Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm continuing a message that I began last week
entitled, Christ Against the World. Christ Against the World,
this is part two. And it's from John chapter 15,
the gospel of John chapter 15. where the Lord in verse 18 told
his disciples, verse 17, he says, these things I command you that
you love one another, talking about the love relationship and
fellowship that Christ and his people have together that causes
them to stand against the world. And he says, if the world hate
you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. So he's
talking about the hatred of the world. Now he's talking about
the unbelieving world. The world fallen in Adam, in
darkness, under the curse of God, and in unbelief, ignorant
of the truth. Even the religious world, we
have to understand that, the best that the world has to offer
is cursed in the eyes of God. the best people, the best religion,
whatever it is. If it's not the religion of God's
grace, the true religion of the gospel, the gospel which is the
power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, the
Jew and the Gentile, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed. That's what we need to understand.
What is this righteousness of God? That's the entire merit
of the obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ as the
surety, the substitute, the redeemer and preserver of His people.
And it's revealed from faith to faith, from knowledge that
God reveals in His Word by the Spirit to that God-given faith
wherein we receive it, believe it, trusting in Him, resting
in Christ for all salvation. for the forgiveness of all my
sins, based on His blood alone. You see, salvation is not conditioned
on me. It's conditioned on Christ, and
He fulfilled those conditions to secure my salvation. Even
the faith with which I believe in Him is a gift from God, for
by grace are you saved through faith. That's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. not of
works, lest any man should boast. And so it's from faith to faith,
as it is written, the justified shall live by faith. Those who
are forgiven of all their sins, based on the blood of Christ,
those who are declared righteous in the sight of God, the judge
of all, based upon Christ's righteousness charged to me, charge imputed
to me, They live by faith. They have life from the dead,
given by Christ. The Bible says this body is dead
because of sin, but the Spirit is life, the Holy Spirit is life
because of righteousness. Whose righteousness? Christ's
righteousness. Not mine, I don't have any. There's
none righteous, no not one. And so they live by faith, meaning
they live by looking to Jesus as the author and finisher of
their faith. And that's what separates them from the world.
And it says that there's no other way of salvation over in the
book of 1 John chapter 5. Think about this. And we talked
about this last week. Why does the world hate the message
of God's grace? It's because the world is so
intent on getting things right with God by their works which
they relish in. I know because I was there. Until
God the Holy Spirit brings you down to see the fact that based
upon your best, you deserve death and hell. You'll never see the
reality of God's grace and mercy. Men highly esteem their works,
their religion, Bible says that which is highly esteemed among
men is an abomination to God. That's Luke 16, 15. But over
in 1 John 5, listen to this. In verse 19, John says this,
and we know that we are of God. Now, who is he talking about
there? Who is the we? Well, that's sinners saved by
grace. True believers. who believe the
gospel, the true gospel. Now, there are many false gospels. I mentioned this last week, how
the two things that are common to all false religion, even false
Christianity, is number one, they make salvation conditioned
in some way, to some degree, at some stage on sinners and
not totally on Christ. See the gospel, the true gospel
says that salvation, the salvation of all the people of God, the
church, His sheep, their salvation was all conditioned on Christ
who fulfilled every condition required and secured their salvation
unto final glory. Now think about that. If you're in a church that calls
itself Christian, they believe that salvation's conditioned
on what you do, or salvation's conditioned on your faith, or
your faith and repentance, you're in a false church. Now, how do
you respond to that? That's what the gospel, the Bible
says. You say, well, I don't wanna listen to that, I hate
that. Marvel not if the world hates you. It hated me before
it hated you, that's what Christ said. That's the light that sinners
hate. So he says, we are of God. And
the whole world lieth in wickedness or literally under the wicked
one. They're deceived by Satan. That's what the scripture teaches
in 2 Corinthians chapter four, that those who believe not are
deceived by the God of this world, which is Satan, the usurped authority,
little g God. Well, back here in John 15, this
is what he's talking about. Verse 18, if the world hates
you, you know that it hated me before you. Verse 19, if you
were of the world, if you were in fellowship with the world
in its false religions, false gospels, even in its immorality
and materialism, the world would love his own. The world would
get, you'd get along. They wouldn't hate you. All you
gotta do is just take a person who believes a false gospel,
who claims to be a Christian, but who's ignorant of the righteousness
of God, as Paul wrote in Romans chapter 10. Who doesn't know
the true Christ and the true grace of God. All you have to
do to get along with them is just say, hey brother, hey sister,
speak peace to them. But if you tell them the truth,
now look, you don't believe the truth, you're lost. what's going
to come, their hatred. Now they may not, I mentioned
this last week, how that hatred doesn't always manifest itself
in hot anger that causes somebody to want to kill you. You may
just turn their back and say, well, I don't want to hear you anymore. That's
still hatred, hatred of Christ and his church and his truth.
