10 o'clock, so time to start. Let's open this morning's service
with hymn number 21, The Covenant, Ordered and Sure, from the Spiral
Gospel Hymn book, number 21. Let's all stand together, number
21. God the Father and the Son and
the Spirit be in one. In eternal ages past, Ada cometh
sure and fast. God my Father chose His own in
the person of His Son, and ordained that I should be one with Him
eternal. ? God the Son agreed to come ?
In the flesh to bring me home ? He would keep God's holy law
? And retrieve me from the fall Stood as my great surety, For
my price he offered blood To appraise the wrath of God. ? God the spirit heavenly dove
? ? Promised to come down in love ? ? Bringing life and peace
and grace ? ? To the chosen purchased race ? ? He seeks the lost, heals
the lame ? ? And he brings us to the Lamb ? ? By his mighty
sovereign call ? ? God's elect are gathered all ? ? This poor
sinner is secure ? ? For God's covenant will endure ? It is
sealed by God's own word, by his spirit and his blood. Blessed, holy, covenant God,
I am yours by ties of blood. Ties of grace and ties of love
hold me to my God above. Please be seated. Good morning. We're going to
be in John chapter 1 this first hour, the first chapter of the
Gospel of John. I am so thankful and excited,
looking forward to our pilgrimage through this gospel. It is such a glorious portion
of God's word, very thankful for it. I'm thankful we can sing that
hymn we just sang with some understanding, God's covenant grace, And I'm
reminded every time we sing that hymn of what David said in his
last words when he said, although my house, speaking of his own
tabernacle of his flesh, his own family, everything about
him, he said, although my house be not so with God, it's not
as it ought to be, yet here's my hope. He has made with me
an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure And then
David went on to say, this is all of my salvation and all of
my desire. Pray the Lord would make it so
for us this morning that our hope of salvation would
be based on his faithfulness to keep his covenant promises. For surely like David, we can
find no comfort or hope in our faithfulness. Let's ask the Lord's
blessings. Our merciful heavenly Father,
thank you. Thank you for establishing and
fulfilling that eternal covenant of grace, your purpose in glorifying
yourself through the salvation of your people. Lord, we pray
that you would enable us this hour to rest more surely, more
comfortably in the glorious person and accomplished work of our
Redeemer, thy dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ. who himself fulfilled
all the requirements of that covenant. Lord, might we be blessed
by your spirit in such a way as to find in ourselves no hope
and find in Christ all our salvation. Thank you for your word. Open
it to our hearts. Open our hearts to thee. open
the windows of heaven and come down. Lord, we ask it in Christ's
name and for his sake. Amen. I've titled this message, Who
Found Whom? Who Found Whom? And our text can be found in
John chapter one, when Andrew goes to his brother Simon in
verse 41 and says to him, we have found the Messiah which
is being interpreted the Christ. Simon just came to see who the
Lord Jesus is and he says, we have found the Messiah. Who really
found whom in that encounter? And then if you look down in
verse 45, and Philip findeth Nathanael and said unto him,
we have found him, we have found him, of whom Moses in the law
and the prophets did write Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
Well, again, who found whom? You remember from last Sunday,
the question that the Lord asked Andrew in verse 38, what seek
ye? What seek ye, Andrew? And then Andrew responds to his brother
and Nathanael of Philip with, we found what we were seeking. We found what we were seeking.
Well, did you really? The scripture tells us that there
is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. Does the natural man have the
ability to seek and find God? Or is he experiencing a work
of grace performed by the Lord in seeking and finding him. The Lord said, I know my sheep.
I seek them. And he knows where they are and
he brings them in faith to himself. So who finds who in salvation? Now, God's elect are allowed
to seek a lot of things in their pursuit for God in this world. The Lord will allow us to try to find our hope and our
comfort in the law. and in legal religion. He will allow us to try to find
the hope and comfort that we seek in worldly wisdom and pleasure
and prosperity. He will allow us to go on in
this pursuit. And then the Lord will do for
us what he did for Saul of Tarsus in that he will say to us, that's
enough. That's enough, stop. You're looking
in all the wrong places. I've allowed you to pursue all
of these vain pursuits in order to show you my glory. and who it is and what it is
that you really need. Paul was pursuing God in works
religion, he testifies of that. He speaks of all of his progress
and all of his achievements in pursuing the law, in thinking
that he's establishing for himself a righteousness. But he was the
one who wrote Romans chapter 10 when he said, though they
have a zeal for God, and he knew by experience what that meant,
to have a zeal for God, yet without knowledge. for they going about
to establish their own righteousness are ignorant of the righteousness
of God for Christ is the end of law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth. And so Paul again says, when it pleased
God, when it pleased God in God's time, he ended my pursuit. He put an end to all of my vain
attempts to provide for myself what I thought I was seeking.
