What a wonderful hymn. It's wonderful
to sing the gospel. The scriptures speak of us singing
to each other, so the singing is not an incident. the purpose of God, that it is
just to entertain our flesh. It's to cause us to sing the
glories of our great God and Saviour. And if you turn with
me in your scriptures to John chapter 15, I thought I was doing really
well. I got lots of sleep last night
having not had any much for the previous 48 hours and having
run around half of Europe it seemed for a couple of weeks. But I got up to speak earlier
and I thought, dear oh dear, I am really tired. My brain is
not functioning very well at all. Pray that the Lord might
use some of his word and lay it upon your hearts because we've
come to another one of those glorious passages of scripture
that speak of the Lord Jesus Christ. And once again, we need
to be reminded of the night that was This was occurring is the
night before the arrest, the night of the arrest, the night
of the tears, the night of the blood that flowed in Gethsemane's
garden, the blood that flowed in the courts of Pilate and Herod
and the Jews, and the blood that flowed on the cross of Calvary. And Norm spoke so well about
how precious that blood is. Not only in this night do we
have the Lord Jesus Christ speaking words of comfort and encouragement
and wanting them to rejoice in the glory of Him and who they
are, but also to be reminded that Our great God and Saviour
saves on purpose. The verse that I wanted us to
look at this morning is verse 16. And this is a word spoken
to his friends. Let's go back to verse 13. Greater love has no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends. If ye do whatsoever, I command
you. And the great command of the
gospel is to believe. The great command of the gospel
is to come. The great command of the gospel
is to look unto the Lord Jesus Christ and be ye saved, all the
ends of the earth. The great command of the gospel,
all of them, are about not looking inward to ourselves, but looking
outward and looking upward and looking to him alone. Henceforth,
verse 15, I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what
his Lord doeth, but I have called you friends. For all things that
I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. And so these
words of the Lord Jesus Christ are the words of God the Father.
You can't separate one from the other. And then this is this
amazing verse. Ye have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you and ordained you. that ye should go and bring forth
fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall
ask of my Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that
ye love one another. If the world hate you, you know
that it hated me before it hated you. If you are of the world,
the world would love his own. But because you are not of the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the
world hateth you. Divine, sovereign election. is a glorious doctrine, but it's
only a glorious doctrine when it's seen in the glory of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And Norm read those verses to
us out of 1 Peter this morning, earlier, and it's just, I love
the books of Peter. I love to think of Peter's life,
I love to follow his life along, but Listen to what he says. He says in verse 4 of chapter
2, he says, To whom coming? God's children are always coming.
They're always coming. The elect children are always
coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. To whom coming? As unto a living
stone, disallowed indeed of men, which is exactly what was happening
that night and exactly what this religious world does. It disallows
him. but chosen of God and precious. Ye also, as lively stones, as
living stones, are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to
offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, What does God accept? The next
words, by Jesus Christ. Everything that God accepts,
he accepts by Jesus Christ. Wherefore, also it is contained
in the scripture, behold, I lay in Sion, a chief cornerstone,
elect, precious, And he that believeth on him shall not be
confounded. He shall not be confused. He
that believeth. The doctrine of election in John
Chapter 15 is a doctrine that's stated throughout all of the
scriptures and we've been through some of them in the past. The
number of them throughout the scriptures is so immense that
I just put into my search engine on my computer just some of them
that relate to that, and there are dozens more synonyms and
dozens more examples. But just the simple ones that
use the word elect and chosen and similar phrases like that,
when you type them out on A4 pages, it is nine pages of scripture. God doesn't have to write something
hundreds of times for it to be true. He only has to write it
once. But this scripture, this glorious declaration, and it's
really just a declaration of God being God, isn't it? I have chosen you. It's just a great declaration
of who God is, isn't it? It is a precious, precious truth. And here, on this particular
night, the Lord's preaching these words. In John 14, he says, don't
let your hearts be troubled. You believe. He's saying this,
that their joy might be filled. Why do men object to the electing
God who is Christ Jesus the Lord? Why do so few churches believe
and proclaim this? The answer is simple and the
answer is in our passage of scripture in John 15 verse 19. If you were of the world, if
your origin was from here, the world would love his own. If your origin is from here,
if the origin of your religion, the origin of your righteousness
before God is something that you have done, the world will
love you. You preach the righteousness
of men and the world will love you. You preach the morality
of men and the goodness of men, the world would love you. Would
love his own, but because you are not of the world, and that
word of means origin, because you are not of the world, But
I have chosen you out of the world. I have chosen you out
of the world. We love contemplating what is
happening in heaven and how glorious it is, isn't it? I have chosen
you out of the world. What are they singing in heaven?
