Gospel of John, John chapter 14. Let me say,
it looks like I'm going to have to speak for Donna. I can't imagine
what she's doing. But it's awfully nice to be back
and visit and be one with you again. It's very nice. We've
missed the opportunity to see all of you and certainly have
missed our children and grandchild. And it's just been a really nice
trip down and we've had a great travel time and great weather. It's just very nice to get to
be back here with you. All right, let's take a look at John 14
and read verse 6. Actually, let's back up. Let's
catch the context. Let's start with verse 1. We'll
read down to verse 6. Let not your heart be troubled.
You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are
many mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
receive you unto myself. And where I am, there you may
be also. And where I go, you know, in
the way you know. Thomas, interrupting, said unto
him, Lord, we know not where you're going, and how can we
know the way? And what a wonderful answer we
find in verse six. Jesus saith unto him, I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father
but by me. Pray with me for a moment. Father,
we thank you so much for the opportunity to gather together.
We're thankful that you ordained that mode and that means by which
believers demonstrate our union with each other and our union
with you. Lord, we thank you that you bless us that when we
are together that somehow or other, Lord, you have given us
various gifts and various abilities in the spiritual realm that we
can't put our fingers on nor define, but you bless us, Lord,
in such a way that when we're together, we rejoice in Christ
so much the more. We pray that that might be the
case today. And I pray this morning that
you would bless us as we look at these scriptures. And may
you, Lord, be pleased to reveal yourself in us and to us this
morning for Christ's sake. Amen. In John 18, and don't have to
turn there, but in John 18 where Christ was arraigned before Pilate,
who was to determine what the Lord Jesus was supposedly guilty
of, that is according to the standards of Roman law, and to
pronounce his sentence. I'd like to focus on Pilate's
last words to the Savior. The Lord Jesus had just summarized
his mission in the latter part of verse 37. For this I have
been born, for this I have been made a representative of chosen
sinners. For this, I have come into the
world in order that I witness to the truth, the truth of our
sin, truth of his righteousness, truth of his power and ability,
truth of his grace, truth of his mercy. And that's not all
of them, not even all of them. Everyone being of the truth,
he said, Everyone being of the truth hears my voice. Pilate's
response came in the form of a very frustrated question. I
can imagine that just absolutely tore him as a religionist up.
He screamed out, what's truth? What is truth? And I can imagine
being a politician, I'm quite sure he was used to spinning
the truth into whatever flavor the situation demanded. The truth
is what it needed to be. to him. The truth is what he
wanted to make it. The truth was what was convenient
to him. He looked at the Lord Jesus and
said, what is truth anyway? I can make truth any way I want
to. Notice though that he didn't
speak of truth as the Lord did. He didn't speak of the truth. He spoke of truth as a concept. something that could be analyzed
and broken down into its components and rearranged into whatever
form necessary to accomplish the desired end at that precise
moment. But in our text in John 14, 6, we find that the Lord
Jesus had already revealed the answer to Pilate's question as
to the essential reality of the truth. He said, I am the way,
I am the truth, and the life. Now that takes the idea of truth
far beyond that of a concept, way beyond a simple set of facts,
or even a doctrinal statement. And it makes me wonder how many
churches this morning are dealing with truth, trying to find the
truth, and all they have is words. All they have is concepts. All
they have is ideas that they've put together from their religious
creeds or they've joined together from their experience, which
is absolutely worthless. You can't find God by experience.
If you have the experience of finding God, he found you. You
didn't ever find him. No, the foundation of all truth
is not scientific. This is not a truth that you
can study out in a lab. It's not linguistic. And I'm
very partial to linguistics. That was one of the things I
enjoyed most in college, and I've used it most in my former
work. Linguistics are wonderful. To
see where words came from and what their roots meant and where'd
they come out of and what does it mean. It's a wonderful thing
to find out what you're saying and what it means. But that has
nothing to do with the gospel. The gospel is not a matter of
how we speak. Our manner of conveying the message
makes no difference. The Lord's used many different
servants. He's used many different languages. He's used many different
illustrations down through time, and they all speak the same word,
Jesus. Now, truth is not linguistic in its basis, nor is it even
theological. It's not even theological. You
can study theology, and you can get some good out of it. You can hear those fellows that
bring off those words that are that long or longer and have
them define that for you and show you, here's a word where
they use that in the scriptures and you can get a little out
of that, but you can't get the truth. You can't get the truth. In our text in John 14, 6, we
find, I'm sorry, I missed my place. Yes, let's get back to that question.
