I don't know if I want to read
the whole chapter here. I was reading through some passages
yesterday and I was thinking of some other things, but this verse kept kind of hitting
me this morning. to be called God. We're very
blessed to be able to rejoice in the sufferings of Jesus Christ
on our behalf. We just explained to Andrew this
morning, he was asking me, you know, why we don't go to a regular
church and tell him that we are a regular church. But not like
a lot of the churches that are out there. But we explained to
him It's not a building location
or anything like that. Wherever two or three are gathered
in His name, there He is in our midst. The church is a group
of baptized believers who have been gathered together by the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's what constitutes the church. That doesn't mean that there's
not people that attend churches, but that's what constitutes the
church. believers who have been baptized
and gathered together to worship together. And as we do that each
and every week, whenever we do so, we do so not only at the
command of the Lord, but we do so because our hearts and our
spirit yearns for the fellowship of the brethren. It yearns and
desires the fellowship of the gospel All throughout the scripture,
the Bible is, and Christ specifically, is illustrated by the term of
being bread or food. You know, man doesn't live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth
of God. Well, Jesus Christ is the word of God. If there's anything
that's ever said about God, or shown about God, it comes from
him. And so, whenever we gather together, we gather together
because we, like a hungry man, come because we are hungry to
hear the things about Christ. We are hungry for those things
because Christ has, through the new birth, through being quickened
from above, through that new spirit that lives within us has
given us a desire or a hunger by faith to hear what Christ
has done for us. In fact, the Bible says that
it is from faith to faith. From the faithfulness of Christ
and His faith that is given to us, we hear and we believe. Whenever we hear the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done for us sinners, we
believe those things and we rest upon those things. We trust in
those things. It encourages us. It uplifts
us. And brethren, I'm not naive.
I know that there's a lot of people that whenever they probably
listen to the preaching from us or from People by nature like to have
a self-help lesson. They like to go to a church and
have a preacher that tells them good stories and has a good illustration
or some good anecdote or something like that to add to his sermon
that he's constructed throughout the week. But brethren, those who are the
children of God, they love to come and hear their Savior life and immortality to light.
And in that gospel, we learn of our salvation. And so we are blessed to be able
to be like that. A lot of times in scripture,
and bear with me, my mind's kind of going in a thousand directions,
but in scripture, we see a lot of admonitions about
do this, do this, be like this, be like this, be like this. And
one thing that we got to understand is the flesh profits nothing. It can't do anything that those
admonitions are telling us to do. Your flesh can't accomplish
that. Okay. Your carnal man, the outward
man, the Adamic man, that which is born from Adam, it cannot
accomplish any of those things. And so those admonitions aren't
there as a rule book or a checklist for you to start getting out
and checking these off your list that you're doing these or keeping
these things up. Those are there as statements
of fact. I've used this illustration before.
In my line of work, we have service manuals. And so for a piece of
equipment that I have and I'm going to work on, I have a service
manual for that, and that service manual tells me how that piece
of machine is supposed to be like whenever it's functioning
properly, whenever it is what it's supposed to be, right? So
if I have a generator that generates electricity into x-ray, I can
go to that machine no matter what name it has on there, whether
it be from someone, or whether it be from CPI, or whether it
be from quantum or from wherever and everything, those things
all are built and work the same way. There's a certain way that
an x-ray generator functions. It has an incoming power, it
has rectifiers, it has transformers, it has computer boards in there,
it has relay, all these things that make up this generator that
causes it to be able to produce an x-ray. And whenever I open
up that manual and I see That's not telling that generator
to go out and start doing that. No, it's telling me that this
is what this generator should be doing if that generator is
what it says it is. Okay. Well, that's kind of a
semi poor illustration of about what we are in these admonitions
in the admonitions. It is telling us statements of
fact of what would be present within the child of grace if
the Spirit of God is there. Again, anything that comes from
what we would call righteous life or righteous activities,
the fruit of the Spirit if you would, that comes by the empowerment
of the Holy Spirit. We can't generate that. We can't
produce that. I can't produce faith. I can't
produce hope. I can't produce love. I can't
produce forgiveness. I can't produce gentleness and
meekness, self-control. I can't generate that. That is
antithetical. That is opposite of what we are
in our nature. So if any of that is to take
place, it is because the Spirit of God is in activity in me producing
those spiritual gifts. So I can't produce that. I need the Spirit of God to produce
that. So whenever I see the admonitions
or the things of Scripture telling me to believe, or telling me
to trust, or telling me to repent, or telling me to do whatever,
those are things that I look at and see the child of grace,
these things will be evident in, but yet they are not produced
by the child of grace. And so I came across this passage
in my reading and it really did just, it really struck me because
