Book, hymn number three. We'll sing Covenant Love. This
is to the tune of Amazing Grace. I don't know the tune, the Lord
is my shepherd. Use Amazing Grace to that tune. Covenant Love. Behold, my soul, the love of
God. Behold, the grace most free. Before all worlds His purpose
serve. His heart was fixed on me. Elected by eternal love, the
covenant firm and sure, the triune God agreed in love. salvation to secure. My soul was given to the Son. He promised to redeem by blood
and righteousness His own. He would my soul reclaim. In the due time, Emmanuel came
to live and die for me. He lives today and bears my name. Christ is my surety In love He
sent His Spirit down Who gave me life and grace He drew me
and I followed on my Savior to embrace. Now I rejoice in covenant love,
amazing grace I see. I now am conquered by His love. My Savior is my King. Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound that saved a wretch Our gracious Heavenly Father, we
thank you for that amazing grace. We thank you for that covenant
love that was given to us. even before time began. And we
thank you, Father, for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who
has stood as our surety for all time, never to see us in our
sin, although we be sinful and wretched and full of iniquity,
full of unrighteousness, unable to keep your law, unable to keep
your love fully and wholly in our hearts, Lord, always failing,
falling short of the glory of God. But yet, in love, you have
seen us in Christ from all eternity. And there is no sin imputed unto
your people. And so we're grateful today for
that grace that is given to us, those blessings that Ephesians
speaks about. Father, we're thankful that we
have the opportunity to gather as your people and to sing these
praises about what you have done for us, about the gospel and
about the work of Christ on our behalf. We're grateful. Father,
to be able to meet and to live in song and in prayer and in
preaching and in edification of the Saints. Father, for the
time of fellowship, what a privilege that is to be a part of the Lord's
Church and to be able to exercise that worship together. Lord,
we know that without the Holy Spirit, we can't do that. Even
though we've met together, it would just be another vain meeting.
But we need your Holy Spirit. And we ask, Lord, that you just
give that to us today, that your Spirit might come in power to
help us in our preaching, in our singing, in our fellowship,
our love towards one another, our service to you. We pray,
Father, that you just might speak and minister to our hearts today
through the Spirit. Teach us through your word. And
Father, Lord, glorify your Son in our hearts today. May we see
him afresh. May we love him. May we cherish
him. May we honor him today in our
worship. And Father, we just again, thank you for the blood
that he shed for us and for the removal of sin, for the removal
of condemnation that would have been had he not stood for us. And Lord, we are grateful for
that. And we ask all these things in his precious and holy name.
Amen. All right, just over a few more
pages in that handbook to hymn number six. Hymn number six. And there's a few little notes
here that we need to make about the song here before we get into
singing it, how it's structured here. We sing this to the tune
of America the Beautiful, and how it goes is, you see it's
broken up in the stanzas. Well, to sing it with the tune,
you sing two stanzas at a time. Okay, so the first two stanzas
will actually become one stanza, the second two stanzas will become
the second stanza, and the last two stanzas will become the third
stanza, okay? So, as we see, you'll get it
when we get into the tune, because you'll see in the middle of America,
the beautiful, it don't stop, it keeps on going, and it'll
move right into that second stanza. Also, if you'll notice in one,
two, three, four paragraphs down, That last line, it says, believe
and he'll save you. Okay, we're gonna scratch out
he'll save you and put in that he saved you, that he saved you. Okay, because we do not believe
and then he saves us. That's not how the gospel is
taught in scripture. We believe because we have been
saved. So if you have a pen or something next to you, you can
mark that out. But in that last line, we'll
sing believe believe that he saved you come trust his blood
and righteousness believe that he saved you okay all right so
two stanzas two stanzas at a time and the last line is believe
that he saved you all right Behold, he came, our Savior God. He came to save his own. By his own blood and righteousness,
the work was fully done. Behold, he died the substitute. He bore the wrath of God. The sword of justice and of wrath
was drowned in Jesus' blood. Behold, he rose, he rose for
us. the grave. Come trust his blood and righteousness. Believe that he saved you. Behold, he reigns. The God-man reigns. He reigns as sovereign Lord. All creatures serve him. must bow and say that Jesus Christ
is Lord. Behold, he comes again. Rejoice, let ransomed sinners
sing. We'll see the one who died for
us. We soon shall see our King. Amen. All right. Let's sing hymn number
60 in this book. And after we sing that, then
if anybody has any requests for a song, you can make that. Open that up for anybody that's
got a song that you'd like to sing. Hymn number 60. Receive
not the grace of God in vain. My soldier of the cross is what
the tune will be. I can remember how it goes. How blessed we are. Wait, no, that's not it. Now
my soldier of the cross. How blessed we are in this free