What is truth? Now here's what the Apostle Paul
said about it. I like his answer. What is truth? Let God be true. Let God be the truth. Now we usually think of truth
then as a concept. Here we have to change that part
of our mind. Truth is not an idea, even though
we have ideas about the truth. Truth is not just a word, even
though it takes words to try to remember what those ideas
actually were. But he says, I'm not really worried
about what's in your head. I'm not really worried about
the way you spell it. What I'm concerned about is that
you understand the truth. Let God be true. And every one of us, every man
a liar, As it has been written that you be justified, that God
himself be justified, found flawlessly accurate, perfectly factual in
the words that you speak. God is always perfectly accurate
in what he says. And you will overcome when you
are judged. Whenever you're falsely accused,
there will never be a time. There has always been people
who have labored and struggled and argued and combated the scriptures
as being the sacred word of God, that God himself inspired and
that he said what he wanted to say. I mean, granted, he didn't
deliver it in English, but I'm convinced that if he took the
love and the compassion and the interest in making sure that
we, his creatures, had his mind on paper, even though it was
written in other language years and years ago and has been translated
into just about every language that there is on the planet,
No. If God had anything to do with
it, and if the people that were used were those who understood
the gospel, it's true. Let God be true. Every man a
liar. You will always be justified
in the words you speak and will overcome when you are judged.
It'll always be found to be true. If we were to limit what we say
to the words that God has revealed in the sacred scriptures, If
that's all we ever talked about, you know we'd never be in error.
We'd never speak a wrong word. We'd never miss it. We'd be right
every time. If our preaching and our teaching
and our witnessing of the gospel of Christ do not conform perfectly
to the person and the work and the word of the Lord Jesus Christ,
then we have very simply just not spoken the truth. Surely
it is of the Lord Jesus Christ that Psalm 138.2 says, I will
worship toward thy holy temple. Praise thy name for thy loving
kindness, for your grace, and for your truth. Now listen to
what he says about his truth. For you have magnified your word
above all your name. What about that? So important
is God's word that Christ would say, if someone has my word,
They've never seen me, and they've never heard a message about me.
If they have my word, they've got the most important part.
I'd say we probably ought to read that book. I'd say we probably
ought to spend all the time we can in that book. Sounds to me
like it's the most important information on the planet, and
we should all spend much more time in it than we do. Thou hast
magnified thy word above all thy name. Now, because the Lord
Jesus Christ is in himself the truth, and by God's grace all
believers are spiritually united with him, then that means we
know the truth. Of at least five things that
I can think of in ourselves, we know these truths. By the
grace of God, we know the truth of our depravity. It's not a
joyous truth, but it's a truth that's worth knowing. It's a
truth that's worth knowing. We do not deny the absolute sinfulness
of our fleshly nature. We don't join in the chorus of
those who recite in every day and in every way, I'm getting
better and better. No, that's not in our songbook.
Rather, it seems to me and perhaps to you that if anything, my sinful
flesh is daily getting worse and worse. In Acts chapter nine,
verses one through six, In that passage, the depravity of Saul
of Tarsus is on vivid display. Let me read that to you. And
Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples
of the Lord, went out to the high priest and desired of him
letters to Damascus, to the synagogues, that if he found any of this
way, this other way of worship that we know nothing about, this
way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound
into Jerusalem. I remember a similar young man
some years ago who, in the fervor of his religious zeal, pursued
his college degree in false religion. That young man preached vehemently
against salvation by grace alone, and he readily condemned what
he called the error of once saved, always saved. He was convinced
that God could not and would not save anyone who didn't first
produce the required price of repentance and faith. You repent,
you put your faith in Christ and he'll save you, otherwise
you're stuck. There's not a thing you can do about it. And then,
in the middle of all that foolishness, out of the blue, absolutely unsought,
unexpected, and most of all, unwanted, by sovereign grace
alone, God struck down that young man's blasphemous religion. rewrote
his Bible and gave him spiritual life against his will, but happily
so, through the Spirit of God and made him a new creation in
union with Christ. Absolute human depravity ceased
to be an issue. It was no longer in question,
it was just obviously so. Just a sinner to the core and
can't do anything else. He finally understood what dead
in sin really meant. Saul's experience and that of
every other child of God is the same. God has ordained only one
way to give valid testimony to this glorious transformation,
and he's assigned baptism. He's assigned that act of baptism
to be the most wonderful way to explain what God has done
for us. That doesn't make it a sacred rite that makes the
water turn into something when the preacher gets in there. It doesn't make it holy water
that you can't let it go down the drain, that you have to bottle
it or do something special with it. No, that's not about that.
