Yet she on earth hath union with
God, the three in one, and mystic sweet communion with those whose
rest is one. That's a glorious hymn, that's
a glorious truth. We have Union with Christ. Through faith we have access,
we have acceptance before God Almighty in the person of our
substitute. And together we have this mystic
sweet reunion, the fellowship of the spirit of God's people.
What a blessing that is. I appreciate Trevor reading from
Psalm 133 and 134. Behold how good and how pleasant
it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. Christ is not divided. All believers
believe the same thing about him. about their salvation, how
it was accomplished, who gets all the glory. And it's such
a blessing for us to be able to come together and in unison
point to Christ. I asked Trevor to do the call
of worship this morning and I'm I know why he chose that passage
of scripture. As most of you know, the Fanchers
are moving to Kingsport. They'll be attending Gabe Soniker's
church there. Trevor got a new job up there. I'll admit to you and to them
that I'm already praying the Lord bring him back. I would recommend that you invest
in Allegiant I'm sure there's going to be a few extra flights
between Kingsport and Sanford between Sarah and Renee and the
kids. So we love you guys. What a blessing it's been to
worship with you and to fellowship with you. And we're going to
see you all hopefully on a fairly regular basis, not every week
like we have been. Blessings to the church in Kingsport. What a treat they have. They
don't even know it yet, but we love you. Let's open our Bibles together
to John chapter three. We're gonna enjoy a meal together
after the service. I hope that everybody will plan
to stay for that. I've titled this message, The
Work of Christ. The Work of Christ. There's a verse of scripture
in Matthew chapter 22, verse 42, where the Lord Jesus asked
the Pharisees, what think ye of Christ? What think ye of Christ. And I'm sure that multiple thousands
of gospel messages over the millennium have been preached from that
verse of scripture. It's a pressing question that
must be answered. What think ye of Christ? But we must understand the context
in which the Lord asked that question in order to understand
the real meaning of it. He wasn't asking them, what do
you think of Christ? He was exposing the error that
they had about Christ. Because in the end, it doesn't
matter what you think of Christ. It doesn't matter what I think
of Christ. It doesn't matter what any man thinks of Christ.
What matters is who is Christ? What does God think of him? Who
exactly is the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ? And the one thing that we're
going to look at from scripture this morning is what exactly
did he do? What work did he perform? When the Lord asked the Pharisees
that question, what think ye of Christ? That wasn't the end
of the question. The rest of the question is,
whose son is he? And what did they say? Well,
he's the son of David. He's the son of David. To which
the Lord Jesus went to Psalm 110. And he asked them this question. If he be the son of David, then
why did David call him Lord? When David said, the Lord, God
the Father, said unto my Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, David
speaking, the Lord said to my Lord, sit thou here at my right
hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. If the Christ just be the Son
of David, the Son of David is a man of flesh. then we can do with him what we will
if he's just another man. But if he's Lord, if he's none
other than God incarnate, If He is the Word that was made
flesh and dwelt among us, and if we beheld His glory as the
glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, the One who is full
of grace and full of truth, if He is the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, if He's the self-existent Creator and Sustainer of all
of life, if He's God, if He's Lord, then we're brought to that place of worship bowing before him. In John chapter 6, these men did not believe that
Jesus was Lord. They ask him in verse 28, which
we considered last Sunday, what shall we do that we might
work the works of God? What can we perform in order
to in order to find acceptance with God. And the Lord Jesus said, this
is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent. Now, the Lord was not saying,
if you want to do the work of God, then you have to find in
your heart the ability to believe, and in believing, you will have
performed the work of God. No, that's not what he's saying
at all. He was saying, this is the work of God that you believe.
Your ability to believe on him is the evidence that God has
done a work in your heart. You're interested in the work
of God? Do you believe? Do you believe? And so they responded, with this
in verse 30. They said therefore unto him,
what sign showest thou then that we may see and believe thee? What dost thou work? What work are you going to perform?
What miracle are you going to perform in order to prove to
us that you are who you say you are? We wanna see. These same people previously
in this same chapter The Lord Jesus rebuked them and
said, you follow me, not because you saw the miracle, but because
you did eat of the loaves and the fishes. You just want me to perform physical
feats that might make your life easier. That's all you're looking
for. They had seen what the Lord Jesus
did in multiplying the loaves and the fishes to feed 5,000 men, not counting the women and
children. And yet they still did not believe. In John chapter 11, the Lord
Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead who had been in the tomb
for four days. And there were Jews there that
watched that miracle. They saw it with their own eyes.
