The following sermon was delivered
on Sunday morning, October 29th, 1995, at the Trinity Baptist
Church of Montville, New Jersey. When it was my privilege to stand
in this place two Lord's Days ago, I preached the final message
in the series entitled, Take Heed How You Hear. a series of
studies based on our Lord's instruction in Luke 8 and verse 18. God willing, next Lord's Day
morning, we will begin a series of studies on the moral law of
God, or that section of the Scriptures that we commonly identify as
the Ten Commandments, and then, God willing, a week from this
Lord's Day evening, I'm sorry, two weeks from this Lord's Day
evening. Next Lord's Day evening is our communion meditation.
We begin our expositions on the book of 1 Peter, and for the
foreseeable future, those two series will be running concurrently,
The Moral Law of God in the Morning and The Epistle of Peter in the
Evening. But today, before launching into
these two series of studies, I want to direct your attention
to a text which expresses what, in my judgment, is one of the
most sad, the most tragic, the most irrational facts recorded
anywhere in the Holy Scriptures. The text to which I make reference
is found in John's Gospel, Chapter 5, and is a record of the very
words of our Lord Jesus while here upon earth, words spoken
into the ears of some of his contemporaries, words, I say,
which are tragic, words that are irrational. They are sad. They are grievous. And yet, if
they could only be spoken in that generation, They would be
sad enough indeed, but I fear that were the Lord Jesus to stand
amongst us this morning, he would say to some who sit here in this
place the very words that he spoke to his contemporaries. The words to which I make reference
are the words of verse 40 in John chapter 5. Jesus speaking says, and you
will not come to me that you may have life. And you will not
come to me that you may have life. Now to feel something of
the force of these words Just spend a few moments with me considering
briefly the setting in which our Lord spoke them. According
to chapter 5 and verse 1, our Lord Jesus has gone up to Jerusalem
to one of the stated feasts of the Jews. After these things,
there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And while he was there in Jerusalem
at this particular feast time, our Lord performed a miracle
of healing upon a man who for 38 years had been so infirm as
to lay apparently in a paralyzed state upon a pallet And the Lord
marvelously, instantaneously healed him, but he did so according
to verse 9, on a Jewish Sabbath day. Now it was the Sabbath on
that day. Now having healed this man on
the Sabbath, this precipitated another encounter between Jesus
and the Jews. Our Lord's ministry, as recorded
by John, often revolves around these various encounters with
the Jewish leaders. And because he had broken their
rules and regulations by healing on the Sabbath, certainly not
the law of his father, He enters into this period of interaction
with the Jews, disputation with them, which resulted, according
to verse 16, in another wave of persecution of our Lord. And for this cause, the Jews
persecuted Jesus because He did these things on the Sabbath.
And then our Lord, in response to this persecution, however
it manifested itself, goes on to give a justification as to
why He healed on the Sabbath. And he did so in such a way that
the very terminology he used with respect to his relationship
to his father was clearly understood by the Jews as nothing less than
a claim to deity. And so, from mere persecution,
we read in verses 17 and 18, But Jesus answered them, My Father
works even until now, and I work. For this cause therefore the
Jews sought the Moor to kill him, because he not only broke
the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself
equal with God. And so, from persecution occasioned
by his healing on the Sabbath, there is now an intensified commitment
to kill him because, in their reckoning, he was guilty not
only of Sabbath-breaking, but of blasphemy, that he was claiming
to be equal with God. Jesus then, in response to his
awareness of this intensified animosity and bitterness now
rising to the level of a determination to kill him, makes some of his
most sweeping, stupendous personal claims in the next paragraph,
beginning with verse 19. And in that paragraph, our Lord
claims an equality of relationship with the Father. He claims to
be the one to whom the Father has committed all authority for
the judgment of men, the one at whose very voice The dead
will be raised from the dead and will come to judgment and
have their eternal destinies announced and implemented by
Jesus Christ himself. And then he goes on in his interaction
with these Jews to indicate that these claims that he makes concerning
himself are not empty, invalidated, or non-validated claims, but
rather claims validated by a threefold witness. First of all, the witness
of John. In verse 33, you have sent unto
John, and he has borne witness unto the truth. And one of the
truths, you remember, to which John bore witness, as recorded
in John chapter 1, is identifying Jesus not only as the Lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world, but as the very Son
of God God, the Son. And then there was the witness
of the Father, verse 36 in this chapter. He says that the witness
which I have is greater than that of John, for the works which
the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear
witness of me that the Father hath sent me, and the Father
that sent me, he hath borne witness of me. So there is the witness
of John himself, There is the witness of the Father validated