land. to hear the gospel preached. How blessed this church of ransomment
whose heart the light has reached. The light of truth has made us
free from sin and guilt and fear. Christ is that light and all
the truth. His word we gladly hear. But many who once had the light
are now in darkness dead. The light despised by favored
men has from those men now fled. be warned my soul be warned my
friends the gospel is god's gift he will remove the gospel's light
if we despise his gift great god give us the grace we need and we pray that the lord continues
to make us faithful and doesn't remove that from us that we would
uh continue in his share with everybody as they
come. It says there, be warned my soul,
be warned my friends, the gospel is God's gift. The Bible says
that the church is the pillar and the ground of truth. And
that's what we're to be preaching. And that can be taken away if
we despise that gift, if we don't preach that gospel, and if we
don't obey the tenets of the gospel. And so we want to continue
to do that. Pray that the Spirit will help
us to be faithful so that our candlestick is not removed. All
right, does anybody have a song that you'd like to sing? Out
of any of the hymn books? Six. Six? Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee Holy, holy,
holy merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints
adore thee. Casting down their golden crowns
around the glassy sea. Cherubim and seraphim falling
down before Thee. Who word and heart and evermore
shall be. Holy, holy, holy, though the
darkness hide Thee, Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may
not see, Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee. Perfect in power, in love and
purity. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. All thy works shall praise thy
name in earth and sky and sea. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and
mighty, God in three Persons, Blessed Trinity. Alright, turning the wood over
this morning to John chapter 14. John chapter 14. John chapter 14. Good morning, brother. See you this morning. John chapter 14. Before we get started this morning,
I just want to announce that we're going to have a meeting
here at our church in September. It'll be the second week of September. second weekend in September,
which is That will be September the 14th and 15th, that's a Saturday
and a Sunday September the 14th and the 15th If anybody has any
issues with those dates, please let me know as soon as possible
so I can make arrangements with the preachers and on that, but
we kind of talked about that a little bit last week. We don't
want to get too deep into September, because there's other meetings
that's going on. I thought about the first weekend,
but one of the preachers that I'd like to have come is already,
his grandson's getting married on that Saturday, so he won't
be available. That's Brother Tom Armstrong,
and so we want to, he was kind of the first preacher that I
thought about coming. But the 14th and the 15th, what we plan
on doing is the night of the 13th, that Friday evening, some
of the men will be coming in and we'll be putting them up
in a hotel. Some of them will be staying at our house. And
we'll have dinner here at the church Friday evening. We'll
have the times on all this stuff later as we go get further on
in. But we'll have a dinner here
on that Friday evening for everybody who comes in early. And then
on Saturday, we'll have preaching Saturday morning, then we'll
have a lunch. And then we'll come back after
lunch and have preaching up until dinner time. And then at dinner
time, We'll feed everybody at dinnertime, and then we'll be
dismissed for the day. And then on Sunday, we'll have
just regular church times, but we'll have a couple of preachers
preach on Sunday. One from 10 o'clock till 11,
and then we'll have a short break. And then 11 to 12, then we'll
have lunch like we always do, and done for the day. Okay, so that's kind of how I
will plan it out there. And so I'll have some preachers
preaching Saturday, maybe three messages Saturday morning, then
lunch, and then we'll have three or four messages on Saturday
afternoon, and then we'll have dinner, then Sunday we'll have
a couple of sermons, and then lunch. And that's kind of how,
if anybody has any better suggestions, I'm open to hear them as well. I'm not the best planner in the
world, so. My wife usually does that for
me, so. But that's kind of the way we
normally do things, at most the other places. Well, right now
I have, Tom Armstrong has already agreed to come. My uncle Tom
Tanquary, I'm still waiting to hear back from him on dates. And brother Ray Hoggard from
Jonesboro, brother JC Fulton, and brother Lord Smith. And if something happens that
those days don't work for those guys, I may see Brother Dean
Robinson, I may ask him to come as well. He's also from Covita. I know he enjoys the time to
be able to preach and everything whenever he can. So anyway, we'll
have those men come. I would normally ask the MENA
guys to come, but they have a fifth Saturday just the week before
that. And so I don't wanna have them
come all this way. The Mina or the Brother Raines,
they have a meeting just the 31st of August, so I don't want
them. And then Mina has their church's
meeting on the 19th and 20th, so don't want to kind of intrude
on them, because I'm sure they've got a busy schedule and everything. But I'd love to have those brothers
come and preach also. they probably won't have the
time to get everything. All right, does anybody have
any questions on any of that or any suggestions or anything?