And as soon as the Lord had said to the men there, lose him and
let him free, they ran back down in Jerusalem and reported to
the Pharisees what had happened. And the Pharisees got together
and said, what are we gonna do? and they plotted the Lord's death
that day. They saw a miracle, the 5,000
saw a miracle but they were not convinced. Pharaoh saw the plagues pronounced
ahead of time and yet with each revelation
of God's fulfilled miracles and prophecy, his heart was made
harder. These men are saying, what work
are you going to perform in order that we might believe? We want
to see something. And there's plenty of evidence
in scripture and in everywhere else that physical manifestations
of God's power never changes the heart. You would think, and I want you to think about
this. You would think that if a man came back from hell and
sat here and heard the gospel, of God's free grace in the glorious
person and in the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ
that his experience in hell would have been sufficient to cause
him to believe. It wouldn't. It wouldn't. Except God do a work in our hearts. This is the work of God that
you believe. No outward evidences are going
to convince us, none. They wanna see another work. I think it's in Matthew where
this same conversation is recorded. The Lord Jesus said, a wicked
and perverse generation seeketh after a sign. What sign are you
gonna show us? What miracle are you gonna perform?
We wanna see something. And what I'm saying to you, brethren
and my friends is that no miracle of God ever convinced a man to
believe, ever. And men can see and experience
the most undeniable evidences of God's power and not come to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one thing that will
cause anyone to believe and that is the work of God in the heart. Giving him ears to hear, giving
him a heart to believe, breathing into his dead spirit, his dead
soul, life. We'll believe it when we see
it. No, you won't. But you will see it if you're
able to believe it. Martha Did I not say unto thee,
if you would believe, then you would see? In Acts chapter 28, the apostle
Paul goes to Rome and he's preaching to some Jews in Rome. And after having preached the
gospel, the scripture says this, believed and some believed not. Now, the interesting thing about
that verse is that the verb to believe in the first part of
that verse is in the passive voice. Now, the passive voice
means that that person didn't do anything, something was done
to them. And the second word, the second word believed is in
the active voice. And that means they participated
in their unbelief. If you are a believer, it's all
God's fault and he gets all the glory. And if you are an unbeliever,
it is all your fault and you bear all the responsibility. Now that's what the Bible teaches. We want to see something. No,
you must have a work done for you, not a work performed before
you that will convince you. Nothing will ever do that. Hell itself would not convince
a man to believe on Christ. He must have a work of God done
for him. Now we can respond one of three ways to that truth.
We can become fatalistic. And we can say, well, what will
be, will be. It's all in God's hands. I'll
just wait and see what God does for me. And really what you're
doing is you're waiting for a sign. You're waiting for a feeling.
You're waiting for an experience. Or you can become angry and you
can say, that's not fair. That's not fair. I've got some
say-so in this thing. And that's the way most people
respond to the truth of sovereign grace and the work of God in
the heart. They either become fatalistic
or they become angry toward God. But there's a third response.
There's a third response. Lord, do a work of grace for
me. Lord, if you don't save me, I won't be saved. Lord, if you
don't turn me, I won't be turned. Lord, if you don't give me faith,
I can't believe. Lord, save me. I'm completely dependent upon
you to do a work of grace for me. The work of Christ. John 9, verse four. The Lord
Jesus said, I must work the works of him that sent me. What work can we work that we
might work the works? What can we do that we might
work the works of God? Oh, you perform a work for us.
Let's see something. John chapter four, verse 34.
when the disciples came back from Sychar and they found the
Lord talking to that woman at the well. And he said to them, my meat
is to do the will of my father and to finish his work. The first recorded words that
we have in the gospel accounts of our Lord Jesus was in Jerusalem
at the age of 12, when he said to his mother, after searching
for him for three days, did you not know that I must be about
my father's business? And the last recorded words that
we have of our Lord before he bowed his mighty head was, it
is finished. I must finish his work. The work that the Lord Jesus
came to do was the will of his father. What was his father's
will? To save his people from their
sins. And that's the work that he performed.
And that's the work that he finished. And that's the work that he gets
all the glory for. And it's a spiritual work. It's
a work that cannot be seen with the physical eye. It's a work
that can only be seen through the eye of faith. We look on
those things which are not seen. We look not on the things which
are seen for the things which are seen are temporal, but the
things which are not seen are eternal. They that do mind the
thing, they that are after the flesh, they mind the things of
the flesh. They're looking for some external
evidence. We need a work, we need a miracle. And when the Lord Jesus said,
a wicked and perverse generation seeketh after a sign, but no
sign will be given unto it except for the sign of Jonah. who spent
three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. And so
shall the son of man spend three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. What is the Lord speaking of?