particularly in the works that the Father enables Jesus to do. And he says, these works attest
to my true identity. But then in verse 39 he says
there is another witness that you have had concerning my identity
and that is the witness of the Old Testament scriptures themselves. You search the scriptures because
you think that in them you have eternal life and these are they
which bear witness of me. This emphasis is repeated at
the end of the chapter. Think not, verse 45, that I will
accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuses you,
even Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed
Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. Now in this setting, A setting
in which our Lord has manifested His power in the healing of this
man who had been in this condition for 38 years. in a setting in
which the Lord reminds them that these stupendous claims regarding
the identity of His person were claims validated by the witness
of John, the witness of the Father, and the witness of the Scriptures
themselves, He speaks all of these things in this setting
with this end in view clearly delineated in verse 34. But the
witness which I receive is not from man, howbeit I say these
things that you may be saved. Here he is speaking to these
bitter enemies. who are persecuting him, who
have an intense commitment to kill him, and yet he says, I
continue to speak to you, I continue to set forth these validations
of my claims, these things that underscore that I am what I claim
to be, because he desires the salvation of these very people
determined to kill him. These very ones determined to
oppose him. But he says, I speak these things
that you may be saved. So get the picture. They've made
it very clear that they have no sympathy for him, that they
regard him as a Sabbath breaker and a blasphemer. And yet the
Lord Jesus does not wash His hands of them, but He continues
to interact with them, He continues to reason with them, He continues
to set before Him the manifold evidence that He is who He claims
to be, and is able to do what He says He will do. And He says,
all of this I do, I say, that you may be saved. But in spite
of all of that, He had to say to these people, you will not
come to me that you may have life. And it is obvious that
in speaking these words, he holds them personally and morally accountable
for their refusal to come to him. He says, you will not come
to me that you may have light. These sad, these doleful, these
astoundingly grievous words spoken to a people who had witnessed
His mighty power, who had heard the witness of John, who were
constantly seeing the witness of the Father, who had in their
hands the witness of the Scriptures, and yet, in spite of all of this,
They would not come to the one who could impart life to them. Clearly indicating that his use
of the words, that you will not come to me, are used synonymously
with believing upon him, for certainly in terms of physical
proximity they had come to him. They were in his very presence.
They were carrying on a dialogue with him. They were close enough
to exchange thoughts and words. So when he says, you will not
come to me, he is obviously using that terminology as synonymous
with the motion, not of the feet, but of the heart that goes out
to Christ in faith and trust. the heart that goes out to Christ
in that saving response which He continually embodies in this
language. Come unto Me, all you that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. All that the Father
giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that comes to Me I will in
no wise cast out. And so when our Lord says, you
will not come to Me, what He is saying is, you will not. You refuse to cast yourself upon
Me. You refuse to commit yourself
to Me. You refuse to trust in Me. You refuse to embrace Me for
who and what I am, even though I speak these things to you that
you may be saved. You refuse to do the one thing
necessary unto salvation, namely, come to me. And as we anticipate
entering into two new concurrent series of studies in the Word
of God, studies that will on the one hand be taking us into
the realm of our moral duty and obligation before God, our study
of the Decalogue, A study which I trust will not only hone the
consciences of the people of God with respect to their duty
before God, pierce the conscience of the unconverted and show you
your need of Christ, But a study which I trust will point us to
the perfection of Christ who, made under the law, perfectly
kept that law. A study which I trust will increase
our appreciation for what He bore when He bore our sins, all
of our transgressions of the law, in His own body up to the
tree. but a study which will find us
primarily concerned with seeking to understand the claims, the
moral demands of the living God over us as His creatures. And
as we enter upon our studies, following the track of the Spirit
of God through the pen of Peter, and we will range far and wide
over many doctrines and privileges and responsibilities that are
found in that marvelous epistle of some five chapters There will
be opportunities to bring applications to the conscience of those who
are not in Christ, to those of you who have yet to close with
the offers of mercy in the Gospel, that as I prayerfully anticipated
what to do with this Lord's Day, as my own preparations mature
for these other two series, My own spirit was constrained to
focus in upon this most elementary of all issues. Have you come
to Christ? Or would the Lord Jesus say to
you in this place this morning, you will not come to me that
you may have life. Now, what is it? that kept men
in our Lord's day from coming to Him that they might have life.