Revelation chapter 5 verse 9 and they sung a new song saying thou
art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof for
thou was slain and has redeemed us to God you have bought us
out of this world back to yourself you've paid the price the price
of your precious blood the price of perfect obedience and satisfaction
to the law of God. You have redeemed us to God. That's what redemption is, isn't
it? Redemption is to God, by thy blood, out of every kindred
and tongue and people and nation, and hath made us unto our God,
kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. The answer is love, isn't it? The children of God love the
electing love of God. And I know you looked at Ephesians
chapter 1 last week, but 14 times just in those verses it speaks
of in Him, in Him, it's God's love language. We are predestinated. I'll just read some of them to
you out of Ephesians, the beginning of Ephesians. It says, Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places, in Christ, according
as he hath chosen us in him. before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and without blame before him
in love, having predestinated us under the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. You haven't chosen me. You haven't
chosen me. You have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you. I have no interest in making
the Lord Jesus Christ something that men debate about and just
argue and the object of a theological discussion, which is one of the
reasons in our church we don't tend to have Bible studies. When
God's children get together, I trust that we speak scriptures
to each other. But God is not to be debated,
he's to be declared. And God's children will believe
in him, and God's children will rejoice, and God's children will
love the declarations of God being God. And this is one of
the most remarkable and wonderful passages of scripture. We'll
leave all the theological debates to the professors of religion. We just proclaim the Lord Jesus
Christ and you cannot proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ without
proclaiming him as the God Almighty who elects. He is the elect one
of God. I'll put an article in in your
bulletin that I wrote some time ago, and I'd forgotten all that
I'd written in it, but I just looked at that word elect or
election in the New Testament because someone who was very
religious had challenged me. And I thought his inquiry was
genuine, and I was challenged again just before I went to England
by someone who said to me, why? Why are you making or why do
you make so much of election and predestination? And the simple
answer is, God makes so much of it. God makes so much of it. In Isaiah 42 he declares that
this is the title of his son. We just read it in 1 Peter again,
isn't it? He's elect and precious. He says in Isaiah 42 verse 1,
Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect. And then God says,
my soul delights in him. My soul delights in him. I have
put my spirit upon him, and he shall bring forth judgment to
the Gentiles. Not only is it the name of him,
but as a glorious father, his children have his name, and as
a glorious husband, his wife bears his name. And we, the children
of God, are the elect. It's God's title of his son,
it's God's title of his children. He calls them mine, he says,
he's my beloved, it's mine own. He says in Isaiah 45, verse four,
for Jacob, my servant's sake, and Israel, mine elect. The spiritual Israel of God.
I have even called thee by thy name, I have surnamed thee, though
thou hast not known me. Isaiah 65, 9, I'll bring forth
a seed out of Jacob and out of Judah, an inheritor of mine mountains. Mine elect shall inherit. Mine elect. God speaks, the Lord
Jesus Christ speaks of his elect all the time throughout the scriptures. It's a title for him, it's the
title and a name he gives his people. It's God's love language
to his people. Why would people in this religious
world want to hide something that God sees as so precious? Well, let them do as they like.
