Blessing to be here. I look forward
to seeing what kind of skills Todd does have. We'll find out. I want to try to bring a message. Is this pulpit taller than it
used to be? I feel like my Bible's in my
face. That's better. You must not be
as tall as you are. Already tonight, two passages
of scripture have been read from God's word that has the word
only in it. Todd Rood read the passage from
Jude to the only wise God and Rich read from the Psalms, he
only is my rock and my salvation. I'd like to try to deal with
some other verses in the scriptures where the Lord uses that word
only. And most of them are very familiar
passages, so probably we won't have time to look them all up.
We'll just quote them and try to expound on them a bit and
hopefully the Lord will teach us something of what he considers
to be exclusive. That's what that word only means.
We've heard people say, never say never, and you get aggravated
when somebody tells you you never do something. You know it's an
exaggeration, but when God says never, it's not an exaggeration. The Lord said, I will never leave
you nor forsake you. It ain't never gonna happen.
When the Lord said charity or love, never faileth. I've loved
you with an everlasting love. There's nothing you're going
to be able to do to cause my love to change toward you. Never. And when God says only, he means
only. There's no exceptions, no exclusions. It is exclusive as the Lord has
declared it to be. And the onlys of God's word show
the simplicity of the gospel. In Matthew chapter six, the Lord
said, if the eye be single, then the whole body will be filled
with light. But if the eye be evil, and you
could look up that word evil, it means full of labor. That's
what it means. If the eye be evil, if you be
trying to earn favor with God by your works, then the whole
body is full of darkness. The single eye toward Christ,
the simplicity of the gospel, is seen in the onlys, where the
Lord expresses what he considers to be exclusive. In another place, the Apostle
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11, I fear, I fear, lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should
be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus. And
I just hope that this message will be as simple as the title.
The title of this message is Only. Only. And my heart's desire
is to preach the simplicity that is in Christ. Religion is so
complicated. It doesn't make sense. I was
sharing this morning that I was raised Roman Catholic and then
I dabbled in Eastern mysticism and then and then became a freewill
Southern Baptist and then a Reformed Baptist. And a brother came to
me and he said, you know, I was raised Roman Catholic. And he
said, I never could make sense of it. And I said, of course
you can't make sense of it. It doesn't make sense. You can't
make sense of something that doesn't make sense. It's nonsense,
and that's the way religion is. It says one thing, and then it
does something else. It says God is sovereign, but
he's dependent upon man to make a decision for him to be able
to save you. It says that God loves everybody,
but then he's going to send some of the people that he loves to
hell. Religion says that salvation
is by grace, and then they make it a matter of works. It's convoluted.
It's confusing. It's complicated. It doesn't
make sense at all. The gospel is so simple. It's
so clear. And the Lord has expressed it
clearly in the onlys of his word. And so I have five questions
to ask. And these questions are answered
with God saying only. The first simple question is,
who are we to worship? He only is my rock and my salvation. When Satan came to tempt the
Lord Jesus Christ in the wilderness, the Lord responded when he said,
if you'll bow down, I'll give you all these kingdoms. It wasn't
his to give, they already belonged to the Lord. But the Lord responded
by saying, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only,
him only shall thy serve. And then the Lord tells us in
Hebrews chapter two that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is
that only. When he says, At sundry times
and in divers manners, God spake to our fathers through the prophets,
but has in these last days spoken unto us by his son who is the
express image of his person, the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
We're to worship the Lord Jesus Christ only. We're to reject all other gods,
the one who has revealed himself in his word. We all come into
this world fashioning in our imagination a God that we think
exists, but it's just our own idolatry. We make him to be all
together as ourselves. When the Lord's pleased to make
himself known, then he gets all our worship. We can't talk about
the onlyness of the Lord Jesus Christ without thinking about
that experience that Peter, James, and John had on the Mount of
Transfiguration. When the Lord took them there
and God the Father spoke audibly from heaven, this is my beloved
son in whom I'm well pleased, hear ye him, and the veil of
our Lord's humanity was removed, was taken away, and the radiance
of his deity shined forth. The scripture says it was like
the noonday sun. Peter, James, and John were forced
to the ground and Moses and Elijah came and spoke with the Lord
concerning those things would be accomplished in his death.