What is it in our day, in this very place, where Christ is set
forth repeatedly in all of the plenitude of His saving mercy
and power, in all of His suitableness to be the Savior of every and
any sinner who will cast himself upon Him? What is it that would
keep you, man, woman, boy or girl, from coming to Christ that
you might have life? Well, this morning I want us
to focus on two major reasons why some here, as in the day
of our Lord Jesus, did not come to him that they might have life,
and then, God willing, tonight to focus upon two more major
reasons why this text is true, even in this place. And the first
and perhaps one of the most fundamental reasons in these to whom our
Lord spoke was this. They did not come to Christ that
they might have life because they were ignorant of their desperate
need of Christ. They were ignorant of their desperate
need of Christ. Remember, the situation in which
our Lord stands before them. He has come as the great burden
bearer. He has been spoken about by John
as the Lamb of God who bears away the sin of the world. He has spoken in this very book
of John as the one who, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, had to be lifted up He had to be lifted up upon
a cross that he might die, that there might be the provision
of a just pardon for sinners. He was constantly offering himself
to men. as the one who would receive
sinners. And yet these people, the Lord
Jesus said to them, you will not come to me that you may have
life. And what was the problem? Well,
the problem with many of them, as perhaps with some of you sitting
here today, was ignorance of their desperate need of Christ. One of the clearest examples
of this is found in Luke's Gospel, Chapter 5, the Gospel of Luke,
Chapter 5. In the middle of the account
of the conversion, the discipleship of Levi, Matthew, The Pharisees
and their scribes see the Lord Jesus calling this man to himself,
going into his home, sharing in a banquet with him and his
fellow publicans and other notorious sinners. And they are terribly
offended at this, Luke 5 and verse 30. And the Pharisees and
their scribes murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do
you eat and drink with the publicans and sinners? In the parallel
account, they were also getting at their master. Why does your
master, why does he, along with you, eat with publicans and sinners? Jesus answering said unto them,
They that are in health, those who are in a state of physical
well-being, have no felt need of a doctor, and therefore they
don't get on the phone and make a doctor's appointment. The person
who has no fever, who has no pain, who has none of the symptoms
of a physical malady, unless he simply enjoys the wallpaper
in the doctor's office and the music that comes over the loudspeaker,
or has a crush on the doctor, or simply likes to have conversation
with him, people that are consciously in a state of health have no
felt need of a physician. Therefore, they don't call a
physician. And should a physician show up
on their doorstep and say, I'm here for you today, they'd say,
well, that's all well and good, but frankly, I don't need you.
That's the point our Lord is making. They that are in health
have no need of a physician. They don't call out for the physician.