You ladies can talk over how you want to do the food arrangements,
whether you guys want to make something or we can buy a bunch
of stuff and have it brought in or whatever you guys want
to do. I know we all have done in the past, done a great job
of feeding everybody. And listen, it doesn't have to
be a huge ordeal, okay? Like at lunchtime on Saturday
and on Sunday, it doesn't have to be a giant spread of a bunch
of home cooked stuff. We can have sandwiches, we can
have pizzas, we can do all kinds of things. But anyway, you ladies
can kind of get together on that and discuss what you'd like to
do about everything. That way we can have everything
planned out ahead of time. And we'll try to, I want to try
to see, depending on how many come, if it doesn't look like
there's going to be a whole lot, I'm going to try to see if we
can kind of get a rough estimate. If we can move the tables out
of the way and set chairs up here just in rows and sit in
here. If not, I want to try to see about getting that other
air conditioner fixed. And we can sit in the other,
in the sanctuary, but if we do that, we need to have a thorough
clean of the sanctuary and everything. The sanctuary, keep using that
term, it's not a sanctuary. The auditorium in there, we need
to have a thorough clean of that. When you set the pews, it probably
got a lot of mold on them. Well, they keep building up in
there, but we've been coming down on occasions to clean, you
know, and so we kind of keep it to a minimum. But it still
gets that, you know, every so often. So we'll want to do a
really good clean of the church and a good sweep of the perimeter and everything
like that. Make sure everything's nice and
tidy for everybody to come and everything. But, so we'll look
at that Lord willing in the next few weeks to come. Any questions? Suggestions? I'm open to all
of them. Sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds
good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. All right, John chapter
14 if you would. Turn my phone off so I don't
make any noises. John chapter 14, we are going
to conclude our sub-study of the Ecclesia. We've been looking
at the gospel that Jesus preached, or the doctrine of Christ. And
in this, now, of course, we haven't covered every doctrine that Jesus
taught while he was here. The point of this was, what is
the gospel? And what is the gospel that we
are to preach? What is the gospel that we are
to look for if we're looking for a church? If we're a church,
what is the gospel that we should be proclaiming from here? If one is looking for a church,
what is the gospel they should be looking for? What is it? And I will say, first and foremost,
that is what we are to look for when we look for a church. you're
to look for a church that is proclaiming the true gospel of
Jesus Christ. They can be right on everything
else, but if they're not right on the gospel, then it's not
worth going and listening to. It's not worth even being there.
We're looking for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that is
what we look for first and foremost. And so if you find a preacher
find a church that is preaching that gospel, they are something
to be thankful for and worthy to go and to be a part of. So all those who are listening
and watching that are looking for churches, that's the first
and foremost thing, is the gospel. And so the question was posed,
or the question is posed, is posed, You know, whenever we
began this sub-series in our study on the church of Jesus
Christ or the church that Jesus built, what kind of church was
it? Well, it was a local visible
assembly. And when did it start? Well,
it started with the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. That's when
the New Testament church began. It didn't start in the Old Testament.
It didn't start with John. It didn't start at Pentecost.
And it didn't start somewhere subsequent after Pentecost. whenever
Jesus was baptized and came up out of the water and began to
gather those things that was prepared by John the Baptist,
that's whenever it began. Okay, so the nature of the church
is a local visible assembly. The birth of the church was whenever
Jesus began his earthly ministry. And now we're looking at the
gospel of the church. What is the gospel of the church? And we started off first with
the warnings in this section, we started off with the warnings
that there is no other gospel. There's only one gospel. There's not many gospels. There's
not a gray-shaded gospel. There is one gospel, and that
gospel was given to that first church. It was handed for them
to keep. It was handed for them to proclaim
and to perpetuate throughout every generation. The Bible says
that it was upon Christ that the church was built. That's
who we preach. That's who is the center of the
gospel. The center of the gospel is not you or me, okay? A lot of times we like to think
that the gospel is centered upon the saving of the man and not
the savior. The whole purpose of the gospel
is to declare and to show forth the glory of God and that in
that we are saved. See, the main point of salvation
is not to get you out of hell into heaven. The main point of
the gospel is not that you have been saved from your sins. The
main point of the gospel is that God has been gracious upon those
who have transgressed him. And he has gloriously provided
salvation through that grace in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so the glory, the honor, the center part of the
gospel is Christ Jesus. So those who have a gospel that
center upon man, whether the reception of that gospel or the
reception of that salvation, or whether it centers on man
on the condition to get that salvation, then you have another
gospel. You're not preaching the gospel
of Jesus Christ. You're preaching, no matter how
zealous you are, you're preaching another gospel. And we've seen
that anybody who preaches another gospel, whether it be an angel
from heaven, whether it be an angel of earth, whether it be
any person, no matter who it is, even the Apostle Paul himself
included himself, he said, let them be accursed. It is a very,
very dreadful thing to tell a lie about the work of Jesus Christ.