of, like I said, there's no way that we can produce anything
and how beholden we are to God's grace and God's mercy. If any
of you here that's here this morning will ever believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, truly believe. I'm not talking about
it. We'll see in our passages here. There were some people
that believed on Jesus or believed who he was, but they with their
heart wasn't ever given to believe. Okay. A lot of people believe. Yeah, I believe that there's
a Jesus. Yeah, I believe that Jesus died on the cross. Yeah,
I believe that he was buried. Yeah, I believe in three days
he rose from the grave again and was back alive. Yes, I believe
he ascended back to heaven. There are a lot of people that
really believe that, but they've not been given faith to trust
that that, and that alone is their righteousness. They're not given to trust that
that Christ is all that they need. And so that's why I say
we are blessed today, brethren, to believe. We are blessed that
we have been given to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
we don't have any room to boast about that. For by grace are
you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is
a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. The
faith that saved us was the faith of Jesus Christ. And the faith
that receives that testimony about our salvation is also the
faith of Jesus Christ that he has imparted to us. So therefore,
we can't boast about our faith. We can't boast about what we've
done. We can't just say, I'm going to believe one of these
days. And we can't say, I'm going to continue believing until the
day that I die. Faith is governed by the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's given by Jesus Christ. It's
maintained by Jesus Christ. It is his faith, and it is his
to operate. So whenever you find a group
of people that believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you find a
group of people that have been graciously blessed, not meritoriously
blessed, Okay. Sometimes when it, like my kids,
whenever they were little, you know, we would try to get them
to do things for us. And we would say, well, uh, I
won't use that side of the station because it makes it personal.
So we would tell our kids, Hey, if you do this, if you pick up
your room or whatever, I'll give you a cookie. Okay. We blessed
them with a cookie, but really that was a blessing because of
something that they did that we told them to do. Well, that's
not how faith works, brethren. Faith isn't something that God's
going to bless us because we make up our mind and with our
own efforts start to do something. God says, oh, wow, okay, well,
you didn't do that. Well, let me go ahead and give
this to you. No, every child of grace exercises and operates
through faith when and how the Lord Jesus Christ gives them
to do that. In the 12th chapter of John, though, we find just
the opposite. And these are very sobering words
to me. Matter of fact, some of the most
sobering words that we find in Scripture. Now, let's not forget,
brethren, who we are talking about. We're talking about God. God who is outside of all of
us, that has no outside influence, nobody is above God, nobody controls
God, God doesn't listen to anybody, and they do something because,
or he does something because they said something or did something. God never reacts to anything. He is always the causal factor
in all things. by his will and his will alone
are all things that are happening. We're talking about God who cannot
be controlled. We're talking about God who has
all wisdom, all power, all might, all authority. We're talking
about a God who cannot be challenged. There is no other gods before
him. And so we're talking about a God who is, as we call him,
and why our church's name is Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. The reason we say sovereign is
because He is complete and total in authority and He can do what
He wants to do. And so I say this is a very sobering
passage because just as we just contemplated upon the wonderful
blessing of being given to believe, because brethren, no man has
faith. That's our problem. See, this isn't an offer or an
invitation for people to come and believe. The Bible never
does give an offer or an invitation for anybody to come and believe,
okay? It does command and tell those
who have been given faith to come and dine, to come and drink,
to come and cast your cares upon Him. That's where we find our
rest whenever we've been given faith. But, brethren, our faith,
we can never produce that in and of ourselves. But, brethren,
That wonderful blessing to believe is something that a sovereign
God has chosen to give to us and to all those who are out
there, wherever they may be, that have been called of God
from the foundation of the world. But there is another side to
the coin. There are those who have not been given that blessing,
that have not been given that grace. And listen, that doesn't
make God an evil person. That doesn't make God unrighteous
to not give that grace to others. Look, if you would, in the 12th
chapter of John. And the verse that really weighs
upon me is verse 39. And I want to go back and hit on what
happened before this verse, but I want to go ahead and read the
gravity of this verse and why it's weighing so heavy upon my
mind. Verse 39 says, therefore, they,
everybody follow along with me. What's that next word? Therefore,
they could not believe. Therefore, they could
not believe. It doesn't say would not, did
it? What's the difference between would not and could not? Would not is God gave them a
chance to believe. They just decided that they didn't
want that. And could not is God never gave
them a chance, but they want to. Well, that's pretty close. Pretty close. Good answer. Okay, that's pretty close too. Both of you are almost right
on the money. The difference between could
not and would not. Would not would suggest that
there is an ability to choose or not to choose. Could not means
that there's an inability. They don't have the ability to.