He's speaking of his death, burial and his resurrection. This is
the sign. This is the sign. You remember when Gideon asked
the Lord for a sign and Gideon put a fleece out And he asked the Lord, he said,
Lord, I need to know for sure that this is you calling me to
do this. And he asked the Lord for a sign.
And he said, Lord, if you will wet the fleece with the dew of
the night and cause the ground everywhere else to be dry, then
I'll know that you're speaking. God gave him a sign. He woke
up. He wrung a bowl of water out
of that fleece and the ground all around was wet, it was dry.
But Gideon wasn't yet convinced. And so Gideon asked him again,
he asked the Lord again, he said, Lord, show us another sign, show
me another sign. This time I want the fleece to
be dry and I want all the ground around the fleece to be wet.
And the next morning Gideon got up and that's exactly what happened. And you say, well, you know,
we need to put out our fleece and we need to ask God to give
us a sign and we need to ask God to prove something to us. No, no. The fleece that Gideon put out
was none other than that lamb that is without spot and without
blemish who came as the Christ, the anointed one, the one who
came in the full power of the spirit of God to accomplish the
work of his father. And on the cross, he was wrung
out. He was wrung out. And the anointing
of the spirit of God came from him to all around him. You see, Gideon's sign and Gideon's
fleece is the same as what the Lord said. when he said, no sign
will be given unto it. What am I saying? Don't ask God
for some physical manifestation of his promises, believe God,
believe his word. This is the evidence that we
have. You know, there's a whole branch
of philosophy called Epistemology, epistemology. Epistemology is a study of philosophy
that tries to discover how it is we know what we know. And
there's different categories, what we know by experience, we
know by intellect, we know by influence, we know by all these
intuitions and feelings, And I suppose there's some truth
in all of that as far as how is it that we know what we know.
But how is it that we know what we know when it comes to the
gospel? How is it that you know that
you're a sinner? Is it because of the pains of
conscience that you experience when convicted by the Holy Spirit?
Well, I suppose. in part, but that's not sufficient evidence
because that's subjective. Maybe I'm just feeling guilty
like all other men feel guilty because I've got a conscience.
That's subjective. How do I know what I know about
me being a sinner? And the short answer and the
consistent answer to everything that we know is because God said
so. And that's enough. You see, faith
just believes God. Faith just believes God. God
said he looked down from heaven and he saw that every thought
of the imagination of the heart was only evil and not continually.
How do I know that every thought and imagination of my heart is
only evil and not continual? I think I have some good thoughts
because God said so. How do I know that everything
I put my hand to I defile? Because God said so. How do I
know that everything about me falls short of his glory? Because
God said so. How do I know what I know? Faith
is the evidence of things not seen. Faith is the evidence of
things not seen. And faith is simply believing
God. It's just believing God. These people wanted a sign. We
need something to prove to us. What does God say about the work
of Christ? Isaiah chapter 53, God saw the
travail of his soul and God was satisfied. For by my righteous
servant shall justify many. He justified. Who is he that
condemneth? Who is he that condemneth? It
is God that justifies. God justified me, that's how
I know. How can I come into the presence
of a holy God and be without sin? That's what justified means,
to be without sin. Because God said, I've separated
your sins from you as far as the East is from the West and
I remember them no more. Because God said, I buried them
in the depths of the sea. That's how I know, God said so.
That's why everything else is subjective. All other sources
of knowledge, are subjective. Let the philosophers deal with
that all they want. Here's how I know what I know. God said so. What sign are you gonna show
me? For the works which the father
hath given me to finish the same works that I do. And these works
bear witness of me. These works bear witness of me. And the Lord Jesus was able to
go before his heavenly father in John chapter 17 and say to
his father, I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished
the work which thou gavest me to do. How do I know that the
work of God is finished? Because the Bible says so. That's how I know. It's how I know everything I
know. Oh, we want proof, don't we? We want outward evidences. The word of God is not enough.
And so religion says, join this group, walk this aisle, pray
this prayer, wear this robe, light this candle, smell this
incense, listen to this heartwarming music, or listen to this motivational
preacher. Look to the change in your life.
Look to something that you do. And every message of salvation
promoted by all forms of religion point us somewhere other than
Christ to find the hope of our salvation. Why? Because men haven't changed.
What work are you going to do that we might see and believe? Brethren, the work of God has
already been done. The fleece has been wet and wrung
out. The Lord Jesus has finished the
work of his father. The father has raised him from
the dead. That's the sign. We weren't there. We can't see
it. And it's not just that it happened
historically, everyone who calls themselves a Christian. Last
Sunday, perhaps you noticed, nothing was said about Easter.