Christ said, he that is not with me or for me is against me. There's no fence riding here.
There's no middle ground. So he says in verse 19, if you
were of the world, the world would love his own, but because
you're not of the world, but I've chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hateth you. Now understand this, look at
verse 20, he says, remember the word that I said unto you, the
servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted
me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my saying,
they will keep yours also. Now this hatred, Christ against
the world. This hatred has to do with our
doctrine. It's not what we do. If you're
kind to somebody and you help somebody, even an unbeliever,
they're not gonna hate you for that. But when you tell them
the truth, that they're lost and their deeds are evil, that's
when the hatred comes out. Look at verse 21. But all these
things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they
know not him that sent me. They don't know the son, they
don't know the father. Remember Christ told the Pharisees,
he said, you're of your father, the devil. You claim that God
is your father. He's not your father, you're
illegitimate children. You hate the true and living
God. So he says in verse 22, if I had not come and spoken
unto them, they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for
their sin. False religion, false salvation. is veiled under a
cloak of deception. And the only way that that cloak
of deception is going to be removed is by the plain preaching of
the light of the truth. And we read this last week in
John 3, 19 and 20. Here's the light that's coming
to the world. This is the condemnation that light is coming to the world
and men love darkness and hate the light because their deeds
are evil. See, as long as you're in a church,
what they call a church or a religion, that enables you to admire your
deeds, your efforts to keep the law. My friend, that's a cloak
of deception. And the reason is, is because
our deeds and our efforts cannot equal the perfection of righteousness
that God requires that can only be found in the person and work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, as I've said on this program
many times, if you're a believer, if you're truly a sinner saved
by grace, you and I ought to be engaged in a life of godliness
in every way, in our thoughts, in our attitude, in our motives,
in our actions. We ought to be engaged in the
warfare of the Holy Spirit against the flesh. We ought to try to
be the best people we can be in every way, in every role that
we've got. But we need to do this realizing
that our best efforts in all of those areas will not equal
or match the perfection of righteousness that God requires that can only
be found in Christ. And what I'm saying is this,
at my best, I have no righteousness within me. My righteousness is
Christ. It's His righteousness laid to
my charge, imputed to me. And if I don't see that, I don't
know the gospel. Paul quoted David in the Psalms,
as Paul wrote by inspiration of the Spirit in Romans chapter
four and verse six, where David described the blessedness of
the man to whom the Lord God imputes righteousness without
works. And what is that imputed righteousness?
That's the righteousness of Christ, the merits of His obedience unto
death laid to my account, to my charge. And if His righteousness
has been charged to me, at some point in time, He's going to
send the Spirit to bring me out of the world and under the gospel
and give me life, spiritual life in the new birth. He'll give
me eyes to see and ears to hear what I rejected before. And He'll
give me faith to believe and bring me to repentance of my
dead works. Think about the Apostle Paul
in Philippians chapter three, where he described those things
when he was a lost person, when he was in fellowship with the
world and when he hated Christ, hated Jesus. He thought so highly
of his religion, his sincerity, his works. But then God revealed
himself to Paul on the Damascus road and brought him to Ananias
to hear the gospel. And Paul then saw the awfulness,
the sinfulness of his best efforts in religion in the light of the
righteousness of God in Christ. And he said this, he said, I
do count all that that I so highly esteemed and loved and thought
so much of as dumb that I may win Christ and be found in Him,
not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith or the faithfulness of Christ, the
righteousness of God, which is by faith. You say, well, I know
I'm saved because I just love everybody. Well, first of all,
you're lying to yourself. And even if you could say you
love everybody, do you think you love everybody, even your
worst enemies, perfectly, without any taint of sin? And if you
say you do, you're just lying to yourself. My friend, my love
for God, listen to me, my love for God, my love for my neighbor,
my love for my brethren will not get me into glory but His
love for me will get me there. First John 4 10, hearing His
love, not that we love God but that He loved us and sent His
Son to be the propitiation for our sins. What is a propitiation? It's a sin-bearing sacrifice.