It's the symbol. It's a God-given symbol by which
he has outlined what he does for sinners, baptism. It's what
Saul of Tarsus did. The moment he was saved, the
scales fell from his eyes, the Bible says, and rising up, he
was baptized. Didn't say nothing about joining
the church. Didn't say nothing about getting his name on a church
roll. He just was baptized because God had shown him what he had
done for him spiritually, and he echoed it back with that physical
representation of how God saves sinners. Here's what he understood. that
when Christ graciously joined himself in union with us, of
his own accord, and against our natural will, our sin became
his sin. We were put down into the water.
All was one in that pool. And when he joined himself to
me, all that was mine, nasty as it was, terrible as it was,
blasphemous, ugly, and religious, and foolish, and blasphemous.
And he baptized me into that, into himself, and he put that
away. His sin became my sin, his death
became my death, and his life became my life. And now, by the
grace of God, no longer depraved. Oh, I have my depraved nature,
and I'd like to get rid of it. But no longer depraved in my
real self, There's two of me. This is there two of every believer
in the world. An old man and a new man. I'm
glad to be a new man. I still drag that old one around.
He will not leave me. But one of these days he will.
And all will be new. No longer depraved, made as a
new creation in union with Christ. The first eternal truth we learn
from the Spirit of God is that God's grace is sovereign. What a lot went on for me when
I first heard Henry Mahan preaching. Somebody, dad had sent me a old
cassette tape of Henry Mahan all the way over into Africa
where I was trying to save the heathen and didn't even know
I was the heathen. No, God's grace is sovereign
grace. It's the only kind there is.
Why would such a glorious savior pass by others so many Why would
he do such a gracious thing for someone like a Saul of Tarsus
or a me or a you? Why would he do that? And if
you know anything of electing grace, then you know that it
can only be sovereign. It can only be electing grace.
That means that since you and I cannot merit grace, none of
us can do anything to get God to be gracious toward us. And
that means that salvation is not our choice. Aren't you glad
to be free from that foolishness? Somehow or other, I remember,
I remember I was raised from a child in that foolish religion. And I remember going through
days, in grade school even, I remember getting in such a deep, dark
hole? Had I done enough? Was my repentance
real? Was I really asking for forgiveness
or was I just doing it to be religious? Oh, what a miserable
life for that who would make salvation their choice. Should
be obvious then that God's grace is God's prerogative alone. Oh,
how the flesh chafes. at this eternal reality. But,
but, but, I can, I, you can do nothing. We are without a doubt
the most ignorant, the most illogical, the most downright stupid creation
that God ever made. Do I hear an A? No, I don't think
I would hear an A. The world is full of religions
of all manner of beliefs and practices, but all of them have
this one thing in common. They all believe that they can
do something, something, and that something gets translated
into an almost innumerable number of things, but they can do something
to appropriate God's favor to themselves. Look with me, if
you would, in Romans chapter nine. Find my page there. Romans chapter
9. Let's read beginning with verse
9. Here we go. Romans 9, 9. For
this is the word of promise. At this time will I come and
Sarah shall have a son. And not only this, but when Rebecca
also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac, For the
children not yet being born, neither having done any good
or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election might
stand, not of works, but of him who calleth. It was said unto
her, the elder shall serve the younger. I've determined it.