One of the things that's challenging about going to the various parts
of the world that we've been in this last couple of weeks,
we went to some of the oldest religious relics that are left
in this world and we went to Stonehenge, which they say is
3,500 years old. So it's really old, isn't it? But 3,500 years ago is still
in the days after the Lord had been revealed in the glories
of what he did in Nation Israel. 3,500 years ago is about the
time of the Exodus. The religious world, out of whom
the Lord Jesus Christ chooses his people, is not ignorant,
and their rebellion Their rebellion is not a rebellion of ignorance
about God being God. That's the objection that fallen
men have to God, is God being God, when God declares who he
is. And we've looked at it on several
occasions lately, and you can go and look at Luke chapter four,
and you'll see the Lord Jesus Christ proclaims glorious things
about who God is, and then he declares the operations of electing
love. And those people who had known
him for 30 years in Nazareth, they were so enraged they took
him out off a cliff and wanted to stone him. These people that,
in John 15, while the Lord is saying these glorious words,
are meeting down the road, were religious people. And those religious
people believed in election. Those religious people believed
they were the elect. The Jews down there were plotting
the destruction of the Lord Jesus Christ because he was offending
their notion of who God is and their religious notions of what
it is to be the elect of God and what it is for God to be
God. You have not chosen me. We need to begin where God begins,
and God begins in the beginning, but also in terms of God's dealings
with humanity. He begins, and we must begin
where He has. I've chosen you out of the world. I've chosen you out of the world. That's where we had, in our fall
in our father Adam, when we fell in Adam, we didn't lose a sense
of religion at all. That's exactly what all these
palaces and all these things we've seen. You go to London,
and I had never been in to see any of the crown jewels and things,
but all of the robes of of religion that are involved in the coronation
of our king. And I want us to be reminded
that we're called upon to pray for our kings and those in authority
over us. But nevertheless, all the robes
and all of the orbs and all of the other sort of ornaments there
are extraordinarily blasphemous. I was horrified by the blasphemy
where they take When they're anointing their king and when
they're robing their king, they're using the words out of the scripture
that apply to the Lord Jesus Christ and his people and applying
it to a man. The jewels and things are just ridiculous. Huge diamonds and huge rubies
and the craftsmanship and the workmanship of man is just amazing,
just as it is at Stonehenge. You see those stones there and
they wouldn't fit in this building. They're huge stones. They're
tall. They're so tall and they're so
big and they weigh 60 or 70 tons and they put other stones up
on top of them and it's just ridiculous. But it's still an
idolatrous activity. Palace of Versailles in France. And the Palace of Versailles
is the biggest palace in all the world, and the most lavish
palace in all the world, and the amount of gold that you see
shining there on tops of the buildings, and in all the buildings,
and the paintings and things, and all of it is just extraordinary. The guy that built that, Louis
XIV, was the man who excluded the
last of the Christians out of France. He openly rejected the gospel
and yet in the middle of that palace is a chapel. And he used
to be renowned for the fact that he would reveal and show his
piety to everyone in the morning. He'd go into his chapel and he'd
say his prayers and he'd do his mass. And he'd do his religious
activities and then go out and live in and build a monument
to himself, openly rejecting the gospel. Man is religious. We need to be taken out of this
religious world. I have chosen you, verse 19 is
one, I have chosen you out of this world. And we mustn't think
of this world being the world of all those that God loves.
This is the world, this is the religious world. This is the
religious world that he's speaking of here. If God chooses his people,
he'll choose them out of the religion, the religion that men
make for themselves, the righteousness that men establish for themselves.
Everything God does, he does in this world for his elect,
but the very first thing he does, he takes them out of this world. You have not chosen me. There
is absolutely nothing in natural man and there is nothing in natural
religious men which would cause them to choose God. They think
they do. And yet like the religious people,
the Christian religious nation that the Lord Jesus Christ came
to, when he declares himself to be God and declares that he
came to save a particular people and came to save a particular
people from the Gentiles as well as the Jews that God the Father
had given him from the foundation of the world, When men hear God's
operations as God Almighty, they find him offensive. We will not
have that man to rule over us. I will have my throne and I will
build my palace. Just like Louis XIV. But to build my palace and to
build my reputation, I have to have my religion and I have to
maintain it in such a way that all the world can say how wonderfully
pious I am at the very same time. They are hating God. That's exactly
what was going on in Jerusalem that night. They were rejoicing,
weren't they? When Judas came to that religious
world and said, I'm going to betray him and I'll betray him
for just 30 pieces of silver, the scriptures say again and
again, they were glad, they rejoiced that they had someone who would
betray him. One of the things that people
say often, and you probably have heard it because I've heard it
so many times, is how can a loving God and how could a loving Father
love some of his children and save them and damn some of his
children? See, one of the problems we have,
we have several problems, don't we? We believe that all people
are children of God. We are children of God by creation,
but there are in this world people who are declared by God Almighty
to be children of the devil. The other problem we have when
people object to the glorious description of the Lord Jesus
Christ as the elect one and his people as the elect in him is
that they naturally think They naturally think that God
ought to choose me and God ought to give everyone an opportunity
because we're all basically good. The heart of the problem is that
they have not been made by God to be sinners. We think that
they're all good people and God chose some of the good people
to be saved. But the situation that scriptures
present to us is that we are all fallen and in our fallenness
we are enemies of God Almighty and we hate him. And a far better
picture of election is that imagine the most heinous crimes that
you can possibly imagine. Child molesters and murderers
of children sexually molesting them and they're all in prison.