And that's what we do if we say something of a different gospel. We are telling lies about the
work of our Savior. And then we see that there is
no other gospel and that anybody that comes with another gospel,
that we are not to receive them among ourselves. That we are
not to consider them brothers and sisters in Christ. Until
they preach that true gospel, until they believe that true
gospel, there is no confidence, there is no profession, there
is no fruit of repentance that is shown. You remember John the
Baptist refused to baptize the Pharisees and the religious leaders
of the day who came down to have this, what they considered, another
religious ceremonial thing tacked onto their list of accomplishments
of what they thought was law keeping. But yet John the Baptist
told them, until you show forth fruits of repentance, then you're
not eligible for this baptism. And he didn't mean repentance
for sin. He said, show forth fruits of
repentance. Those men were the religious
leaders. They were trying to keep the law and kept the law,
for the most part, above everybody else. But it wasn't an issue
about external law keeping to John. It was about an internal
thing. They did not have repentance
in their heart to put away their religious zealousness and to
look to Christ alone for their salvation. They still thought
that it lied within their religious ceremonies and their religious
law keeping and those things, being the child of Abraham. They
thought that was what was going to save them, is being the seed
of Abraham. And we've seen that. As we've
walked through John, we've seen that over and over and over again.
They continue to appeal to their law keeping and appeal to their
heredity in Abraham as their key to being saved. And Jesus continually at every
point shut them down, that that was not how salvation was accomplished
and that that did not make them a true Israelite. And so whenever
we preach the gospel, we preach a gospel, and we preach that
and teach that, and then we receive that as the profession of faith
from others as they seek to have membership. If they have not
those things, if they have not that gospel, then the Bible says
that we are not to receive them as brothers and sisters in Christ,
that we are to look at that And again, I want to reiterate this
so that nobody thinks that I'm saying what I'm not saying. We
are not saying that they can't be saved. We're not saying that
they have not been saved by Jesus and are not part of the elect.
We are just saying they have yet to be given repentance to
the acknowledging of the truth. They have not yet been given
conversion to the gospel. They are still believing in a
man-tradition, man-centered, wisdom of man type teaching.
And so we've seen that there was a warning about the gospel,
that we need to be careful of that. But then we began to look
and go back and say, well, what is it that is the doctrine of
Christ? What is the doctrine that Christ taught? And so we've
been going through John, going through all the quote unquote
red letter verses where Jesus has been teaching. And we have
seen that in every chapter, pretty much every chapter that Jesus
has taught at the very minimum one, but if not all of the doctrines
of grace. Every bit of the doctrines of
grace have been found in the teaching of Jesus. He taught
that men were spiritually totally enabled, that that is how they
are created. That is who they are by nature.
they are unable to do anything spiritual. They cannot keep the
law of God. They cannot understand the things
of the spirit. They cannot repent. They cannot
believe. They cannot receive. They cannot
come. They cannot thirst. They cannot
hunger. They cannot do those things that
we see as far as gospel works, okay? They cannot see those things
and do those things because they are spiritually discerned and
spiritually enabled and the natural man is not spiritually enabled
until he is born from above. So the natural man cannot do
those things. Jesus taught that inability. No man can come except
it be given to him, okay? So Jesus taught total depravity,
total inability. Jesus taught unconditional election. He taught that no man can come
except to be given by the Father, the Father has to give first
and he gave to Christ the people all that the Father giveth me
shall come to me." That's who's the ones that's going to come
is all the ones that was given to Christ. The ones not given
to Christ will never come. And so Jesus taught that there
is an unconditional election of God. There are sheep, there
are goats. Jesus taught that there were
people who were his children and there are those who are the
children of the devil. Okay, and that's a harsh saying,
but that's the truth. There are those who are the children
of the devil and they can't do anything except what their father
tells them and shows them to do. Just like Jesus is our father
and we can't help but do what the things he tells us and chose
to do. And we've seen that Jesus taught
that the atonement was only for his people. He taught that the
sheep was the one that he died for. I shall lay down my life
for the sheep. And so he taught that the atonement,
that redemption, that his death on the cross, John 3, 16, his
death was only for those who would be believers. And we found
that only those that would believe and receive or receive and believe
were those that he had been given by the Father that he gave eternal
life to. Those were the ones who would
be believers. And so the whosoever of John
3, 16 is defined in Jesus' own teaching as those whom the Father
had given him. Those are the ones who would
believe, those who were ordained to eternal life. Those were the
believers. And so Jesus taught that salvation
in its atoning action was only for those people. So he taught
limited atonement, he taught particular redemption. He taught
irresistible grace. No man can come except he be
drawn by the Father. Irresistible grace is not this
everybody is kicking and screaming and saying, I don't want to come
to Jesus. I don't love Jesus. I don't like Jesus. But yet he's
making me come. And Jesus forces himself to make
you come. And the whole time you're not
wanting to come, but he's making you come. and you're just having
to live with it. That's not irresistible grace.
That's sometimes what is characterized as irresistible grace by those
who don't believe in it, but that's not what irresistible
grace is. Irresistible grace is what we found in Ezekiel,
what we found in the Old Testament where the Bible says that he
takes the heart of stone out and he puts in the heart of flesh.