And he said, when it pleased God, the God who separated me
from my mother's womb, the God who created me, when it pleased
him, he revealed Christ in me. He was pursuing me from the covenant
of grace that we just sang about from the very beginning of time.
When he wrote my name in the Lamb's Book of Life, God has
been in pursuit of me. And in his perfect time, in the
fullness of his time, He stopped me in my vain pursuits and he
knocked me off of my high horse and stopped me in my self-destructive
attempts to establish for myself a righteousness. And yes, I found him. I found him only because he found
me. He found me. If finding God is up to us, we
will be left without God. We will be ignorant
of him. And another example of a man
who was seeking God would be Solomon. Solomon, when he writes
in the book of Ecclesiastes, he confesses that he had pursued
all of these things. He mentions wine, he mentions
women, he mentions wealth, and Solomon had those beyond measure. And the conclusion that he came
to was vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And so then he goes
on to say, I have given myself to seek wisdom or the wisdom
of the things under heaven. So now he can't find it in these
and these other things, so he thought, well, maybe knowledge,
maybe wisdom, maybe understanding of the things under heaven will
be what I'm really looking for. And he says, behold, even this
is vanity and vexation of soul. So in his pursuit of the wisdom
that is under heaven, he finds no satisfaction. The wisdom of God has to come
from heaven. And a man can receive nothing
except to be given to him from above. And so, we found him. Yeah. We found him because he found
us. And If he doesn't seek us, we
will, like the prodigal, waste all that we have in riotous living. We will fill our bellies with
the husk that the swine do eat, and we will be as content as
a pig in its wallow if the Lord doesn't put us in our right mind
and cause us to come home to our father. Like a lost sheep, we will wander
aimlessly in the wilderness, pray to every wild beast. If the Lord doesn't leave the
99 and come out and gather us to himself and bring us into
his fold. We found him. Well, who? Really found whom? Like Mephibosheth, we will hide
out, oh crippled Mephibosheth, we will hide out in Lodabar,
a land where there is no bread, until the king sends Ziba, the
king of heaven sends his Holy Spirit to fetch us and bring
us to the king's table that we might eat of his bread all the
days of our lives. We are in need always of the
Lord pursuing us. And we only pursue him in response
to him first pursuing us. Like the woman with the issue
of blood, we will spend all that we have on physicians and we
will be left bankrupt unless the Lord puts it in our hearts
to touch the hem of his garment. And unless virtue goes from him
to us, we'll not be able to tell him all the truth as she did.
How dependent we are. No, Andrew didn't find the Messiah. The Messiah found him. Nathaniel
didn't find the Christ. The Christ found him. And so it is with you and me. Unless the Lord needs be, go through Samaria, we will be
like that woman at the well pursuing her purpose in life through relationships
and left lonely at a well that cannot satisfy our thirst in
the middle of the heat of the day unless the Lord pursues us. I must needs go through Samaria. I have some lost sheep there
and I I'm going to seek them out and I'm going to make myself
known to them. Oh, what a blessing. What grace
that the Lord would not leave us to ourselves. Except the master call us, we
will spend our entire lives like blind Bartimaeus begging for
crumbs and living in darkness unless someone say to us, be
of good cheer, the master calleth thee. Now, all of that having been
said, the scriptures clearly command us to seek God. Turn with me to the book of Deuteronomy. Chapter four. Deuteronomy chapter
four. Look with me at verse 27. And
the Lord shall scatter you among the nations And you shall be
left few in number among the heathen, whether the Lord shall
lead you. And there you shall serve gods. The work of men's hands, wood
and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. Is
that not us? But if from thence Thou shalt
seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him if thou shalt seek with
all thine heart and with all thy soul. So which is it preacher? Are
we dependent upon the Lord to seek us or are we commanded to
seek him? Well, we compare scripture to
scripture, don't we? And we know that both are true. Both are true. Say, well, that doesn't, that
doesn't make sense to me. Well, I hope in a moment it will. Psalm 105 verse four, seek the
Lord and His strength. Seek His face forevermore. There's a command from God. The
Lord Jesus Christ said, seek and you shall find. For he that
seeketh, findeth. So clearly the Lord has given
us a command to seek him. The Lord Jesus said, take no
thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink,
or with us shall we be closed? For after all these things do
the Gentiles seek. Your heavenly Father knows what
you have need of, but ye seek first the kingdom of God, and
his righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto
you. So the Lord's commanding us to
seek him. David said, when thou saidest
unto me, seeking my face, my heart said, Lord, thy face will
I seek. Now there's the issue. God commands us to seek him.
