the Lamb's
Book of Life. The Lord alone has the knowledge
of the names that are in that book. We can't look at our life
and determine whether or not we've been chosen by how we live
in our life, what we're doing and what we're not doing. We
can't find any comfort there. If we did, that would be nothing
but self-righteousness if we were able to find something
in our life that gave us comfort and hope, we'd surely be looking
in the wrong place. We can't look back to an experience
and say, well, I remember when I was converted and find any
real hope there because however However impactful that experience
may have been, that's yesterday's manna. We can't live off of yesterday's
manna. We can't really find assurance
of our salvation in any of our past experiences. We certainly can't look to our
feelings. conclude from how we feel that
we're chosen of God. Feelings come and feelings go
and feelings are deceiving. They're deceiving. My only warrant,
as we just sang, is the word of God. None else is worth believing. How do I know? How do I know
if I have been Chosen Go back with me to our text. I want you
to notice something here in verse 66 From that time many of his disciples
and the followers that had That had followed Christ for all the
wrong reasons they went back and they walked no more with
him and Then Jesus said unto the 12, he said unto the 12,
will you also go away? And Peter's response is not,
they're not looking to one another, the disciples Peter doesn't look
for approval from the other disciples. He doesn't say, well, it's because
we believe this. He's not relying upon just a
group confession. Simon Peter answered him. Simon Peter is looking right
into the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's making this
confession, to whom shall we go? You see, what Peter's gonna confess
here is not something that we can find hope in because we believe
in a historical figure, because we believe that Jesus of Nazareth
as a historical figure was the Christ, the Son of the living
God, we find no real comfort there. Our only comfort comes
when the Spirit of God enables us to look in faith to the Son
of God. And that's a work of God's grace
in the heart. It's not just a, we're not just
giving some sort of intellectual assent to who Jesus of Nazareth
was. We're not looking around to the
other disciples and saying, well, it's because we believe this.
We're looking straight into the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're confessing, Lord, to
whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal
life. And we know and we are sure that
thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. If the spirit of God is enabling
me to make such a confession from my heart, looking to Christ
alone in that confession, Therein I find the hope that God has
chosen. The Lord responds to Peter's
confession by saying, have I not chosen you? Is this not the evidence
that you have been chosen of God? To whom shall we go? You've taken away all our choices.
Salvation's not our choice. It has to be His choice. And
when He chooses us, He takes away from us all the choices
that we would ever have. The choice of going back to the
law and trying to find The hope of our salvation in our law keeping
has been taken away. You know, the law of God is like
a plumb line against a crooked wall. The plumb line didn't make
the wall crooked and the plumb line can't fix the crooked wall. The plumb line only exposes the
teetering wall for what it is. And the scripture speaks of those
who trust in the law as those who lean upon a teetering wall
and how that wall will fall and it will crush those who trust
in it. There's the law of God. The law
of God didn't make us a sinner and the law of God can't fix
our sin problem. And when the Lord chooses us
and calls us and enables us like Peter to make this confession. What we're saying is, Lord, I've
got no place else to go. I used to think that somehow
improving my behavior and becoming a better person and doing the
works of the law was going to earn me salvation and earn me
favor with God. I was gonna work my way to heaven.
That option's been taken away. Every time I try to find any
hope there, I'm left wanting. I'm left with
any real comfort and any real assurance of my salvation. We're
like the woman with the issue of blood, aren't we? She had
spent all that she had on physicians. Who were those physicians? They
were the religious leaders. They were the Pharisees. They
were the lawmongers. They were those who were putting
us under the law. And she had spent all that she
had on them. She was broke. And she was worse
off now than she was before. I can just imagine that some
of these physicians that she had gone to, she had a problem
with bleeding. And one of the treatments they
would have done would have been bloodletting, which would have
been the worst thing. And that's the way the law is.
What the law does for us in trying to cure our sin problem only
makes it worse. It only makes it worse. And so
here she is. Oh, if I could just touch the
hem of his garment, I would be made whole. She had her eyes
fixed on Christ. She had no place else to go.
She had tried everything else. And crawling through the crowd,
she touched the hem of his garment. You know, there's another place
in the Bible where the hem of that garment is mentioned, and
it's the hem of Aaron's garment. When Aaron was anointed with
oil, the oil was poured upon his head. The Bible says it ran
down his beard and down his coat and dripped off the hem of his
skirt. And there we have a picture of
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the anointed one. He's anointed
above His fellows. He's anointed with the oil of
gladness. He came in the full anointing
of the Spirit of God, and we get little drops of that oil.