And Peter wanted to build tabernacles for all three of them. And then
after they came up off the ground, remember what Peter said? Peter
looked around. and he saw no other man save
Jesus only. There was no need to build a
tabernacle for Moses, for the Lord Jesus Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. There's
no reason to build a tabernacle for Elijah, for the testimony
of Jesus is the fulfillment of all prophecy. And so we worship
the living God, the Lord Jesus Christ only. And then when our
Lord prayed in John chapter 17, you remember what he said? This
is life eternal. He didn't say this is eternal
life. It was, but I love the way the Holy Spirit directed,
well, the Lord spoke it, this is life. In him is life, and
his life is the light of men. In the natural realm, we think
of light being necessary for life, but in the spiritual realm,
the life of Christ is necessary for light. In him was life, and
his life was the light of men. And when he prayed, he said,
and this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. there's but one
true God. If we're not worshipping Him,
then we're worshipping an idol, Jesus only. Not looking to the
law, not looking to our imagination, not looking to the prophecies,
but bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ and worshipping Him only
as the sovereign creator and sustainer of all of life, the
immutable God. We can't ascribe that word immutability
to anything but the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else changes. Everything is in the process
of change. What does he say? I am the Lord and I change not. and therefore you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. I'm the one who has established
a covenant of grace in eternity past. I'm the one who has chosen
a particular people and laid down my life for them as the
lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Nothing's going
to change this. David even declared that when he came to the very
end of his life, his last words, his last words, although my house
be not so with God, yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things, and sure, this is all my salvation, this
is all my desire. trusting in this one who cannot
change, this one whose promises are sure, the one in whom the
Lord Jesus Christ is the yea and amen of all the promises
of God. He's the one that we worship. Now, the problem that we have
in worshiping this God is that we have sin. Isaiah said, your
sin has separated you from your God. And so we've got a sin problem
that's got to be fixed in order for us to be able to worship
our God. And so my second question is,
exactly how sinful are we? And God answers that question.
You're familiar with the passage, Genesis chapter six. When God
peered down from the portals of heaven, and looked into the
hearts of men. He saw that the wickedness of
man was great upon the earth, and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart were only evil, and that continually." And someone's thinking, well,
you know, I know I've had evil thoughts, but not all my thoughts
are evil. The only reason a person would
say that is if they're comparing themselves to themselves. God
says, all our thoughts are evil. Why? Because he has a different
standard. He has a different standard. His standard is absolute,
holy perfection. And he said, your thoughts are
not like my thoughts. The Lord Jesus Christ never had a thought
that wasn't perfectly holy. And every thought that we have,
well, I've shared this with you before, you know it, the best
definition on all the scriptures in my understanding of sin is
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So the only
question that you and I have to ask ourselves is what in my
life falls short of the glory of God? God says it's sin. everything, every thought that
we ever have. We cannot measure up to the standard
of righteousness and we can't see that until he is pleased
to reveal himself. When the Lord revealed himself
to Job, you remember his response, behold, Behold, I see something
about myself I never saw before. I had heard of thee by the hearing
of my ear, but now mine eyes have seen thee, and I abhorred
myself. But he said, Behold, I am vile. We read the book of Isaiah, the
first five chapters. Isaiah, as a prophet of God,
rightly so, is declaring the woes of God against the children
of Israel when he says, woe unto you, woe unto you. And then in
chapter six, I saw the Lord, I saw the Lord. He was high and
lifted up. His train filled the temple.
The seraphim hovered over the throne of God and they cried,
holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth
is filled with his glory. What's the first words out of
Job's mouth? What was me? I'm undone. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. I've
never been able to speak in a way that would be pleasing to God.