They could not. If I would say out here, if I
tell you, Andrew, go out there in the yard and jump over this
house, you would tell me, well, I can't do that. Well, how come?
Because you don't have the ability to, right? But if I told you
to jump over that stick out there, I said, would you jump over that
stick? We would jump over that stick, right? So I would be saying,
you would jump over that stick. Would you jump over that stick?
That means from me asking you that, I'm assuming that you can,
and you can, so you will. But here, Jesus is telling us
that they could not believe. Therefore, they could not believe. And then he tells us why. why
they could not believe. Because that Esaias said again. Now Esaias, that's just a New
Testament way of saying Isaiah. In the Old Testament there was
a prophet called Isaiah and he wrote about this back in Isaiah
chapter 6. But he tells us in verse 40 what
Isaiah seen and what Isaiah heard. It says, he hath blinded their
eyes and hardened their heart that they should not see with
their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted,
and I should heal them. These things said Isaiah when
he saw his glory and spake of him. So here we see, brethren,
that to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is an inability. We don't have the ability. Just
like I don't have the ability to go out there and jump over
this house, We don't have the ability to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's an utter inability. Therefore,
if it's an inability, there is absolutely no way in and of yourself
that you can do that, right? You wouldn't be able to jump
over that glass no matter if I bought you brand new shoes, right? Even
the pump up kind. Yeah, because that's pretty much
impossible. Right? And even if I got you
those little springy, those little springy type shoes, you wouldn't
be able to jump over here, would you? Or stilts. If I put a trampoline
out there, you still wouldn't be able to do that, would you?
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Okay. Because like,
depending on what kind of trampoline. The point is that there is nothing
that we can do. You wouldn't be able, and even
maybe if you had the trampoline, you still wouldn't be able to
do that unless I gave you the trampoline. Right. Right? Right. Because like, that's physically
impossible. So if left to ourselves, brethren,
We cannot believe on the Lord Jesus Christ because there is
an inability there. Now I'm just gonna say a side
note there for folks that are listening and watching and those
that may not have been under this kind of teaching very long.
There are a lot of people that whenever they hear the doctrine
that we preach about election and predestination and sovereign
grace and the things that we're talking about right now, God
choosing some and not choosing others, giving some faith and
blinding others. They will say, number one, they'll
say that God, that's not fair. Well, the fact is, is nowhere
in the Bible does it tell us that God has to be fair. It says
that God is righteous and that God is a just God, but nowhere
does it say that God has to be a fair God. Matter of fact, if
God was a fair God, then there would be nobody saved because
the Bible says all of us have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God. So that means that every one
of us should receive the just penalty for our sin, which is
death. Okay? And so, if God were to be fair,
He would give everybody the same thing. But that's not the case. The Bible says that God will
be gracious to whom He will be gracious. He will give mercy
to whom He will give mercy. And that's because God is sovereign. God has the right to choose to
do with whatever with His creation that He wants to do. So whenever
we talk about they could not believe, we're not talking about that
God has made believing available and just saying, no, I'm not
going to let you come. but that the person, the way
that they have been created, there is no ability in them because
the natural man is dead and trespasses and sins and he cannot believe. So the only hope we have is for
God in His grace and in His mercy to give us belief, to give us
faith. If God doesn't give it to us,
we never can believe upon Him because it's an inability. Now, there was a lot of things
that happened before this verse. Look back with me, if you would,
in John chapter 11, and we see probably one of the greatest
miracles that Jesus ever performed. Y'all remember Lazarus? Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. Lazarus died, and Jesus wasn't
there when he died. They sent word to Jesus that,
hey, your friend Lazarus has died. He's sick. He's about to
die. And Jesus kind of waited around
for a little bit and didn't go immediately. And Lazarus died. Then Jesus went to Mary and Martha,
and they were all sad. They said, if you would have
been here earlier than our brother Lazarus would have not died,
you could have healed him. And Jesus told them, he said,
Lazarus, the reason that Lazarus has died is so that God might