As it is written, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there
unrighteousness with God? Can he do that? God forbid. For he says unto Moses, I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. So then, it is not of him who
wills, nor of him who runs and makes that dynamic effort, but
it's of God who shows mercy. Why would God publicize the fact
that grace and love, his grace and loving kindness is at his
discretion alone. Why would he make that known?
It'd be just as true if he didn't. He could have just kept that
information to himself and only recorded Revelation 22, 17, perhaps. Whosoever will, let him take
up the water and fly freely. That's in the book too. Why would
he have said anything to the contrary? Well, here's why. Because
God's call to whosoever will, be it ever so universal as we
could possibly imagine, would not have resulted in the salvation
of a single one of Adam's rebellious race. He could have said, you
can all have it if you do, and you could fill in that blank
with whatever you wanted, and we'd be living on a planet of
entirely lost people, because we could not do it whatever it
was, whatever it was. And so he revealed instead, His
sovereign mercy. He takes it into his own hands,
knowing that we are too stupid, too sinful, too foolish to choose
him. And in his sovereign mercy, he makes up his own elect from
the same rebellious, unbelieving sinners from every age and place,
because otherwise there would have been no redeemed sinners,
not one. God only saves the dead ones. Is that not true? God only saves
the dead ones. What do you mean by that, Mark?
He doesn't save the ones who can. Dead people can't. He doesn't
save the ones who want to, because dead people don't want to. He
only saves the dead ones. And you has he quickened. Here's
his verse about that. You has he quickened. who were
dead in trespasses and sins. Had he not just saved us, what
else would we have done? Who would have chosen Christ?
None of us would have chosen Christ. Who would have understood
that this is how God saves sinners? I would have never understood
how God saves sinners had he not just decided to save this
sinner. No, we all, we know what we know.
because it's been divinely given to us. Other than that, we would
have no knowledge. We'd still be here just a bunch
of Baptists, a bunch of lost Baptists, praying to a God that
we don't have a clue about, looking for a mercy from Christ that
we don't have the first understanding of. No. You hath He quickened,
made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins. We did not
help. We could not help. Scary though, isn't it? That
God's not running around the world trying to beg sinners to
allow him to save them. He's just not. He's just not
doing that. I don't know if you've had one
of those big tents come through here lately where they set up
the big tent and all the chairs and try to get as many people
in and out from the surrounding area. No. He's not doing that. He's not begging people to let
him save them. He doesn't need to. But I'll tell you what that
does do. Whenever whenever one of God's
own hears that God can save them or pass them by, and one is just
as righteous as the other. You know what they do? Every
time they say, Lord, could I be one? And then he says, you already
are. I already took care of that.
That's why you want to be ones, because I made you one. Isn't
the Lord wonderful? In Ephesians, let me read for
you from chapter one, he speaks of this, blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one having blessed us with
every spiritual blessing that there is in Christ, even as he
chose us in him. I don't have to worry then about
taking the first step. Isn't that what they used to
call it back in those revival meetings? You've got to take
the first step. God can't do anything if you don't take the
first step. But even as He took the first step and He chose us
in Him before the foundation of the world that we be holy
and unblemished before Him. In love, predestinating us, predetermining
the outcome unto the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ
to Himself. All that according to the good
pleasure, the good pleasure of His will. to the praise of his
glorious grace with which he favored us, even us, in the beloved. Now here's the grace of God.
It's not that he's waiting on us to see what we'll do, but
it's that before time began, he has already chosen a great
crowd, an innumerable host of sinners too big to count, and
he himself promised that he would not lose 010. That's our salvation. That's our only hope. May we
never have any other. What need do we have of anything
else? Established before there ever
was anything to save or to send to hell. Taken care of before
the world was ever formed. I'm good. I'm good. I'll just
sit right here. And I'll just stay right in that
point. Because that's a safe place. Safest place I can think
of in the world is in the sovereign providence and grace and mercy
of God Almighty. I do not fear Him now, not for
Christ's sake. Not only is God's choice then of His people an
eternal truth, the Spirit of God has also taught us that something
of the truth of Christ's unfailing atonement. Let me read to you
from John chapter 6 again, verses 37 through 41. All, all which the Father gives
to me shall come to me. And the one coming to me, I will
by no means cast out. Do you ever wonder, do you ever
get to wonder why God would ever save you? And then wonder if
he did. Why would he? Why would he? I
can't look at myself too long, Brother Rupert, I can't. If I
look at myself too long, I get all messed up. And the Lord's
taught me that, looking to me, there's nothing there anyway.