I've got to, I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. That's who Christ
came to save. This is a faithful saying and
worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. Man at his very best state is
altogether vanity. And David, you remember what
David said in Psalm 51? And the psalm begins by saying
that this was a psalm that David wrote after Nathan confronted
him because of his sin with Bathsheba and David in in repenting of
his sin says to God against thee and thee only have I sinned and
done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest be justified when
thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest. This sin is against
you. Sin by definition is an offense
against a holy God. I remember some years ago we
had some Japanese students stay with us in our home and They
had no religious background whatsoever. They were coming out of a completely
atheistic culture. And in trying to talk to them
about the Bible, we came to realize that they didn't have a word
in their language for sin. And I thought, well, that makes
sense. If there's no God, how can there
be sin? And then some years ago we took
our granddaughter whose name is Grace to Disney World and
took her down to Epcot and went to the Chinese pavilion and they
were translating the children's names into Chinese characters
and they couldn't come up with a word in the Chinese language
for Grace. Why not? There's no such thing
as Grace without God. Without God, oh, what glorious
hope we have in knowing that by grace we are saved through
faith, and that not of ourselves. It's a gift of God. He puts away
our sins by his free and sovereign grace in the accomplished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid the ransom price for his
people, putting away our sins once and for all by the sacrifice
of himself. What a glorious Savior. It's
how sinful we are. Paul said, in me, that is in
my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. No good thing. If the Lord's
ever pleased to make himself known, we can only come to one
conclusion. Lord, I'm a sinner. I need a
Savior. I need one to stand in my stead
before a holy God and present himself on my behalf. I need
a righteousness that's alien to me, one that's outside of
myself. I need Christ. Zachariah put it like this, he
said, when the spirit of grace and supplication is poured out
by God on the house of Israel and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
they will mourn after him whom they pierced, as one mourneth
after his only son. So this matter of being a sinner
isn't feeling, there's no way that you and I are capable of
feeling the full weight of our sin. We can't do it. The only thing we need to understand
about our sin is what it took God to put it away. We mourn
after him, the sin bearer, the one who satisfied God's justice
when he bore our sins in his body upon that tree and suffered
the full wrath of God's justice in order to put it away. What
hope we have in him. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only one that felt sorrow for sin in a way that satisfied God. He's the only one that felt the
shame and guilt of sin. You and I are not capable of
it. That's why in Isaiah chapter 53, the scripture says, God Almighty
saw the travail of his soul and was satisfied. If you have the
idea that, well, if I could just feel a little bit more sorry,
if I could just be a little more burdened, then I could really
repent of sin. You can't. He did. He drank the bitter dregs of
God's wrath, sheathing the sword of God's justice into his own
heart and suffered. in order to satisfy the Father. Sin's been put away. Every imagination of our heart
is only evil and that continually, but every sin has been put away
through the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary's cross. God satisfied
with him. The only question that you and
I have to ask is, are we satisfied with the one that God's satisfied
with? And then, fourthly, my question
is, what is my hope for righteousness? And this is a favorite passage
I know for your pastor. It comes from Psalm 71, verse
16. I will make mention of thy righteousness even of thine," what's the word? Only. Only. We all as an unclean
thing, all our righteousness, we all are as an unclean thing
and all our righteousness is as filthy rags before God. We have no righteousness. Now,
religion is all about man trying to establish his own righteousness
before God, ignorant of the righteousness of God. He goes about trying
to establish his own righteousness, not knowing that Christ is the
end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. But
man, man's gonna try to atone for his sins. He's gonna try
to make up for it. He's gonna try to do something.
And David said, I'll make mention of thy righteousness, even of
thine only. If I'm gonna have a righteousness
before God, It's going to have to be the righteousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ. I've got none outside of him. I was talking to a man the other
day. He, uh, professed himself to be agnostic. And spent the
whole day with him, fishing on a boat, actually. Nice guy, his
name was Mike, he's in his 70s. And started trying to talk to
him about the gospel. He said, I'm an agnostic. And he said, I decided many years
ago to adopt the golden rule as my rule of life. And I just
treat other people the way I want them to treat me, and it's worked
really well for me. And I told him, I said, well,
Mike, obviously, you're a very nice guy. And I've enjoyed being
with you today. Living by the golden rule is
not going to get you into heaven. Not going to satisfy the demands
of a holy God. But that's what the men have
a thought that they can somehow satisfy God's justice through
their own good works. It's not possible. I'll make
mention of thy righteousness even of thine only, only. Who can forgive sin? You remember
in Mark chapter 2 when our Lord went to Capernaum and he went
into someone's home. The scripture doesn't say exactly
whose house but I love the way the Bible says it was noised
in the city that he was in the house. Wouldn't that be a good
thing to happen for it to be noised in this city that the
Lord Jesus Christ is here in the house and for this place
to be packed so that no one else could get in? I'd love for that
to happen in our city. It happened in Capernaum. Four men brought their friend
who was sick of palsy and they could not get into the Lord. The place was so packed. And
so they went up on the roof of the house and they removed some
tiles and they lowered their friend down in front of the Lord
and the Lord saw their faith. And the Lord said, your faith,
I forgive you of your sins. And some of the men sitting there
were thinking, Only God can forgive sin. And the Lord Jesus Christ
said, knowing their thoughts, he said, what would it be easier
to say, thy sins are forgiven thee, or take up thy bed and
walk? But that thou might know that
the Son of Man has power to forgive sin, I say unto you, take up
your bed and walk. He's the only one that's got
power to forgive sin. The only one. You know why a
man would go to another man and confess his sins? He can't help
you. If I offend you, I can't go to
someone else to get your forgiveness. I've got to come to you. Sin
by nature is an offense against God, and the only one that can
forgive sin is the one who's been offended by it. Oh, but he does forgive sin,
doesn't he? He does forgive sin. And he also
says to his children, take up your bed and walk. I made you
whole. I put away your sin. What am I to do? What am I to do with the onlys
of God's word? Well, in Mark chapter 5, there
was a man, the scripture says, who was a leader of the synagogue
who had a 12-year-old little girl who was on her deathbed. His name was Jairus. And the
Lord was in town and Jairus went to Christ and pleaded with the
Lord to come to his home. My little girl, she's about to
die. Come. And the Lord agreed to
go with him. But on the way, God ordained
an interruption. And that's when the story of
the woman with the issue of blood takes place. And I can just imagine
Jairus, not really interested in this woman who's got an issue
of blood, is pulling on the Lord. We've got to get to my house.