be glorified because Jesus had been given to come and perform
a miracle to show people some things. And Jesus came, and even
though Lazarus had been in the grave for several days, Jesus
said Lazarus come forth and Lazarus came back to life and he came
out of that tomb all alive. So Jesus raised Lazarus from
the dead and it was a great miracle. Now in chapter 12, Jesus comes
back to Lazarus's house and they're eating supper together and they're
going to have dinner together with Mary and Martha. And during
this time there was a woman that came and she broke open a costly
vessel of oil and spilled it out upon Jesus' feet and took
her hair and wiped his hair and anointed his feet with that oil. And a lot of the Jews got mad
because that oil was very expensive and they were more concerned
about the money than they were about what she was doing. what
she was doing was actually a service to Jesus to anoint Him because
He was about to die. And this was a sign of her love
and her respect and her care for Jesus. And so during this
time there was some discussions that began to happen about Jesus. And if you look with me in John
chapter 12 and verse 20, it says, and there came certain
Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast. The
same came, therefore, to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee,
and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh
and telleth Andrew, not this Andrew, but another Andrew, Philip
cometh and telleth Andrew, and again Andrew and Philip tell
Jesus. And Jesus answered him, saying,
The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth
much fruit. So Jesus here is telling a parable,
or telling a story, an illustration about a grain of wheat falling
into the ground and dying. And that's the picture of him
dying. Because Jesus came and died,
all those who are in him, just like in that grain of wheat,
every grain of wheat that would come from that grain of wheat
that we planted in the ground was in that first grain of wheat.
Sometimes my wife will go out here and she'll plant a little
garden out here beside the beside the house, and she'll take a
little seed, and she'll put in, most of the time we grow peppers,
we'll put that seed down in the dirt, then she'll come and she'll
water that, and then a plant will grow up. Out of that one
little seed, there may be 15, 20 peppers that grow. And then inside those peppers,
whenever you cut them open, what do you use to see when you cut
open a pepper? Seeds. A whole bunch of seeds, right? And then
if you plant those, what will happen? More plants come up and
more seeds, right? So it's just an infinite. Yeah,
but every one of those seeds, every one of those peppers that
you cut open and find more seeds and then plant more seeds and
more seeds and more seeds come out all came from that one seed,
right? We planted that one seed and
then all these peppers came out. And if that one seed dies. Yeah,
that one seed, when you put it in the ground, that seed dies.
begins to rot, and as it begins to rot, it shoots out a little
shoot, and that's where your plant comes from. It has the
new seeds on it, and the new fruit, or whatever, the new peppers. Well, this is what Jesus is saying.
He's saying, just like that, whenever I die, and I'm buried
in the ground for three days, and then come back forth, whenever
I come back forth from the grave, I will bring with me all the
fruit, all the seed that is in me. And so he's telling the story
of all of us who are his people that whenever he died, we died
with him. And whenever he was buried, we
were buried with him because we were inside of him. And whenever
he came back from the dead, we came back from the dead with
him. And that's where our life comes. Our life comes from him.
And so now, whenever we begin to show forth like fruit, sometimes
we'll see that plant out there, and we'll see a little bud start
to grow, and we'll see a little bitty pepper start growing, and
then maybe a few days later, here's one over here that will
start growing, and one over here. Well, that's just the same way
throughout all of time, Jesus' children, wherever they've been,
have began to show forth here, over here, over here, over here,
in the time that God has purpose. And that's what Jesus is talking
here. Whenever he dies, if he dies, if he doesn't die, that
seed abides alone. If I take that pepper seed, I
put it up here on the on this piece of wood here and I just
leave it there. Nothing's ever, ever going to happen to it. It's
just going to sit there for years and years and years and years
and years. But if I take that seed and I put it in the ground,
it will grow. and produce more fruit. That's
what Jesus is saying here. He that dies, it will bring much
fruit. He that loveth his life shall
lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep
it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him
follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be. If
any man serve me, him will my father honor. Now is my soul
troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?