Having my sins imputed to Christ, which died, gave its life up
to satisfy the justice of God and pay my sin debt. That's what
Christ did. Let's go back to John 15. The gospel message, the gospel
light, verse 22, exposes what men and women by nature
highly esteem as being an abomination to God. And it reveals that that
which God highly esteems is the obedience and death, the blood,
the righteousness of His Son. And that's why Paul said, I want
to be found in Christ. I want to stand before God washed
in His blood from all my sins, and clothed in His righteousness
for my justification. Now Christ says in verse 23,
he that hateth me hateth my Father also. Don't fool yourself. You cannot believe and follow
and love the true and living God, the God and the Father,
apart from Christ. Christ said it in John 14 in
verse six, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh
under the father, but by me. So don't fool yourself on that.
And he says in verse 24, if I had not done among them the works,
which none other man did, they had not had sin, but now have
they both seen and hated both me and my father. Now, they hated
him because of his doctrine, the gospel, which exposed all
that they highly esteemed in their works as being evil. Evil
not because it was immoral or insincere in the eyes of men,
evil because it denies the Father's glory. What is the Father's glory? Christ, in the glory of His person
and the power and success of His finished work. It denies
the Son, Paul wrote in Galatians 2.21, if righteousness come by
the law, then Christ died in vain. If I can be saved and be
made righteous by my works of the law, then why did Christ
come? That's a denial of him. It gives the sinner room to boast.
And the Bible says, let him that glory or boast glory in the Lord. God has set it up this way, salvation
by grace, that no flesh should glory in his presence. Paul wrote
in Galatians 6 14, God forbid that I should glory, boast, save
or accept in the cross. The work, the person and work
of Christ, the cross of Christ. So to deny the son is to deny
the father. To hate Christ is to hate the
father. And so he says in verse 24, he says, if I had not done
among them the works which none other man did, they had not had
sin. But now they have both seen and
hated both me and my father. Look at verse 25. But this cometh
to pass, that the word might be fulfilled, that it was written
in their law, they hated me without a cause. Now, he's quoting here
from the Old Testament. Some say over in Psalm 35, some
say Psalm 69, maybe both, but they hated me without a cause. Christ is the only perfect human
being. Now, he is both God and man in
one person. That's that hypostatic union
of Christ. The two natures of Christ, God,
and perfect man. He loved perfectly, he obeyed
perfectly. What reason do sinners have to
hate him? None, but by nature we do until
he brings us to love him under the preaching of the gospel.
And he says in verse 26 here of John 15, but when the comforter
is come, whom I will send unto you from the father, even the
spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify
of me. He's going to point sinners to
Christ. He's not going to even point to himself. He's not going
to point you or me to ourselves. He's going to point you to Christ
for salvation. In verse 27, he says, and you
also shall bear witness because you have been with me from the
beginning. Now look at chapter 16 and verse one. Listen to this. again, we're
talking about Christ against the world. And when we say Christ
against the world, we're talking about His people, His church,
His children, His sheep against the world, and His truth against
the world, the lies of the world. Verse 1, these things have I
spoken unto you that you should not be offended. Now the offended
there, the offense means it's almost like a trap that you get
caught up in or tripped over. In other words, I'm telling you
this because when it happens, I don't want you to get trapped
in your own misunderstanding. I don't want you to trip over
this. You're to expect it. And let me say this, I do not
seek and I do not want the hatred that comes from the world. I'm
not a masochist. I don't want to be hurt. I don't
want to be persecuted. I don't enjoy it. But here's
the point. If you're a sinner saved by grace,
a true witness of Christ, you can expect it. It's coming in
some form or fashion. There were believers in the first
part of the gospel age, Pentecost and on, who were sorely, sorely
persecuted, physically, over their testimony of the gospel.