Should the physician himself appear at their doorstep, they
would not welcome him. Or they may welcome him as a
friend. They may welcome him as an interesting character with
whom to have some general chit-chat. But they do not welcome him with
a spirit of desperation and gratitude. as those who have a need which
the physician can meet. They that are in health have
no need of a physician, but they that are sick, those who are
sick, who know themselves to be sick, who feel themselves
to be sick, those whose condition of sickness is a matter that
they are not prepared at all to debate or to deny. Then Jesus
said likewise, Here's the point of all of this. I am not come
to call the righteous. I am not come to call those who
in their own eyes and in their own estimation are morally well,
that is righteous, who do not see themselves and feel themselves
to be sinners, unrighteous, ungodly, morally and spiritually sick. I am not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. I have come as the great physician
in order to deal with those who are conscious that they need
what I and I alone can give. So when our Lord Jesus spoke
as he did to these Jews in John chapter 5 and said, You will
not come to me that you may have life. He was speaking to a people
who were ignorant of their desperate need of Christ. And that's why
they would not come to him. They were in the presence of
the Lamb of God, who in a short time would, by his death upon
the cross, bear away the sins of the world. They were in the
presence of Him described by Isaiah the prophet as the suffering
servant of Jehovah, who would be bruised for the iniquities
of others, who would bear the sins of others, the one upon
whom Jehovah would cause to light the sins of others. And yet,
in His presence, they had no felt sense of their need of Christ. And so it made no difference
that he could present himself as he did, for who and what he
was, as the source of spiritual life, as the only savior of sinners,
as the appointed judge of the world, the very one who would
arbitrate their eternal destiny in the last day. They still refused
to come to him. Why? Because they were ignorant
of their desperate need. of Christ. And what was true
of them, I fear, is true of some sitting here this morning. For
in this place, at your family table, in your living room, in
your Sunday school classes, week in, week out, month in, month
out, for some of you year in, year out, and for others literally
decade in and decade out, Christ has been set before you. in the
plenitude of His grace and power as the only Savior of sinners. And you have been urged by His
word through these various means to lay hold of Christ, to come
to Christ, to find in Christ all that He claims to be to sinners
who trust Him. And you sit here this morning,
and of you it can be said you will not come to Him. And why? because you are ignorant
at the deepest level of your being, of your desperate need
of Christ. And you see, that ignorance is
utterly inexcusable. The testimony of the Word of
God concerning your desperate need of Christ is clear. You, with me, are part of a race
that fell in our first father, Adam. And according to the scriptures,
Romans 5, 12, 1 Corinthians 15, 22, in our first father Adam
we fell. God chose to appoint Adam as
the representative head of the whole human race. And when he
fell, the scripture says, as in Adam, all die. Romans 5, 12, through the one
man's sin entered into the world, and death passed upon all men,
for that all sin. And there is no other explanation
for the human race as it exists, but this biblical explanation. We are a race of sinners coming
from a common root in Adam. your indifference to what Christ
is and what Christ offers. This indifference rooted in ignorance
is inexcusable because you have the testimony of the word of
God that you are part of that race that fell in Adam. The testimony
of scripture that says you are a sinner by nature. Psalm 51
in verse six. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me. Ephesians 2 and verse 3,
we are by nature children of wrath, even as the rest And this
ignorance of your desperate need of Christ is inexcusable, because
not only does the Word of God describe you as part of that
race that fell in Adam, but it describes you as a sinner by
nature. And your own conscience affirms
that you did not need to be taught by another to sin, and to do
that which your own conscience condemns you. That sinning was
as natural to you as breathing. Sinning was as natural to you
as it is natural for the eye to receive light and for the
ear to receive sound. You are a sinner by nature, a
sinner by practice. When you evaluate your words
and thoughts and deeds in the light of God's word and in the
light of his holy laws, we shall be doing God willing in weeks
to come. You will not find it in you to
debate the language of Romans 3 10 and following as it is written. There is none righteous. No,
not one. There is none that understands.
There is none that seeks after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are together become unprofitable. No. The Word of God in its testimony
concerning our state and our condition is clear. And in that
state we are condemned, the soul that sins shall die. The wages
of sin is death. We are impotent to rescue ourselves. We are described as without strength
in Romans chapter 5. We are under the wrath of God.
He that believeth not is condemned already. John 3 and verse 18
so this ignorance of your desperate need is inexcusable the testimony
of the Word of God concerning your state is abundantly clear
and add to this the testimony of your own conscience is inescapable
Romans chapter 2 verses 14 and 15 affirm that even those who've
never seen a page of the Bible, who have never heard one of the
Ten Commandments preached out of Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy chapter
5 or the many other places where some or more of those ten words
are reiterated yet, yet they have to reckon with this reality,
Romans 2. Verse 14, for when the Gentiles
who have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these
not having the law are a law unto themselves, in that they
show the work of the law written in their hearts. And how do they
show it? How do they manifest this consciousness
of God's authority and God's right to say, do this and don't
do that? How do they show that the remnants
of that original constitution of man in his uprightness is
yet there within them? How is that manifested? Their
consciences bearing witness therewith. and their thoughts one with another
accusing or excusing them, there's not a one of you here that does
not know what it is to have conscience function. And conscience doesn't
seek your approval. Conscience doesn't ask for your
vote to function. Conscience is that oft times
unwelcomed voice within us that takes much of the joy and the
delight out of our sin. You children can remember, at
first you felt so filled with a sense of relief that when mom
or dad asked you a question that pertained to something you had
done, And you knew if you were honest you'd have been punished
and you lied. And the first sense that you
had when you avoided the punishment was one of great relief. But
you remember how quickly after that all of the delight of avoiding
the punishment began to slip away very quickly? Because this
little thing called conscience made you begin to feel dirty
and unclean. And you knew you had wronged
not just mom and dad, but God Himself when you lied to them. When you cheated, first time
you spoke the dirty words, when you deceived your parents, and
then as you came up into your teenage years and adult years
and whatever the sins may be, there is that function of conscience
within. There is approbation when we
do that which we know is right, and there is accusation when
we do that which we know is wrong. And these people had consciences.