That's irresistible grace. He comes in and He removes out
that heart of stone that is dead and trespasses and sin that is
natural and cannot receive the things of God and puts in a heart
that is spiritual and that can receive and that does have the
ability to love Him, to follow Him, to want Him, and to adhere
those things that is of the truth. Irresistible grace is when we
are born from above And see, nobody can stop that. Whenever
he decides to place that love and that life in us, then there
is nothing that we can do. I mean, look at Paul, the apostle. I mean, he was out persecuting
the church of Jerusalem all over the place as it was scattered,
breathing out threats, going and collecting them up, even
standing and watching Stephen be stoned to death and approving
of that, but yet, In the midst of his travel, he wasn't being
taught nothing. He wasn't being evangelized. He wasn't being slowly coming
to this. You know, I really think, no,
he was on his way, breathing out threats, on his way to Damascus
to find those Jerusalem church members who had scattered to
there. He was gonna either kill them or bring them back. And
in the middle of that, boom, God changed his heart. Paul wasn't asking for it, wasn't
searching for it, wasn't wanting it, but boom, there it was. And so it is with everyone. The
wind blows where it listens. So Jesus taught there is an irresistible
grace of God, and the grace is the irresistible grace of the
new birth. And then Jesus taught preservation.
He said that all that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and
those who come to me I will in no wise cast out. Jesus taught
that no man can pluck you out of his hand, that he is in the
Father's hand and that we are in his hand and no man can pluck
us out of their hand. Jesus taught that we will persevere
until the end because he is the one preserving us. So we have
seen up to this point that Jesus has taught the doctrines of grace
and that that is the gospel. and to say that, well, as long
as you just preach Jesus crucified, that he died, that he was buried
and was resurrected, that's, in essence, the gospel. And if
you believe that, then you'll learn all the other stuff later, okay? Well, I understand some people
will learn that later and everything, but if you don't preach the whole
gospel, if you're not preaching all of that, then that's not
the gospel, okay? And as that says in Corinthians,
he says, that he preached unto them the gospel, which was Christ
died according to the scriptures, was buried and was risen according
to the scriptures. If you're not preaching his death
and resurrection according to the scriptures and what all the
scriptures teach about that, and if you remember, we even
went back to the Old Testament and we read all those passages
in the Old Testament that the scripture said about his death,
primarily Isaiah 53. What did it say about how Jesus
would die? Well, he would die as a propitiation
for his people to justify the many, that there would be a successful
salvation by that death, because it said, by his righteous servant,
the many shall be justified, right? So it was an efficacious
death. It was an efficacious sacrifice,
meaning that everyone for whom Christ died, the application
of that salvation was assured, that it would be applied. And
if we go back, and matter of fact, if we go back and look
at the Old Testament types and foreshadows under the law system,
we'll see that whenever that priest went in to make that atonement
for the people, the nation of Israel, on the day of atonement,
after he had cleansed himself and after he put on the holy
garb, and he went in, he went in with that ephod that had the
12 stones that represented the 12 tribes of Israel, all of Israel,
and then on his shoulder, His shoulder and the breastplate,
they all had those stones, and all those represented the 12
tribes of Israel, meaning that all of Israel was being atoned
for. But he did not have stones on
there for the Jebusites, the Hittites, the Canaanites. He
did not have those stones on there for any other nation, for
any other people other than his people, the nation of Israel. And that whenever he went in,
he made that atonement. And whenever that atonement was
made and that blood was sprinkled, that blood was sprinkled and
then it was declared under them people that they had been atoned
for. They didn't have to come and receive anything. They didn't
have to do anything. The atonement was made and they
were covered by that atonement. But it never was offered. And
it never was given to anybody besides Israel. And so we see that in the Old
Testament types and foreshadows that Christ died according to
the scripture for his people and his people only. And so that
has to be part of our gospel. Now a lot of people are going
to say, you know, well, you can't preach that gospel out in the
streets to people. Nobody's going to want to hear
that. Nobody's going to listen to that. You know, that's offensive to
people. Exactly. Exactly it is. Jesus even said
this is going to be offensive. People's not going to like you
about this. He said, people are going to
hate you because of my gospel. They hated me. They're going
to hate you. If you preach the gospel that
I preached, they're going to hate you too because they hated
me. There were several occasions that the Jews tried to kill Jesus,
but they couldn't because it was not yet his time. But yet
they wanted to kill him. Why? Because of what he preached. Many times they tried to take
him by force and to kill him, but couldn't. The Bible says
that there was one instance where they even was so appalled by
his doctrine that they gnashed their teeth at him. But we also learned that there
were many disciples when they heard that doctrine. turned away
and said, I'm not going to listen to that no more. And they followed
Jesus no more. And so we see that the gospel
is an offensive thing. Now, that doesn't mean that we
preach it offensively in a horrible way. You know, we don't go out
and be rude to people and belittle people and things like that.
But the preaching of the gospel, whenever it includes all of what
is in the gospel, it is an offensive thing to the natural man because
it takes away any prideful activity that he can merit his salvation
by his own works. And it also is offensive to be
told that God chooses and not you. It's also offensive to say
that you have absolutely no control over your destiny. Absolutely
none. That God chooses who is the vessels
of honor and who are the vessels of dishonor. And so that becomes
an offensive thing. But to the child of grace, the
one who's been born again, that becomes a sweet song, a sweet
savor. The Bible says that it becomes
a savor of life unto life for those of us, and a savor of death
unto death to those who are perishing. People say, well, that gospel
just won't appeal to anybody. It won't appeal to the lost man.