when they, by the grace of God, stood with Christ and His church
against the world. Some of them lost their means
of income. They lost their jobs. Some of
them lost their homes. Some of them were jailed. Some
of them were tortured. Some of them were persecuted
unto death, the martyrs. And that's why I tell people
today who truly believe the gospel, we've had it relatively easy.
Now, we've all suffered persecution in some form. It could be just
alienation from our families and friends. They don't wanna
have anything to do with us, but it could be physical. We've
been privileged by God to live in a country where we have a
constitution that allows me to preach here on TV things that
people don't wanna hear, don't like. And our church, without
persecution from the government, and from other people. So we've
been able to do that. And that's a privilege, but it
may not last long. I don't know. It may not last
in my lifetime. It may, but whatever God chooses.
But we shouldn't be offended. We shouldn't be surprised or
trip over or be in misunderstanding when the world hates us. Verse
two, now listen to this, what he says, they shall put you out
of the synagogues. Now, what is a synagogue? Well,
that's a gathering together of the Jews to read scripture, to
pray. It was a church gathering. It was a church service. Now,
notice he didn't say they'll throw you out of the bars and
the brothels. Now, they may do that. But he says, they'll put
you out of the synagogues when you go in and preach that message
of salvation by grace that exposes their deeds. Those who believe
salvation by works, their deeds is evil. He says, yea, the time
cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth
God's service. The Pharisees. They arrested
the Lord himself and his disciples because they sincerely, in their
clouded, deceived minds, considered him to be a blasphemer. And they
thought they were doing the work of God. Paul the apostle, Saul
of Tarsus, When he was struck down by the Lord on the road
to Damascus, he was on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians,
put them in jail, have them tried and killed. As my old pastor
used to say, he wasn't on his way to a prayer meeting. He wasn't
seeking the Lord, but God put him in the dust. Took him to
Ananias to hear the gospel. And that's where he was converted.
And his whole life was turned upside down. But whereas before
in that lost self-righteous legalistic works religion, Paul thought
he was doing God's service. But then he understood when God
brought him to a saving knowledge of Christ, then he understood
that he was in the service of Satan, doing the work of Satan,
evil deeds. And so what happened? God brought
him to faith in Christ and repentance of all those dead works of religion
that he was so proud of. And that which he highly esteemed
before, now he called an abomination. And he says in verse three, he
says, the reason they'll do this, these things will they do unto
you because they have not known the father nor me. They didn't
know the father or the son, they claim to. These unbelieving Jews
in the synagogue, they claimed that their father, God was their
father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And they claimed that
they were waiting on the true Messiah, but they didn't know
either one. And the reason they didn't know
either one is because they didn't know the scriptures. Christ said
one time, he says, you do err not knowing the scriptures. What
does the Bible say about God? What does the Bible say about
the Messiah, the Christ? I know people carry Bibles around,
they go to church and they read certain scriptures, but they
ignore others. The sovereign God of electing
grace. They don't want to hear about
Romans 9, which talks about the sovereignty of God to save whom
he will. He said, I'll have mercy on whom
I will, and I'll be gracious to whom I will. So then it's
not of him that runneth, nor of him that willeth, but of God
that showeth mercy. That's the God they hate. That's
the Christ they hate. And so when you look into the
scriptures, whatever God says about himself in this word, you
may believe it, you may not, but whatever it is, it's true.
And you may hate it. You may hate the Christ that
I preach, the God that I preach, the God of electing grace, the
God of sovereign grace, the Christ who died for a people whom he
saved. But I pray the Lord will turn
your heart and bring you to love it. Hope you'll join us next
week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia, 31707. Contact us by
phone at 229-432-6969 or email us through
our website at www.theletterofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.