These people to whom our Lord spoke, they had consciences,
and yet they were inexcusably ignorant of the depth of their
need because they sought to try to argue down even the voice
of conscience with all of their religious ritual. How sad for
the Lord Jesus to say to them, you will not come to me that
you may have life, because they were a people willfully, wickedly
ignorant of their need. of him. And I wonder how many
sitting here this morning. Of whom it can be said you will
not come to Christ because. Because. Of your ignorance of
your desperate need. If you really believe if you
really believe the testimony of God's word. that in Adam you
fell into a state of condemnation and sin that from your very conception
you were a sinner and your deeds and acts and even every word
spoken that has been a violation of God's law is known by him
and will in the last day be brought into judgment surely The Lord
Jesus standing before you in the gospel saying, come unto
me, I will take to myself the responsibility for all of the
guilt of all of your sin. I will take to myself the responsibility
of cleansing you of the stain and defilement of your sin, as
well as clearing you of the guilt of that sin. Surely you would
go to Christ immediately. But alas, he said then, and he
says to some this morning, you will not come to me that you
may have life. Why? Because of ignorance of
your desperate need of Christ. And I would plead with you if
you're in this category not to pride yourself that you can hear
of Christ and His perfect life, and His substitutionary death,
and His triumphant resurrection, and His sincere and earnest entreaties
to come to Him for life and salvation and forgiveness. Don't pride
yourselves that you can sit through such stuff day in and day out
in family worship, week in and week out in the Sunday school
class and in this very building, and be indifferent to Christ's
overtures to come to Him. Don't develop calluses on your
conscience. Cry to God that He would give
you a felt sense of your desperate need of Christ. And especially
as we enter into this series of studies on the moral law,
for the scripture says that by the law comes the knowledge of
sin, that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. Will you not cry that God would
give you a felt sight of how desperately you need what only
Christ can give? For they that are whole have
no need of a physician, but they that are sick. And until you
field in the depths of your soul, The malady of your own sinfulness
in its guilt and its defilement to the extent that you know you
can't fix yourself up, you can't clear your record, you can't
change your own heart any more than the leopard can change its
spots. People ask, how much conviction
of sin does a man, a woman, a boy or girl need in order to be saved? And I answer, he needs just so
much, only so much, but so much as to drive him out of himself
to seek salvation in another. And that other is the Lord Jesus.
And here these people could stand face to face with him, talking
to him, having seen his mighty works, having heard the witness
of John, seeing the witness of the Father, and they trafficked
in the very scriptures that should have brought them broken to his
feet. And yet they had so learned to
handle the scriptures as to make them a barrier between themselves
and Christ. What a tragic thing. to have
Christ say, you will not come to me that you may have life
because of ignorance of your desperate need of Christ. But
then there is a second major reason why the Lord Jesus spoke
these words in that immediate setting. And why he speaks them
again and again in every setting where he offers himself in his
word and through the gospel, where he speaks through his servants
to the same end, he speaks these things that you may be saved. And yet you will not come to
him that you might have life. What is the second great reason?