It won't appeal to the man who's not been born again, but to the
child of grace, that is their food. Jesus preached that this
is my body, right? He said, you eat of my body and
you drink my blood. Eat my flesh and drink my blood.
What's he saying there? Does that mean that we should
be like the Catholics and believe that we need to eat the way from
believe that it turns into his flesh and drink the wine and
it turns into his blood when we drink it? Does that mean that
we are carnivores and start eating flesh and drinking blood to symbolize
now, what was Jesus saying? He said, this body which came
down out of heaven is given for you. This blood is the New Testament
of my blood. This is being given for you and
you feast upon that. What do we feast upon? We don't
feast upon other things, we feast upon the work of Christ on what
he has done. That's not the food of the child
of grace is not what we do, but what he has done. And so that's
why so many churches are filled with people who don't love the
gospel is because they want to hear what they do and not what
he has done. And the food for the sheep is
what he has done because the sheep The ones who've been born
from above know that there is nothing in me that dwelleth that's
any good. There's nothing that is right
about me. I am wretched. I am vile. I am
undone. I am an unprofitable servant.
There is nothing that is good about me in the flesh. And so I can't do anything. And
so our only hope is Christ Jesus. And so we look to him. Now, we
left off last week. got up to chapter 14 and again
we want to look through and see some of the teachings of Jesus
as it pertains to the doctrines of grace because there is this
great great question of whether or not Jesus even taught these
things and then among those who even believe the doctrines of
grace whether or not that that is the gospel that should be
understood or known that the gospel is something less than
that. That the doctrines of grace is what you come to after much
more learning. But Jesus here is teaching that
as a initial teaching. If you look at all these things,
Jesus didn't work up. He didn't preach about God's
love. And then he preached about God's kindness. And then he preached
about the Trinity. Or he preached about philanthropy or anything like
that. He didn't preach about all those
things leading up and then once they were there, then he... No,
he preached to the mixed multitude. He preached to those who were
not only his disciples that he knew were his, but he preached
to those that he knew would not believe on him. You know that
there's two reasons for preaching the gospel to everyone? You know, there are some people
that believe that you're only preach the gospel in here to those who
have professed to be Christians and then out there you don't
even preach the gospel. We don't believe that here. We preach
the gospel to anybody, to everyone. We don't know who the elect are.
Now the gospel is only for the elect in the aspect of who the recipient of that salvation
is gonna be. But there are two reasons for
the gospel to be preached. The gospel is to be preached
for the child of grace who's been born from above to tell
them the good news of their salvation and for their conversion, not
their being born again, but for their conversion. There's a difference
between the two. But it's also for the reprobate. The gospel
is preached to everyone because the gospel preached to the reprobate
is to be preached to them for condemnation. And so the reprobate hears the
gospel whenever it's preached, and it is a gospel that is a
gospel under condemnation. But for the child of grace, it
is a gospel under righteousness and salvation. But for the reprobate,
it's to condemn them in the fact that they have heard the gospel
and show forth the fruits of who they truly are. And so whenever
we preach the gospel, we preach these things knowing that it
is going to be a saver of life unto life, or a saver of death
unto death. And so we do that indiscriminately
to anybody that wants to hear it, who can hear it. We should
preach it everywhere to anybody. And so we come to verse 14, or
chapter 14, and we see that Jesus continues on, laced throughout
all of his teachings, teaching these things that are hard for
people to understand. to hear a gospel of, I can't
do this. See, the natural man hates the
gospel of, you can't do. They want to hear, well, tell
me what, remember just a few chapters back? What did the religious
people want to hear? Tell us what the works, what
are the works that we, that God wants us to do? Tell us the works
we are to do. That's what the religious person wants to hear.
But the sinner, the ones who God has saved, what do they want
to hear? Tell me what's been done for
me. Because they've been given to know their sinfulness. And
we, of course, we read about the Pharisee and then the sinner
that was praying together and which one was justified and which
one wasn't. All right, look at verse six,
if you would, with me. Well, I'll tell you what, we'll
back up to verse one and we'll read our way down to verse six.
Jesus is still teaching here to his disciples, and this is
after the Lord's Supper has taken place, after Judas has betrayed
Christ, or has left to go betray Christ. And he is still teaching
his disciples here. He says, let not your heart be
troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. And I'll
just stop there and make this known. You cannot believe in
the Father without believing in the Son. Because the Son is
the Father manifest, manifested. Jesus manifests the Father. What
do I mean by that? Jesus is the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. Jesus said, if you've seen me,
you've seen the Father. You wanna know what the Father
is like? Look at Jesus. Because Jesus is the embodiment
of the Invisible Father. You want to know what the Holy
Spirit is like? Jesus is the embodiment of the Holy Spirit.