But only when we're able to come to Him. We've got no place, Lord,
to whom shall we go? We've got no place else to go. We can't go to the philosophers. Mars Hill is the place where
the philosophers got together and tried to figure out what
the meaning of life was. It was in Athens, the seat of intellectualism. Some of the philosophers thought
that, well, the real meaning of life is found outside of oneself. And the scripture calls that
Epicureanism. And the other group of philosophers
said, no, the real meaning of life is found within oneself. And the scripture refers to those
as the Stoics. And nothing's changed. Men are
still trying to find the meaning of life, either in things outside
of themselves, or they're still trying to find the meaning of
life within themselves. And Paul, in speaking to those
philosophers, said, I noticed in the city of Athens that you
had a statue to the unknown God. That's the God I'm going to preach
to you, because you don't know him. You don't know him. You
preach Christ to them. Do you want to know where life
is and all the meaning of life? It's not in your philosophy. It's in Christ. And only when
we're brought by the grace of God to give up, like Peter was,
Lord, to whom shall we go? This confession This confession,
brethren, is the only evidence that we have that we're chosen
of God. We wouldn't make such a confession
if we weren't chosen of God. Did I not choose you? Peter,
the fact that you didn't leave with the crowd, the fact that
you've got no place else to go, the fact that you have no one
else to go to, All philosophy can teach me is
something perhaps about myself and something about the world,
but it can teach me nothing about God. All the self-help books of man's devising might help me
to get along better in this world, but they can never tell me how
to get into heaven. Education may expand my mind,
but it can never change my heart. Lord, to whom shall we go? We've
got no place else to go. We've got no one else to go to. You know, we're thankful for
medicine, and medicine may repair and strengthen the body, but
it's short-lived. It's short-lived. And nothing
in medicine can tell me how to have a new body, a resurrected
body, a sinless body. The Lord Jesus is the only one
that can do that. Religion might motivate me and
teach me how to live a better life, but it can tell me nothing
about having eternal life. That can only be found in Christ. The only evidence that I have
that my name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life and that
God, according to His own will and his sovereign purpose chose
me is that I've got no one else to go to. I've got to have Christ. To whom shall we go? None of
these other things meet the need of my soul. The prosperity of
this world can't meet my need. The pleasures of sin can't meet
my need. I've got to have Christ. To whom
shall we go? Notice what else what Peter says.
Thou, thou hast the words of eternal life. The words that I speak unto you
They are spirit and they are life. My sheep hear my voice
and they follow me. Never a man spake like this man
before. When God speaks, the evidence that I've been chosen
is that I believe, that I believe what he says. You know, I was
talking to a brother the other day, and we were discussing our
journey in the faith. And even before the Lord had
called us and given us saving faith, the Lord had done a work
even before that. And my experience was that the
Lord caused me to believe that the Bible was the word of God
even before I knew what it meant. It caused me to believe that.
I came out of Catholicism and I was done with the traditions
of religion and I needed a source of truth that was reliable, a
source of truth that was infallible. And even before the Lord revealed
himself to me, for years, every time someone showed me something
in the Bible, I believed it. I believed it. And it wasn't until I was shown
who Christ was, and the Lord opened my heart to that, that
I was able to believe on him. But here's my point. If God has
chosen me, I believe every word of this
book. I may not understand it, but
I believe it. Say, what do you believe about
this or what about that? Whatever the Bible says is what
I believe. And if you show me from scripture
something that I believe that's not right, Lord, Lord, help me,
I don't wanna believe something that's not according to the scriptures. I wanna be conformed to the image of God by the word
of God, whatever God's word says. Lord, to whom shall we go? We cannot trust our own opinions
on things. We cannot trust the words of
man. We cannot trust the philosophers
and all the, we've got no place else to go. You alone have the
words of eternal life. Lord, show me what your word
means. Speak to my heart by, and if
he does, it'll be by his word. It'll be by his written word. Lord, you've shut me up to the word
of God. The unbeliever will, as the Bible
says, they will rest the scriptures to their own destruction. They
will take clear teachings of the Bible
and they will distort them to make them mean something that
they don't mean. And when the Lord gives us faith
in Christ, Lord, I don't want to distort your word. I want to believe whatever your
word says. We know that we've believed God's
word when it points us to Christ. That's the purpose of his word. The end result of having believed
the word of God is that we believe on the word of God. The purpose of the written word
is to cause us to rest our hope in the person of the living word. So I know that God's word has
been made effectual when it causes me to look to and to rest in
and to believe on and to rejoice in the glorious person and the
accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the living word,
the son of God. Lord, to whom shall we go? The disciples didn't discuss
this question that the Lord asked, aren't you going to leave me?