But for this cause came I unto this hour." So Jesus is telling
them, you know, I'm about to die, and am I going to pray to
God to remove me from all this? No. This is the reason why I
came into the world. In verse 28, he says, Father,
glorify thy name. And after Jesus said that, when
Jesus said, glorify thy name, Look at what it says there. Then
came there a voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified
it and will glorify it again. And the people, therefore, that
stood by and heard it said that it thundered. Others said an
angel spake to him. Jesus answered and said, this
voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. Now is the
judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this
world be cast out. Jesus was about to die. whenever
in his death, burial, and resurrection, that was the point where Satan
is bound and cast out. Verse 32, and I, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. So now he's
telling them about that this salvation is not just for the
Jews, but it's for everybody. It's gonna be for everyone that
is from every nation, tribe, language, and tongue that God
has called. He says, This he said, signifying
what death he should die. The people answered him, we have
heard out of the law that Christ abided forever. And how say thou
the son of man must be lifted up? Who is this son of man? Jesus said unto them, yet a little
while is the light with you. Walk while you have the light,
lest darkness come upon you. For he that walketh in darkness
knoweth not whither he goeth. While you have light, believe
in the light, that ye may be the children of light. These
things make Jesus have departed and did hide himself from them.
But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they
believed not on him. As a matter of fact, there's
another place in scripture that says that Jesus did so many miracles
that if they had all been written down, there wouldn't be a book
that could contain them. I mean, we read about all the miracles
that Jesus did in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and Acts. There are a lot of miracles that
Jesus did, but they said that not even all the miracles that
Jesus did were recorded. God didn't have them write it
down. It says, but though he had done so many miracles before
them, yet they believed not on him. Even though Jesus had shown
them all the miracles, even though Jesus had been sinless before
their eyes, Even though Jesus had raised people from the dead,
even though Jesus gave blind people their sight back and they
were able to see, people that were not able to walk, He healed
them and they were able to get up and walk. People that had
leprosy, He removed the leprosy and made their skin clean again.
People that couldn't talk, He gave them the ability to talk
again. People that were possessed by
devils, Jesus brought the devils out of them and give them peace. All these miracles Jesus did,
he walked on the water. I mean, all the miracles that Jesus
did and all the things that these people saw and even heard in
two occasions, once whenever he was baptized, Jesus was baptized. God from heaven spoke out and
said, this is my beloved son and whom I am well pleased. And
then on the Mount of Transfiguration, God spoke out of heaven that
this is my son, here ye him. And now here, God's speaking
out of heaven saying, he's going to glorify his name again and
everybody heard it. And so even though everybody
saw the miracles, saw the love, saw the compassion, saw the perfectness
of Jesus, heard from heaven that this is His Son, that this is
the Messiah, that this is the man that God had sent as the
Savior and everything. It says here that they believed
not on Him. How sad that is, that out of
all those things, they did not believe on Him. But we learn
that the reason they couldn't believe is because it had not
been revealed. Look at verse 20 or excuse me,
verse 38. It said that the saying of Isaiah,
the prophet might be fulfilled. Remember, this was prophesied
back in Isaiah chapter six, thousands of years before this time. God
prophesied that this would happen. remember, brethren, all prophecy
is is God telling us what God had already determined before
anything was created, what God was going to do. That's all prophecy
is. Prophecy is God telling us what
he had already purposed and planned to do before the world began. And he says that the saying of
Isaiah is the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord,
who have believed our report And to whom hath the arm of the
Lord been revealed? And I've often said this, and
I think you've heard me say it before. That second part of that
verse explains the first part. Who hath believed our report?
Who is it that believes on the Lord Jesus Christ? The one to
whom the arm of the Lord hath been revealed. The one who believes the report
about Jesus Christ, who believes on Jesus Christ, isn't the one
who sees the miracles, isn't the one who sees his preaching
and his teaching and hears that. No, the one who believes the
report of Jesus Christ is the one to whom God reveals that
truth to. To reveals their relationship
to Him. God reveals that we are His children. The Bible tells us that God has
sent His Spirit into us and that that Spirit that is in us will
testify to us that we are His, that we are His children. The
Bible says that He has sent His Spirit into us whereby we cry,
Abba, Father. The reason that we cry out knowing
that He is our Father is because God has given us His Spirit.
And those who do not have the Spirit of God cannot cry out,
I'm a Father. They cannot see Christ and they've
not been given to know that they are His children. Therefore, they could not believe.