And they're all awaiting the just sentence of execution. Because
that's what we did. We hated God. That's how bad
our fall is. We hate God enough to crucify
him. And if you think that that's
not you, I'm really, really sorry. May God open your eyes to We keep thinking that if we'd
been there in Jerusalem that morning, we wouldn't have been
with that crowd that cried, crucify him, crucify him. Do you see
what the instant reason for that is? We actually think that we're
good. We really think we're good. But the reality is that we are
those criminals who have done those despicable deeds and we
are about to receive the just sentence. And a much better picture
is that if a good and gracious and wise king, for purposes which
suit him and are known to him, comes to that prison house where
these people hear the cries of those who are dying around them,
he comes to that prison house and he lets some of them out
and says, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will
be gracious to whom I will be gracious. So we are criminals. You have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you. I have chosen you. I've chosen
you out of the world. And just to finish before we
have the Lord's Supper, and he says, I have ordained you. I have ordained you. I have set you in a place. I've established you, my children. I've set forth, I've established
you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit
should remain, that your fruit should abide, that whatsoever
you shall ask of my Father in my name, he may give it unto
you, to give it to you. One of the natural questions
that comes up in the hearts and minds of everyone who hears of
God's electing love in the Lord Jesus Christ is, am I one of
them? How can I know that I am one
of God's electing love? We know that men object to it. We know in particular that religious
men object to it. There's a great story of a lady
who asked her pastor, you pastor their church down in the town
here that preaches election. And the young lady said, well,
I'm not so sure about that. And I've had many people come
to me and say, I'm not so sure about that. And the pastor asked
her, he said, are you saved? Are you saved? And she says,
yes, I am saved. And he turned to her and said,
well, who did the saving, you or God? And she said, well, God
did the saving. That's election. That's the electing
love of our great God. There is, There is embedded in that question
something that troubles the hearts of all of God's people because
they're made to see that they're sinners. They're made to see
that there's absolutely nothing inside of them that could cause
God to come and love them and choose them. In fact, there's
everything in their hearts that causes them to be to be amazed
at the love of God for them at all. They can understand why
God can hate Esau they struggled to understand
and believe how God could love Jacob. There was nothing in Jacob
that caused God to love him. God loved Jacob in the Lord Jesus
Christ and he loved him from the foundation of the world.
But there is an answer here and I just want to go through it
with you and it's an answer that I really, really love and it's
in twice in these scriptures. And I'll read the verses to you
and then I'll leave, in some sense, the issue between you
and God. In verse 7, he says, and this is
an answer to the question, isn't it? He says in verse 7, if you
abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask, And our verse in verse 16, it
says at the end of it that whatsoever, I've chosen you and ordained
you that you should go forth and bring forth fruit, that your
fruit should remain, that whatsoever you shall ask of my Father in
my name, he may give it unto you. What is the characteristic of
God's children in this amazing passage of scripture? Where God
Almighty is wanting to comfort the hearts of His people. Where
God Almighty is wanting them for their joy to be full. Asking, asking. It's asking. You shall ask. It's not an optional extra. It's not something that's on
the side. It's something at the very heart of all of God's children.
You shall ask. You shall come, as Jeremiah 31
says, I've loved you with everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness
have I drawn you to myself. And then it says how they will
be drawn, they'll come with weepings and supplications, they'll come
with tears over what they are, and they'll come with pleadings
to God Almighty. You shall ask. One of the passages
of scripture that we have declared so often and love so much is
the glorious declaration of the eternal and sovereign work of
God. Because this passage of scripture
is about union with the Lord Jesus Christ and communion with
him. And the evidence from our side
of things is that we are people who ask, isn't it? God says after
all of the extraordinary blessings that he gives, he will cause
his people to ask him. We read Ezekiel chapter 36 often
because it's a declaration of the glory of
what God will do, isn't it? I will sprinkle clean water upon
you and you shall be clean, Ezekiel 36, 25, from all your filthiness,
not from a little bit, all of your filthiness. That's what
the Lord Jesus Christ is saying in John 15. It's what he said
to Nicodemus. He says, you're clean by the
word that I've spoken unto you. He says, a new heart also will
I give you. You have to be chosen out of
this world and you have to be given a new heart to see the
Lord Jesus Christ, to love him, to believe him, to plead with
him. And a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of
flesh. A heart of flesh is the heart that cries out to God.