He is the Holy Spirit in flesh. You want to know what the Word
is like? Jesus is the embodiment of the Word. He is the Word made
manifest. He is the embodiment of the Word. So the Father The Word, the Holy
Spirit, those three that bear witness in heaven. You want to
know anything about that Godhead? Look at Christ, because Christ
is that Godhead. He is God in the flesh. The Godhead
in the flesh. And he says, if you believe in
God, believe also in me. That doesn't mean attach me along
with God. because me and him are chums,
okay? Whenever he says, if you believe
in God, believe also in me. Why? Because I am God. I am God. You say, and remember, you gotta
remember the mindset of these people here. The Hebrews was
a people who believed in one God. They were not Trinitarian.
The Hebrews were not a Trinitarian group of people. In the Old Testament, they were
taught, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. And even to this
day, when you talk to Jews, they do not believe in a triune God. A triune Godhead, okay? They believe that God is one.
Now, I agree, I believe that God is one. And I believe that
there are three that bear record in heaven. The Father, the Word,
and the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost. There are three that bear
a record in heaven, and there is only one God. And that one
God is manifested in the Lord Jesus Christ, shown. He is God
in the flesh. Those three record bearers are
manifested as the man, Jesus Christ. So, when you believe
in God, you're believing in Jesus Christ, because he is God. A lot of times, and I know I'm
getting off track here, but I think sometimes we need to pause and
make clear some things. A lot of times we make more distinction
out of God than we should. Okay, we try to cut the Godhead
up too far. The Bible is overwhelmingly speaking
of a great unity in that Godhead. And to make them to be three
so distinct and, I mean, just separate things, I think goes
beyond what the scriptures do. The scriptures, for one, never
call them persons, like all the confessions of faith say. They
never call them persons, that there are three persons. There
are three record bearers, there are three witnesses, there are
three in heaven, but it doesn't say persons. God is a spirit. He isn't seen. There is not a
physical form except in one, which is Christ. And so I think
a lot of times we do damage to what the scriptures say by trying
to add too much to it to explain it. It's not that easy to explain. If you speak biblically, just
say what the Bible says and you'll be all right. But if you try
to keep up with the creeds and confessions that men have made
in trying to explain these things, then sometimes you get off. But
if we just say what the Bible says, then we're good to go.
Leave it where it's at. Don't go beyond, don't go less
than. But say what the Bible says. Okay, there are three that
bear record in heaven, and these three are one. But we find that
those three that are in heaven, the Godhead, what's called the
Godhead, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit is manifested
in the one man, Jesus Christ. He is that Godhead in flesh. All right, end of Psalm. If you
have a question about that, or you can talk about it if you
want to. Of course, we've preached about that in the past. It's
nothing new. I don't think y'all ever heard of that. It says,
in my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so,
I would have told him. By the way, the reason I took
that side note is because the Jews believed there was only
one God and Jesus was proclaiming to be God. They accused him of
blasphemy already in the passages we read before because he was
making himself out to be God, which the Jehovah's Witnesses
say that Jesus never anywhere in the Bible teaches that he
was God. There was a lot of places he taught that he was God and
that was what was understood by those who were listening that
he was saying. But Jesus is saying here, listen, you guys are saying
that you believe in that one God, Jehovah. And I'm here to tell you that
that Jehovah that you are saying that you believe on, if you believe
on Him, you better believe on me because I am that Jehovah.
I am Jehovah. I am God. It says, in my Father's
house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare
a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto Myself,
where I am, there ye also may be also. And whether I go, ye
know, and the way ye know. And Thomas saith unto Him, Lord,
we know not whether thou goest, and how can we know the way?
Jesus said unto him, I am the way. If you want to get to the Father
Jew, that one God that you're saying that you believe, if you
want to get to that, If you want to know the way to get to Him,
I'm the way. He says, I am the truth. If you
want to know the truth about that Jehovah, that one God that
you say you believe in, verse one, you know, you believe in
God. Well, if you believe in God,
then you better listen to what I'm saying about that God, because
I'm the truth of who God is. And I am the life. See, there is no life apart from
my life. The life you have is a natural
life. It is a mortal life. But the
life I give is a immortal life. The life I give is everlasting
life. My life is everlasting. It has
no beginning. It has no end. Those who are
my sheep have everlasting life. Have you ever thought of that? awesome thing to think about
is that we have everlasting life. When did everlasting life start? Well, there's some that says,
well, whenever you're born again, that's when your everlasting
life started. Well, then is it everlasting? If it's everlasting, it has no
beginning and no end. Now some will say, well no, everlasting
life means life continual. And the new translations of scripture
will do that age everlasting life. But the Bible uses those
two terms, these two terms interchangeably. It calls it everlasting life,
it also calls it eternal life. The Bible uses eternal also in
the place of the life that we have in Christ Jesus. And eternal,
does not have a beginning and does not have an end. Everlasting
means it lasts forever. It's ongoing. It continues on.