They couldn't believe the report because God had blinded their
eyes and hardened their heart that they should not see with
their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted,
and He should heal them. These things said Isaiah when
he saw Him in His glory. Nevertheless, among the chief
rulers, also many believed on Him, but because of the Pharisees,
they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the
synagogue. If you remember whenever Jesus
I believe it was whenever Jesus healed the blind man. And the
blind man went around telling everybody what God had done for
him. And the chief priests were trying to grill him about who
it was that did it. And he said, I don't know. All
I know is I once was blind, but now I see. And the chief leaders
say, well, don't speak of Jesus. You're not to speak of Jesus.
And then they put out a proclamation that if anybody talks about Jesus
or confesses Jesus to be the Messiah, then they would be kicked
out of the synagogue. They wouldn't let them come back
to church, so to speak. And this is what was happening
here. Some of these religious leaders seen all the miracles,
seen all the things that Jesus did, and they couldn't help but
believe this must be the Messiah. But they wouldn't confess that
because they were afraid of what men would say. And the Bible
says something about that, brethren. It tells about our heart. If
you look at Romans chapter 10, and we know that these men, at
least at this point, had not been converted of God because
they wouldn't confess Jesus Christ. Those who have been born of God
and have been given faith by the Lord Jesus Christ and converted,
given repentance, they confess Jesus Christ. They're not afraid
to confess Christ. In Romans chapter 10 and verse
10, the Bible says, For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
That doesn't mean that if you believe in your heart and say
it with your mouth, then that's what saves you. That just says
that if you believe in your heart on the Lord Jesus Christ and
you're confessing Him with your mouth, going back to my illustration
of the manual, that's telling you that that right there is
how a child of grace does. A child of grace believes in
their heart on the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done for
them and confesses that with their mouth. The Bible says,
out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. If God in
Christ Jesus is the abundance of your heart, your mouth is
going to speak about that. Why do I get up here and preach
every week? Why do I tell everybody whenever they ask me about why
I believe what I believe, or what I believe about salvation,
or how they must be saved, why do I always tell them about Christ
Jesus? Why do I always say that? It's
because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Christ has put it within my heart to believe upon Him. And if He's
put it within our heart, He's put it within our heart. True
salvation, not just a manufactured religion. Manufactured religion,
people go around talking about Jesus all the time. But whenever
the brass tacks come, whenever things get hard, whenever things
get rough, whenever things get tough, whenever they get put
on the spot in front of their peers, whenever they're persecuted,
whenever they are pressed upon certain things, whenever God
strips them of their pride, then they go back to their default
position. They don't believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, they
believe in themselves. They go away. As it was said,
I think it's in Peter, it says, they went out from us because
they were not of us. If they would have been of us,
they would have not left from us. So with the mouth, confession
is made and the salvation that has been given to us. Now there's
a couple of different ways that we do that. Number one is just
the fact that we profess before everybody that we believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, that he's our hope, that he's our righteousness.
We've been given to believe on Him and that we've been given
to believe on Him means that we will confess Him before other
men. What's the other verse there,
brother? I'm having a rough time remembering
where it's at. But if you confess Me before
men, I will confess you before My Father which is in Heaven. So, there was something that
internally changed within these brethren that caused them to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and to confess it with their
mouth. Now we knew some of those chief priests and some of those
leaders of the Jews there, they did believe on Jesus Christ.
I believe that Nicodemus was one that came to believe upon
the Lord Jesus Christ. Joseph of Arimathea came and
believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. And these men eventually began
to confess that publicly. That's why I'm saying we can't
help. Whenever God overcomes us and His Spirit in us gives
us the ability to do these things, we can't stop it. That's what
we call in sovereign grace. A lot of people have probably
heard of the little acronym TULIP. Not the Phillips dog, but have
heard the acronym TULIP, T for total depravity. U for Unlimited,
Unconditional Election. L for Limited Atonement. I for
Irresistible Grace. And P for Perseverance. You've
probably heard that. Some people call that the Five
Points of Calvinism, although I absolutely, immensely hate
that. It's called the Doctrines of
Grace. It's called the Doctrine of Christ. It's biblical. Salvation is what it is. But
that I in TULIP stands for Irresistible Grace. And again, people think
that, oh, you mean God drags people kicking and screaming.
They don't want to be saved, but He makes them be saved. No,
He changes their heart. They never would want to be saved.