That was on purpose. That was on purpose. There's
so much blasphemy and we've seen it all this week in the news
as a result of the one group that represents Christianity
in the whole world and the death of their leader and all the horrible,
black, dark blasphemy that's been promoted. You want to see
the sin of the world? You don't have to go to the bad
places that men think are dark and wicked, you just watch the
news. The most wicked thing that I've seen in a long time has
been taking place in the last week. And I did not want us to
be identified in any way with that. Do we rejoice in the resurrection
of Christ? Amen. It is the sign. It's the sign. And it's the only
sign. And it's not just that he did
raise from the dead, which all so-called Christians believe,
it's why he raised from the dead. Why did he raise from the dead?
Because he finished the work that the father had sent him
to do. He accomplished the salvation
of his people. He justified them before God. He established a righteousness
on their behalf before God almighty. He ascended back into glory and
he took his rightful place at the right hand of the majesty
on high. And he is our intercessor right now. Everliving, everliving
to make intercession for us. Oh, we have a savior. Isaiah chapter 40, verse 10,
you don't have to turn there, says that his reward was with
him and his work went before him. His work went before him. The work that he performed in
fulfilling the will of his father to redeem all the elect of God
went before him and recommended him to his father. And the father
saw his work and the father said, I'm satisfied. You see, faith is just being
satisfied with what God's satisfied with. Faith is being satisfied
with who God is satisfied with. We're not looking for a sign.
We're not looking for some outward manifestation in order for God
to prove what He has revealed in His Word. If God's given us
faith, we just believe and we can't not believe. We just believe
what God says. God made us a believer, we just,
amen. Amen, Lord. Turn with me to Psalm 111. Psalm 111, verse one. Praise
ye the Lord. Give him all the praise and all
the glory and all the honor. He did all the work and he did
it all by himself. He put all the sins of all of
his people away once and for all, and he gets all the glory. Praise the Lord. I will praise
the Lord with my whole heart in the assembly of the upright
and in the congregation. The works of the Lord are great,
sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. The pleasure
that I have is in His work. Lord, you've made me to believe.
Lord, you did the work of redemption. His work, His work is honorable. Honorable to God. And we wanna
be honorable. We wanna honor God with our lives.
We don't wanna be a bad testimony. And we wanna speak honorably
of Him. But what God's talking about
here, He's talking about perfection. Perfection. What God demands
and what God requires is absolute perfection, perfect obedience
to His law, perfect faith, not just in outward behavior but
in heart and in thought and in word and in deed. And the Lord
Jesus is the only one that ever did that. His work. Here's what
God requires. He required a perfect work. His
work is honorable and glorious and His righteousness endureth
forever. My righteousness is just filthy
rags. The best thing about me is vanity. But His righteousness and His
work What work are you gonna do in order to prove to us what
you're saying about yourself? We wanna see some outward evidence. This is the work of God that
you believe. He hath made His wonderful works
to be remembered. Here we are 3,000 years from
when these words were penned by King David, still glorying in the same work. Nothing's changed, same work. The Lord is glorious and the
Lord is full of compassion. The first hour this morning,
we dealt with 2 Samuel 22 and concluded from everything
that God has told us that he will meet us on the ground that
we come. There was a priest In the night before our Lord's
crucifixion, when he was being passed back and forth between
the priest and Pilate, there was a priest, I'm sorry,
and Herod, the priest, Pilate and Herod. And they were passing
him around, trying to decide who's gonna take responsibility
for this. And when they brought him to
Herod, The scripture says that Herod was delighted to see him
for he had heard about this miracle worker and was expecting that
the Lord would perform a miracle for him, for Herod. And Herod asked him. And the Lord was silent. Silent. He didn't answer him
a word. He kept interrogating him. I'm
sure that in that conversation he probably said what Pilate
said. Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you? Or the power to let you go? The
Lord didn't speak a word to him. didn't answer him a word, and
finally out of frustration, Herod sent him away. God, I need a feeling, I need
this, I need that, I need an experience. I need an outward
manifestation, I need something that I can observe with my flesh,
something I can feel in order to know. And God says to you
and me, this is the work of God. This is the work of God that
you believe. Lord, do a work for me. Forgive my unbelief. It is the
sin that always doth so easily beset us. Brethren, every problem
that we have in this world, every problem, I say this without exclusion,
without apology, every issue that we that we cause every sin
that we experience is because of our unbelief. This is the work of God that you believe. Oh Lord, I do believe, help thou
my unbelief. Our Heavenly Father, thank you for a perfect work,
an honorable work, a complete work. Lord, our works are never, they never qualify,
they never measure up, they never, oh, we need you to do a work
for us. And we thank you for the work that you did. Lord,
enable us, enable us to look, to believe, and to see the work
of God revealed in thy word. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. 15, spiral hymnal, let's stand together.