Not only ignorance of your desperate need of Christ. but impenitence
before the flesh-withering demands of Christ. Impenitence before
the flesh-withering demands of Christ. You see, the gracious
command and call to come to Christ is a command and call to leave
your sins. That's clear. In the entire revelation
of God's salvation in Christ, His gracious command and call
to come to Christ is a command and call to leave your sins. Matthew 121 The words spoken
shortly after his conception, the angel speaks to Joseph and
says, you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his
people, not in, but from their sins. He shall save them from
their sin. Luke 5.32, we read earlier, I
am not come to call the righteous. No, I've come to call sinners. But to do what? To call them
to myself for a full and free pardon while leaving them wedded
to their sins? No. Look what the text says.
I am come to call sinners to repentance, to a divorcing of
their souls from sin. starting with the sin of self-righteousness
and self-trust and self-serving and self-centeredness and all
of the sins that grow out of those deep sins rooted in self. Acts 5.32 tells us that he is
exalted as a prince and a savior to give repentance and remission
of sins. He gives no remission without
repentance. And Paul summarizes his apostolic
preaching in Acts 20, 21 by saying, I testified to Jews and to Greeks
repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. He did not preach faith divorced
from repentance or repentance divorced from faith. And the
reason why some in our Lord's day would not come to Him to
have life, though He offered Himself as the giver of life,
though He did, as in this setting, speak words that men might be
saved, the reason was their impenitence before the flesh-withering demands
of Christ. As one has said, if you would
be married to Christ, You must be prepared to divorce your sins. You see, with some, the problem
is not one of insensibility of their sin. No, you may be conscious
of your sin and even had a dread of God's judgment on behalf of
that sin, you may live as I did for years. Afraid to go to sleep
at night for fear you'll die and drop into hell. I'd be very
surprised if there are not some of the children and young people
in this very building within the sound of my voice this morning
of whom that is true. Why don't you come to Christ?
It's not that you're insensible of your need of Christ. No. Life
would be a lot easier if you could somehow insensitize yourself
to your felt need of Christ. You know yourself to be a sinner.
You know yourself to be under condemnation. What is your problem? Your problem is you know that
in coming to Christ, you must be prepared to part with your
sins. And that's the rub. Like the
rich young ruler, you remember? He was conscious that with all
of his knowledge and all of his influence and all of his externally
moral life, he did not yet possess what Christ alone could give.
And he came and said, good master, what shall I do to inherit eternal
life? He came to the right person,
the Lord Jesus. He didn't go to the scribes and
the Pharisees. He came to Jesus and said, What shall I do to
inherit eternal life? He came with the right question.
He acknowledged that he did not have eternal life. He had morality. He had external religion. He
had influence. But he knew he did not have life.
Then he came to the author of life and said, What must I do
to possess life? Jesus begins to probe his heart. begins to lay bare his true problem. And you remember when the Lord
pinches the real nerve, he says, all right. It's not a matter
of you living in blatant, open defiance of the moral law of
God in your external life. You could say all these things
that I kept from my youth up. I've honored my mother and my
father. I've not stolen. I've not violated anyone's marriage
bed. I've not gone about In a life
of slandering others, Jesus said, one thing you lack. Here's the
real issue, young man. I look into your heart, and what
I see is a heart that is a vast temple of idols. And over all
of the idols is written a dollar sign. It's not that you possess
riches that is your problem. The problem is that your riches
possess you. And if you want eternal life,
you want me! But if you want me, I'll possess
you to be your master, your gracious master, not only to take you
to heaven, but to guide you all the way there, to govern you,
to rule over you with my yoke that is easy and my burden that
is light. So young man, I will speak to you and tell you the
one thing you lack. Go, sell that you have, give
to the poor, come Follow me. And then the Lord said, You shall
have treasure in heaven. You will not be the loser. In
your case, young man, your money has you. You must be divorced
from your idolatrous attachment to your dollars. What happened? Remember what happened? The young
man went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Yes,
because great possessions had him. And it said Jesus loved
him. Jesus wasn't playing games with
him. When he said, What shall I do to inherit eternal life?
Jesus yearned that this man would possess eternal life. But when
he lays out the terms, He's unwilling for them, he would not come to
Christ that he might have the very life he came inquiring about
why? Because there was impenitence,
impenitence before the flesh withering demands of Christ. saying to the young man, yes,
eternal life and all of its blessedness is found in attachment to me,
and I'm calling you to come after me, but I'm telling you to smash
your idol, and your idol is your attachment to your things and
your possessions. Now that wasn't true of everyone.