My daughter is dying. And the Lord takes the time to
deal with that woman with the issue of blood. And when he's
finished, they begin back on their journey toward Jairus'
house. When a servant comes from Jairus's house and says to this
master, bother the Lord no more by the master, your daughter's
dead. Now I can just imagine. Jairus
is about to collapse in grief. That his daughter had died. And
what's the Lord do? He takes Jairus. before he's
able to collapse, gets in his face, takes his tender mercies,
looks into his eyes, says, Jairus, don't be afraid. Only believe. Don't be afraid. Only believe. Believe what? Believe me. Your
daughter's not dead. She's asleep. And when he got
to Jairus' house, the mourners were weeping and wailing over
the death of this little girl. And the Lord said, why weepest
thou? The damsel's not dead. She's
asleep. And what did they do? They laughed
him to scorn. They listened to what the Lord
Jesus Christ said, and they didn't believe him. They laughed at
him. Jairus believed him. And the scripture says that the
Lord caused all those people to leave the house and took Jairus
and his wife into the room where the little girl was lying on
the bed, put his hand on her, said, damsel, arise. And she
stood on her feet. Jairus believed the Lord Jesus
Christ. What God's calling on me and
you to do is believe him. Believe Him. Believe everything He says. And
when He makes you to be a believer, you can't not believe Him, can
you? You just can't not believe him. You're like those disciples
when the Lord said, will you lead me also? Lord, where should
we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. We know and
are sure that thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. You've
shut us up to your word. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing
comes by the word of God, by his own will. He begat he us
with the word of truth. We just believe everything he
says. We've got no place else to go. We believe when he says, if any
man come unto me, any man come unto me, I will in no wise cast
him out. All that the father gave us me
cometh unto me. We believe him when he says,
it is finished. The work of redemption is accomplished
through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's
cross. It's done. It's done. We believe
him when he says, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. We believe him when he says,
I've separated your sins from you as far as the East is from
the West, and I remember them no more. Every word. Every word. We believe him, don't we? We
can't not believe him. When the Lord came to Martha
at the death of her brother, Lazarus, and the Lord said, Martha
said, I know that my brother, but your brother's gonna rise
again. I know that he'll rise again in the resurrection. Martha,
I am the resurrection. He that believeth on me shall
never die. I'll never die. Believest thou this? Yea, Lord,
yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Lord, I'm just, you've made me
to be a believer. I can't do anything else but
believe you. Faith, faith is the substance
of things hoped for. At the very point of death, our
Lord said to Jairus, Don't be afraid, only believe. And that's what he does with
every one of us. When he makes us to be a sinner and causes
us to see our condition, our spiritual condition of death,
he said, don't be afraid, just believe. And through all the
circumstances of life, he keeps taking us in his hands, doesn't
he? And he says, don't be afraid, believe. Believe what? Believe
me. What Paul say, I know whom I
have believed and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that
which I've committed unto him against that day. I just believe
him. No place else to go. No place
else need to go. The Lord told that woman at the
well, if you drink of this water that I'm gonna give you, you'll
not have to go back, you'll not have to go anywhere else for
any more water. Why? I'm your bread of life. I'm the
water of life. Believe me. Believe me. When God says only, He means
only. No exceptions, no exclusions. It's only, only. Pastor. I am very happy that it's Christ
only because he's all I have. Thank you for that message. That
was a blessing. Such a blessing and what a blessing it is. To only have Christ. And if all
you have is Christ, that's the only way you're going to have
assurance. You have anything else you missed him. Let's pray. Lord, how we thank you that he is all we have and all we need
and all we want. Lord, our only desire is that
we might win Christ and be found in him, not having our own righteousness. Lord, we don't want to have anything
to do with that because we know we don't have any. We have his
righteousness only. Lord, he's the only object of
our faith. He's the only ground of our acceptance. He's the only one to please you.
And in him, we know that we're pleasing in you, in him. Lord, bless this message for
your glory and for our good. We give thanks for the gospel. Thank you for the fellowship
we have in the gospel. Lord, what a, what a blessing. What a blessing. In Christ's
blessed name we pray, amen.