And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in
my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments and do them. You'll love all that I declare
and all that I do. And then he says in verse 31,
after all of a done this, then you shall remember your own evil
ways and your doings that were not good and shall loathe yourselves
in your own sight for your iniquities. The world does not loathe themselves. They don't. They love themselves. And for your abominations. What's highly esteemed among
men is abomination to God. And then God says, not for your
sakes do I this, saith the Lord, be it no one under you. Be ashamed
and be confounded of your own ways, O house of Israel. And then he says, I, the Lord, at the end of verse
36, I, the Lord, have spoken it and will do it. It's a promise
from God. This is what he's doing. Thus
saith the Lord, verse 37, thus saith the Lord, yet For all this,
all of this, the new heart, the new nature, a heart of flesh
and not a heart of stone that has no feeling toward God, no
love toward him. I'll give you a heart of flesh
and I'll cleanse you and I'll do all of these things for you.
I'll put my spirit within you. Yet, for all this, Yet I will yet for all this be
inquired by the House of Israel to do
it for them. God does it and he works in the
heart of his people to cry out to him. I will be inquired of
the house of Israel to do it for them. I will increase them
with men like a flock as a holy rock as the flock of Jerusalem
in her solemn feast. So shall the waste cities be
filled with the flocks of men, and they shall know that I am
the Lord. You shall ask, you shall ask,
you shall ask. Lord, make me to love you. Lord, make me to love your word.
Lord, make me to love your electing grace. Grant me the faith of
God's elect, Titus 1-2. Grant me the faith of God's elect.
Grant me the grace that only comes to the elect of God. Grant
me to bow at your word. If you abide in me and my words
abide in you, you shall ask. He says abide in me. Take me out of this world. Don't
give me a love for this world. Don't give me a love for the
esteem of this world. Don't give me a love for the
religion of this world. As I said much earlier, we're
not citizens of this world trying to make our way to heaven. We are citizens of heaven trying
to make our way through this world. There's a vast difference. We are citizens of heaven here. Heaven is our home. Heaven is where we came from.
Heaven is where we're going to. And heaven is the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's a person. It's to be in
union with Him. You shall ask and it shall be
done. Herein is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit. He says, abide in my love, abide
in my words. Lord, save me. Lord, cause me
to love you as you are declared in these scriptures. the fruit of love for him and
love for his brothers and sisters. Lord, bring it forth. I'm asking
that you bring it forth in my life. I'm asking that you bring
it forth in the lives of those I love. when he had received those remarkable
promises in 2 Samuel chapter 7. He'd received the most remarkable
promises about a house and a kingdom that would last forever and ever. And he turns to God and says
in prayer, do as you have said. no matter what the cost it is
to me and my flesh in this world. Do as you have said. Elect, ask. And they never stop asking. Let's
pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do. Thank
you for your word and we pray, Heavenly Father, that you would
work in the hearts of your people here and throughout this world
and for all of us, Heavenly Father, to be people who come to you
and ask. Ask in your name. Ask in the glorious name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious sovereign successful Saviour,
the glorious Redeemer whose precious blood was shed, that his chosen
might be with him to be as holy as he is holy and forever. Heavenly Father, be merciful
to us. Be gracious to us, Heavenly Father. Cause this place and these people
here to live for the praise of your glory in this world, Heavenly
Father. May we be reminded again and
again that our home is Heaven. and God's children who leave
here, change something of the circumstances of their life,
but don't change their company at all. Abide in us. Let your love abide in us, Heavenly
Father, that we may know we abide in you by your grace, by your
electing love, by your choosing of us out of this world. We pray
these things for the glory of your Son, and in his name, our
Father. Amen.