The Lord Jesus didn't tell everyone who came inquiring after life,
go sell that thou hast. He didn't say that to Levi. He
didn't say that to Zacchaeus. He didn't say that to many others.
But in his dealings with this individual, he knew there was
the issue with the woman at the well. You remember what the issue
was with her? Because I want this life, this water of life.
I want this water that if I drink of it, it'll be a well in me
springing up into everlasting life. Lord, I want this water. He says, all right, go call your
husband. I have no husband. He said, that's right. You've
had X number of husbands and the one you're now living with
is not your husband. What was he doing? Was he playing
games with her, promising her life? promising her that well
of water that springs up into everlasting life. No, he was
letting her know that if she would have that life in him,
she must be prepared to deal not with sin in general, but
with her own particular darling sin in particular. And I say, as with a lack of
felt need of Christ. This impenitence before the flesh
withering demands of Christ is inexcusable. The testimony of
the Word of God is clear. Whatever sin we cling to that
keeps us from cleaving to Christ can only damn us. The wages of
sin is death. The sin as dear as right hand
and right eye can only take us to hell if we do not part with
it. And that's why Jesus again and
again used the imagery of cutting off right hand and plucking out
right eye. What is it? What is it? To go
into hell having stroked your bag of shekels, Mr. Rich Young
Ruler? What comfort will they give you
in the fires of hell? And I say to some of you sitting
here today, you've heard the call of the gospel. You've heard
it so powerfully two weeks ago, Sunday night, from Pastor Blaise,
and yet you did nothing. Why? Why? Why will you not come
to Christ that you might have life? Well, in your case, it
is not ignorance of your desperate need for Christ. That's not your
problem. But it's impenitence before the
flesh-withering demands of Christ. And I say, such a posture is
irrational. It's a form of madness, for you're
clinging to that which can only ultimately damn you. And even
in the present, whatever pleasure that same sin brings to you,
the scripture says, there is no peace, saith my God, to the
wicked. The wicked are like the troubled
sea that cast up mire and dirt. Whatever momentary pleasure comes
from that sin, it is sin's pleasure for a moment. And I say to you who are struggling
with that issue, that ambition, that relationship, you say, if
I come to Christ, I know that this will have to be dealt with
and this will have to be dealt with. I'll have to go through
the embarrassment of sitting down with mom and dad and telling
them that I stole out of mom's pocketbook. I'll have to tell
them that I've lied. I can't face the embarrassment
of telling them. I know I'll have to. How can
I get right with God and not make right these issues? I know
that they don't earn me brownie points with God, but I know to
lay hold of Christ and to welcome His rule and His grace into my
life means I'll have to sort these things out. I can't do
it. I can't do it. I'll have to go to my teachers
at school and confess that I cheated in this test and that, and I
may flunk this course or that course. I may have to repeat
a grade. That's what some of you kids
are going through, aren't you? Listen to me. Oh, listen to me.
As you weigh why you will not come to Christ, as you face the
demands of true repentance, I plead with you. I plead with you. Behold
the scarred and twisted lives of those who, for unwillingness
to part with some sin, refused to come to Christ in their youth.