But if I look to Him, I'm quite fine. I see in Him all I ever
needed, all I ever wanted, and all God ever required. I'll just
look to Him, I'm good that way. All which the Father gives to
me will come to me. And the one coming to me I will
by no means cast out, because I have come down from heaven,
not that I may do my will, but the will of the one having sent
me. Don't know about you and your previous religion, but I
know in the free will religion I was raised in, nobody much
wanted to deal with the father, because he's so mysterious, and
he's quite ready to send you to hell. But I know one thing,
in Christ he loves me as much as he loves his son, and has
always done. This is the will of the one having
sent me, that all, all which he has given me, every last one
of them, whose eternal salvation he has entrusted to me and to
me alone, all of them, all of them I shall not lose of it.
I shall not lose a single one, but shall raise it up at the
last day. Well, this is the will of my
father, that everyone, everyone beholding the Son, that's the
original world, everyone who has laid eyes upon the Son and
can't take them off, everyone beholding the Son and believing
in Him, not that I believed, I'm very skeptical of people
who say I believed the gospel in 1972, no, but everyone believing
in Him. All who believed, truly believed,
are believing, and they go right on believing, and they don't
know any other way to live. all the ones believing in him
may have eternal life, and I will, the Lord said, I will raise him
up in the last day. The greatest blasphemy being
pronounced in pulpits around this world today is that God
the Father demanded a sin payment be made for all mankind. that
God the Son shed his blood in full payment for all the sins
of all who've ever lived, all who are living right now, and
all who ever will live. And at the same time, those people
for whom God supposedly chose a Savior, provided a Savior,
and shed the blood, yet at the same time they affirm that hell
will be filled with the souls of men then that the Father supposedly
loves. supposedly, Christ supposedly
died for and the spirit supposedly regenerated. A God who cannot
have what he has willed is not God Almighty. A Christ
whose blood cannot successfully atone for anyone for whom he
died is not the Lord Jesus Christ. And a spirit A spirit of God
who cannot quicken and save and give life to those whom God wills
to save and those whom Christ died for is clearly not the spirit
of God. Now, finally, I'll finish up
here. The Lord Jesus Christ at the
end of the day, he's the truth then of everything else I need.
And what do I need? I need perseverance. I need perseverance. What a weakling I am. What a
natural born doubter I am. What a fearful person I am. I
still remember enough about age one through five to know that
I was afraid the whole time. I was afraid of something the
whole time. Oh, but he's the truth of our perseverance. I need not fear. I don't know
how life's working out for you, but the older I get, the more
doubts and fears I find myself troubled by. Instead of growing
in grace, it seems more often than not that I'm digressing
in grace. But I thank God that he has left me with just enough
weakness, just enough fear, just enough inability to make it impossible
for this idiot to rely on himself. So I'll close with this word
of thanksgiving in which I find all my hope. Paul wrote to the
Thessalonians, And he said, faithful is the one calling you who also
will perform it. I don't have to. He will. He
will perform it. May God be pleased to grant us
that perfect peace in the Lord Jesus Christ who was promised
to finish the work that he began. Let's pray. Father, we recognize that you
are You are the very beginning. You are the entirety, Lord, of
our salvation. Had you not, had you determined,
Father, to leave Adam's sinful race as we deserved, not a soul
here today would be saved. And Lord, we thank you that you
so perfectly made your eternal son that wonderful, beautiful,
glorious, spiritual person, so fully and completely in our image,
and Lord, that he could bear human sin as though they were
his own. Lord, we pray that with all of
this, things we cannot understand,
but things we know to be true, Lord, please forbid us and keep
us that in the face of all of this glory, all of this grace,
all of this power, and all of this mercy, that we would never
have even a second of unbelief. Bless us, Lord, for Christ's
sake.