But it also means that it never had. If you received eternal
life, at whatever point there is eternal life beginning, which
is hard to understand, guess what? There's no end to it. So I said, well, wait a minute. I
thought, you mean we had eternal life before we were ever born
again? You absolutely did. Every child
of grace had life before they were ever born again. The Bible says that your life
is in Christ and that your life was hid with God in Christ for
the foundation of the world. And then that life that we had
in that vital union, that eternal vital union with Christ is imparted
to us in the new birth. He gives that life to us in the
new birth, but that life was already ours. We were in union
with Christ before the world ever began. Our names were written
in the book before the world began. We were His, given to
Christ, blessed with all spiritual blessings, in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus before the world began, saved and called with
a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
the purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before
the world began, but was made manifest now in the appearing
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality
to light Life and immortality was already given to us before
the foundation of the world in Christ Jesus, before wherever
a body was given to put it in. And so that life and that immortality
was brought to light through the, what did he say in Timothy? Through the gospel. See, the
gospel doesn't give us life. The gospel tells us about the
life that we already had in Christ before the foundation of the
world. That was our life. We talked about this a little
bit yesterday at the men's breakfast. Have you ever noticed in scripture
that the Bible calls us pilgrims? Strangers? Aliens? We're fixing to see here in a
minute. The Bible says that we're not of this world. How can that be? Have you ever
been somewhere outside of the world? No, but your life has,
if you're a born-again Christian. If you're a born-again child
of grace, that life that is in you now, the Bible says is a
new creation. It's not your old nature made
better. It's not your old nature born
again. Okay? It's not you revamped. That's why the term regeneration
is horrible. To talk about the new birth.
The Bible doesn't teach regeneration is the new birth. The Bible teaches
that the new birth is a quickening or being made alive. And the
Bible says that it is a new creation, created in Christ Jesus. The
creation that we have inside us, that new life, is a creation
that was created in Christ Jesus. It was a life that was created
in Him. It's in Him because He is life.
And Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the
life. If you don't come by Me, and
when He says come by Me, it doesn't mean you believing on Him. That
means you come by Me. You come by My work. You come
by what I've accomplished on your behalf. I am the way. The only way to get to the Father
is Me saving you. doing the substitutionary work
needed to bring you from justice to peace. From being condemned
to not being condemned. For God not imputing sin to you,
or excuse me, from God imputing sin to you to not imputing sin.
I am the only way that happens. And he has stood for us as an
eternal surety so that that would not happen. And so the only way
to the Father is by Him. He is the way. And He is the
truth about who the Father is and the command that the Father
gave Him was the command to come and do this. And He did it faithfully. And He is the life. He imparts
that life that He had, that glory that He had before with the Father.
He imparts that in us, in earthen vessels. And we have this treasure
in earthen vessels. I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. That's an exclusive statement
of Jesus Christ alone. Not Buddha. Not Hindu. Not Pope. Not anything else. He is the only way to the Father. And it's by His way. Not by any
other way. And we should preach the truth
about that way. If he had known me, you should
have known my father also. And from henceforth, you know
him and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord,
show us the father, and it sufficeth us. So Philip wanted to see the
father as opposed to seeing Jesus. Jesus said unto him, have I been
so long with you? And yet hast thou not known me,
Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen
the father. and how saith thou then, show
us the Father. Believest thou not that I am
in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak
unto you I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth
in me, he doeth the works. Now again, this right here goes
back to what we read last week. Remember, Jesus said, the doctrine
that I'm preaching to you is not my doctrine, but is the doctrine
that God giveth me. And so we said this doctrine,
this gospel that we're talking about, sovereign grace doctrine,
is not from man. It's not from Calvin. It's not
from Baptist. It's not from anybody. It's from
God. And whenever Christ gave this
doctrine to the church, it wasn't just the doctrine of Christ on
earth. It was the doctrine of heaven. It was the gospel of
heaven. And Jesus said, listen, everything
that I've spoken unto you, I speak to you because that was the command
of the Father for me to tell you, and I've told it to you. He says, look at verse 16, and
I will pray the Father and He shall give you another comforter
that He may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth, whom
the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth
him, but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be
in you. Okay, so here again we see that the Spirit of God is
the Spirit of truth, and it is something that the world cannot
receive. There is an inability for the
natural man to receive these things. Jesus is preaching the
doctrine of grace here. He says, I will not leave you
comfortless, I will come to you. Yet a little while in the world
seeth me no more, but ye see me, because I live, ye shall
live also. At that day ye shall know that
I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath
my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and
he loveth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love
him, and will manifest myself to him. All right, we're gonna
stop right there for a minute, and if you guys need to take
a break, use the restroom, get a drink, stretch your legs, touch
your toes, stretch your back. I see your chairs are horrible
after a while, I know. But anyway, take a