They never would want the true Jesus, the true salvation, the
true faith that comes. They never would have that. nor
would they believe on that because their default nature is self-righteousness
that continually thinks that they are good enough, that God
is going to accept them when they come before God, when they
walk through the pearly gates and they see heaven opened up,
that God's going to be there with a scale in His hands and
He's going to weigh their good deeds and their bad deeds and
their good deeds. Everybody's going to say their
good deeds are going to outweigh their bad. I don't know anybody
in this room or outside of this house that is ever going to say,
well, I know whenever I get to heaven, my bad deeds are going
to be worse than my more than my good deeds. No, everybody
thinks that their good deeds are more than their bad deeds.
And that's not true. Hate to break it to you. Actually,
I don't hate to break it to you. I'm glad to be able to break
that to you. And hopefully the spirit will break it to you where
you can actually believe it. But our good deeds will never
outweigh our bad deeds. Because all we have are bad demons. The Bible says that there is
none righteous, no, not one. All of us are unrighteous. Why is that? Because the standard
of righteousness is God. Perfection. None of us are perfect. Therefore, none of us can achieve
perfect righteousness. Therefore, none of us can be
accepted of God, come to God, or would come to God because
if we would come to God in our self-righteousness, the Bible
says we will not come to the light because when we come to
the light, it exposes our evil deeds. We go to the light, we
get exposed for who we are. We, if you want to take, you
know, as an example, what do we like to do? We kind of like,
you know, all of us have our little sins we know about and
nobody else knows about, right? And what do we do? We don't tell
nobody about it. We might hide in the dark, do
our sins, go somewhere away from where people can't see us or
whatever. We hide our sins somehow or another. We cover up our sin by boasting
of what we can do. But brethren, whenever we come
to the pure light, listen, light dispels darkness. There is no
more covering up what we've done in the dark. When we come to
God, every deed will be exposed. When we come to God, every thought,
word, deed, action, reaction, motive, everything in our hearts
will be exposed as unrighteous before God. And therefore, if
we are unrighteous, then we deserve death. And God will say, depart
from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. And he will
cast us off into hell. But brethren, that's why I said
at the beginning of this, for those who have been given to
believe, to be given to know their sin and to believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and then to confess that we've been blessed
of God and we should thank God and glorify Christ Jesus, our
Lord, who has given us life and life eternal and through that
life-giving Spirit has caused us to believe upon Him and to
trust upon Him and to call upon Him. That's why whenever the
Ethiopian eunuch asked Philip, what was I doing, or excuse me,
the Philippian jailer, asked Peter, what must I do to be saved? He said, believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He wasn't saying that
so that he would get saved. He was saying if you believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, thou shalt be already saved. Belief upon Christ and confession
of Christ is just like that generator. It operates a certain way, it
functions in a certain capacity, and that manual is just telling
me how it does it. And those who are believers upon
the Lord Jesus Christ are believers because God had, look back with
me in our passage there in John 12, The reason that they are believers,
verse 38, is because the arm of the Lord has been revealed
to them. Their hearts have not been hardened. Their eyes have not been blinded. So brethren, we're beholden to
the sovereign grace of God to believe and we should be thankful
and praise the Lord and never boast. that we've been called. Anybody got anything that you'd
like to add to that? Any corrections or rebukes or
questions? I apologize for my hacking. All right, let's get on with
the Lord. Father, we are so grateful today
for your love and your mercy and your grace. Truly, without
Your grace, we are all doomed. Without Your love from the foundation
of the world, Your everlasting love, we are of all men most miserable.
We need Your grace. We need Your mercy. We need Your
power. We need Your Spirit. We might
trust You. We might believe upon You. not so that we can get saved,
but because You have so wondrously and gloriously saved us in Your
death, burial, and Your resurrection. Father, I know oftentimes our
heart wanders away in disbelief and begins to look at our self-righteous
works, that we can obtain acceptance by doing good things. Father,
we know that there's nothing good that we can do before you
that will be accepted. So we just throw ourselves at
the feet of Christ for mercy. We say that we are the chief
of sinners, that we can do nothing of our own self. But if you were
to give us mercy and give us salvation, then truly our hearts
would rejoice and be glad. that we would exult in the finished
work of Christ alone. Father, I'm grateful that these
brethren have been called together. Those who have believed upon
you and have confessed your name. Those who are given to rest upon
the imputed righteousness of Christ alone as their only hope. Father, may we ever be kept in
the doctrine of Christ, in the faith of Christ. May you help
us, Lord, to love one another and to love you. And again, we
thank you for what Christ has done on our behalf.