And look at what their lives have become progressively, as
sin has destroyed them, and scarred them, and twisted them, and the
devil's about to throw them off as unusable junk. and they'll
end up in hell. My dear aunt, one of my mother's
sisters, had a large heart for needy children. And in addition
to her own daughter, she adopted two children, took them in first
of all as a foster parent, gave them all the love, warmth of
a Christian home and the instruction Thankfully, that daughter has
brought great delight to my aunt, but that son, I hadn't heard
from him in years. I heard a slurred voice on my
answering machine a few weeks ago, barely coherent, calling
me from a mental institution in Connecticut where his brain
is fried on all kinds of drugs. as a result of an abandonment
to a life of drunkenness and lechery. And he's ruined. He's ruined. I still remember
him when he was a round-faced, happy-faced teenager. Way back
in his brain, he still remembers that I played football in high
school and I threw left-handed. And through his garbled, jumbled
speech was something about how he left hand doing it, still
throwing well. That's what sin does! You precious children. You say,
I can't come to Christ. If I come to Christ, I know I'm
going to have to make this right and that right and the other
thing. So what? Far better repeat ten grades
if you need to, and know you're right with God now and go to
heaven with Jesus when you die, whatever it will cost. The way of a transgressor is
hard. No peace to the wicked. I urge you, as you're wrestling
with the issues, look at the scarred, twisted lives of those
who've run away from what they thought were the demands of Christ
that were too stringent for them. I wish I could take you to the
deathbed of people who've died in their sins, conscious that
they were slipping out into a crisis eternity. Take you to the day
of judgment. Take you down to hell and let
you put your ear to the gates of hell and hear the weeping
and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Then ask yourself,
whatever it is that keeps me from coming to Christ, is it
worth that? Is it worth that? And above all, I would ask you
not simply to look at the scarred, twisted lives wrecked by sin,
the horrible death of sinners, the frightening specter of the
day of judgment, the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of
teeth. But above all, go and plant yourself down at the foot
of the cross. And there behold the Son of God
who left the glories of His Father's presence to take to Himself a
true human soul and body. And there behold Him who knew
no sin being made sin for us. Behold him who perfectly kept
the law, being made a curse under that law. Behold him. Then you'll be able to say with
John Newton, the bleeding Savior I have viewed, and now I hate
my sin. You view a bleeding Savior, young
person, adult, whatever the sin is, whatever the sins are, that
you say, I know to come to Christ, I must part with these. Put them in the light of Golgotha,
in the sight of an immolated incarnate God. Dying under the
wrath and curse of his father does not make you want to write
out a bill of divorcement between you and your sins. It is right
for God to say to you in the day of judgment, depart from
me, ye cursed. You see with these Jews, you
know what one of their crowning sins was? Jesus identified it
in verse 44 of this very chapter. Why they would not come to him?
Look at it. How can you believe? How can
you come to me who received glory one of another and the glory
that comes from the only God you seek not? You think that
peer pressure is a peculiar problem of teenagers? These religious
leaders. They were seeking one another's
acceptance and glory and approbation. He says, how can you believe?
As long as acceptance with one another is more important than
acceptance with the eye of God, it's morally impossible for you
to believe. You see, whatever the sin is, the acceptance of
your peers, afraid to be considered different, afraid to be cut off
from social interaction, Whatever the thing is, what is it in the
light of the death of Christ? What is it in the light of the
coming of the day of judgment? The Lord Jesus said, though I
speak these things that you may be saved, you will not come to
me that you may have life. Is he saying those words to you
this morning? You will not, you will not come
to me. O may God grant that this day
you will say, God, no longer will you be forced to say in
the words of your Son, you will not come to me, but by your grace
I come, just as I am without one plea, that thy blood was
shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee. O Lamb of God,
I come. Just as I am, and waiting not
to rid my soul of one dark blot, to Thee whose blood can cleanse
each spot, O Lamb of God, I come. The hymn speaks of fightings
without and fears within, yet, Lamb of God, I come. May God grant that this day some
of you who entered the day in this description. You will not
come that you may have life. May find you coming. And coming,
find the promise of Jesus true. Him that comes to me, I will
in no wise cast out. Let us pray. Our Father, We are saddened to
read the words of Jesus spoken to his contemporaries, who saw
his mighty works, who heard the witness of John, who had the
witness of the scriptures. And yet we know that that tragic,
tragic reality obtains to this very day. And we plead that you
would take the simple proclamation of these very basic issues and
make them effectual in the hearts of some, that this day some who
have refused to come would no longer maintain that posture
of refusal. But, O God, may they, turning
from their sins, cast themselves upon Christ. as he so fully and
freely offers himself to them in the gospel. And for those
of us who once were ignorant of our desperate need, we thank
you for showing us our need and showing it to us in such a way
that we despaired of ever meeting it in ourselves or in any other
creature. And you brought us to the place
where we recognized that our need could only be met in the
Lord Jesus. We thank you that in many of
us who once clung to certain sins and felt we could never,
never part with them, that you have enabled us to divorce those
sins and to cleave to your dear son and in his strength and power
to continue to wage warfare against all of his enemies within our
own hearts. We pray that you'd seal the word
preached and make it effectual, we plead. Hear us as together
we make our plea in Jesus name. Amen.