They didn't look to one another and say, well, you know, what
do you guys think? What should we say? No, Peter
looked right into the eyes of the Lord Jesus and said, Lord,
Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou alone hast the words of
eternal life. I've got no place else to go.
You've shut me up to yourself. Did I not choose you? Is there any other, is there
any other evidence of God's electing grace, we believe and are sure that
thou art the Christ. This is more than just believing
that Jesus of Nazareth who lived 2,000 years ago and died on a
Roman cross was the promised Messiah. This is looking again
like Peter into the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ as he's revealed
to our hearts in the scriptures by the Spirit of God, looking
to him and saying, Lord, thou art the Christ. You're the anointed
one. I think about that woman at the
well in John chapter four. She was a Samaritan. The Samaritans
only had the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch,
the books of Moses. And when the Lord began to talk
to her about how it is that one is to approach
God in worship. Remember, he said, you, she brought
up, well, you Jews say that we have to worship in Jerusalem,
but our fathers say here in Samaria, on this mountain, and the Lord
tells her that worship is to be done in spirit and in truth.
Remember what her response was? And this was after he had told
her to go get her husband. And he said, she said, I know
this, I don't understand all that you're saying to me right
now, but I know this, that when Messiah comes, he's gonna settle
everything. That Samaritan who only had a
very small portion of the scriptures and much of that was misinterpreted
by the Samaritans, She knew this for sure, that Messiah is gonna
fix everything. And that's when the Lord said
to her, I am speaketh unto thee. End of conversation, the disciples
show up, she runs back down into Sychar. She said, come meet a
man who told me all that I ever did is not this the Christ, Is
not this the Christ, the Messiah? He's gonna fix everything. He's going to save all of Israel. All of Israel will be saved by
him. He's not gonna lose one. And
whatever he says and whatever he does will be perfect and we
can follow him without any hesitation. That's what Peter's saying. We
know and are sure that thou art the Christ, the one promised
from the very start. When God told Adam after the
fall, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.
And when Eve gave birth to Cain, She called him, she said, I've
received a man, the man. She thought the Messiah had come. And from the birth of Cain all
the way through the history of the people of God, every child
that was born was hoped to be the Messiah. And every Jewish
woman hoped to give birth to the Messiah. The Messiah is gonna
fix everything. He's gonna be sent from God with
the full anointing of the Spirit of God to put away all the sins of God's
people and established their eternal salvation and eternal
life once and for all. Messiah is everything. The Christ
is who we Who we must have. I know that men in religion say
that Jesus is the Christ, but those same people will speak
of the Lord dying for people that ultimately won't be saved. that the Lord shed his blood
on Calvary's cross for individuals that are going to end up in hell. There's no Jewish person that
would ever have thought about the Christ that way. That's a
Gentile heresy. That's a heresy that we devise
right out of Greek mythology. where all the gods of Greek mythology
struggle with the humans here on earth and there's an ongoing
battle to see who's gonna win. That's not the Christ. That's
a figment of our imagination. The Christ is the successful,
sovereign Savior of all of Israel. Martha, I am the resurrection
and the life. He that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Martha, do you believe this?
What did Martha say? Yea, Lord, I believe that thou
art the Christ that should come into the world. I believe that
you're that one that God has promised. You're that one that
the scriptures have spoken of from the very beginning. First Corinthians chapter 15,
how that Christ died according to the scriptures. All the scriptures speak of Christ,
this successful savior. What is Peter confessing? What is it that those who are
chosen of God confess? If I'm going to be saved, he's
gonna have to do it. And he's gonna have to do it
all, and he's gonna have to do it all by himself. And by God's grace and the power
of his spirit, we look to Christ, to the Lord
Jesus, and we say, Lord, I believe and I'm sure, I'm sure that thou
art the Christ. the son of the living God. And all that, what is meant by
that? All the attributes of God, the
fullness of the Godhead is found bodily in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the self-existent one.
He is the creator and sustainer of all of life. He is eternal. He is immutable. He's never changed,
nor can he change. He's sovereign over the armies
of heaven and all the inhabitants of the earth. And no man can
stay his hand or say unto him, what doest thou? He's omnipotent. He possesses all power. He's omniscient. He knows all
things. He's never learned anything,
asked a question, or acquired knowledge. He possesses everything
within himself. How do I know that I've been
chosen? Lord, to whom Shall we go? Thou alone has the words of eternal
life. And we believe. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed, and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which
I have Entrusted the word there is committed in our King James,
but it means to entrust I've entrusted everything into him I'm not diversifying my assets. I've got All my eggs in one basket
if you will Christ is all I have We believe and are sure that
thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Have I not chosen you? Have I
not chosen you? All right, let's take a break.