But if the Lord and all men everywhere, all men everywhere, are responsible
to seek him. But if the Lord doesn't give
us a heart to seek him, we'll never seek him. Here's the truth of scripture
and here's where I hope these two things will come together
for us. Very simple truth. What God requires and what God
commands, God must provide. So, We know that the heart has
been changed when we hear the commands of God to seek him. And our response is, Lord, give
me a heart to seek thee. Lord, turn me and I shall be
turned. Lord, call me and I'll come. Lord, I'm dependent upon thee.
It's just like faith. believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. But how shall they call upon
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved? How shall they
call upon him in whom they've not believed? And how shall they
believe on him in whom they've not heard? And how shall they
hear? Except God send the preacher. So Lord, you have to, faith is
a gift of God. Faith is not a decision. Faith
is not a commitment on our part. Faith is a work of grace in the
heart. So yes, when the Lord says to
believe, the heart that hears that command responds by saying,
Lord, I'm dependent upon you to give me the faith. You must
provide what you command and require. I don't have it in myself. Same thing with repentance. Repentance
is a work of grace, a changed mind about who God is, a changed
mind about who we are, a changed mind about how it is that God
is pleased to save sinners. That's not what we think naturally.
The Lord has to do that. And so the Lord says for us to
repent and yet we are depended upon him for that mercy. Righteousness. Accept your righteousness,
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you
shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven. Now the scribes and
the Pharisees had an impeccable outward righteousness of religious
works and behavior that no man, Paul was a was the premier example
of that when Paul said, concerning the law, I was blameless. No
one could find any charge in looking at my life and accuse
me of being a lawbreaker. But when the commandment came,
when the spirit of God brought the law of God to my heart, then
sin revived and I died. So when the Lord said your righteousness
must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees,
he's not talking about the outward life that other men see. He's
talking about a righteousness in the heart. And Paul said,
oh that I might be found in him, in Christ. not having my own
righteousness which is of the law, but that righteousness which
is by the faith of Jesus Christ. I need a righteousness that's
perfectly righteous in the sight of God. I need a righteousness outside
of myself. I need a Savior that's able to
stand in my stead before God and present himself on my behalf
for all of my righteousness before God. Yes, the Lord calls on me
to have a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of
the scribes and the Pharisees. And what God requires, God must
provide. God must provide. You see, Brethren,
the Lord uses his commands to cause us to see our need for
him to fulfill that requirement. You see, the self-righteous will
hear the commands of God and they will say what the children
of Israel said at Mount Sinai. When Moses came down from the
mountain with the law and he read the law to the people of
God, what did they say? We will do it. We will do it. We'll obey God. And Moses said,
you can't keep God's law. And immediately he made a sacrifice. He shed blood in order to satisfy
the requirements of God's holy law. There we have it. We need Christ. We need his shed
blood. We need his faithfulness. We
need his righteousness. We need him for all of our acceptance
before God. And the hope that we have is
that we are accepted in the beloved. What seek ye? What seek ye? Lord, don't leave me to myself.
to seek the vain pursuits of the world or of a false gospel
and a false God, Lord, you're gonna have to seek me and put
it in my heart to seek thee. Now in the Bible, names have
meaning and Simeon, You see that in our text in verse 40, and
one of they which heard John speak and followed him was Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother, and he first findeth his own brother
Simon. Simon. It's the Greek translation
of the Hebrew Simeon. And Simeon, you remember Jacob's
wife Leah and Rachel, He had gotten from Laban and he loved
Rachel. But the Lord gave Leah children
and Leah thought that her bearing children was going to somehow
earn the favor of Jacob towards her. She knew that her husband
loved Rachel, her sister, and didn't love her. And so when
she gave birth to her second child, she called him Simeon.
And she called him that because she said, for the Lord has heard
me in my distress. The name Simeon translated means
to hear, to hear. Now, Solomon puts it like this in
Ecclesiastes chapter 1 at verse 8, he says, He says the eye,
the ear is never satisfied with hearing and the eye is never
satisfied with seeing. He's talking about the physical
eye and the physical ear, we're always looking for something
new. We're always, we're never, We're never satisfied with our
experiences. We want new experiences. We wanna
hear a new song. We wanna see something new, something
different. That's the physical eye. But
then the scripture says, the seeing eye and the hearing ear,
both are from the Lord. And I used to talk about the
spiritual eye and the spiritual ear. If we're to see Christ as
the Messiah, as the Christ, we're dependent upon the Lord to give
us eyes to see. If we're to hear the voice of
God, In the book of Revelation, we
read this. After every one of the Lord's
speaking to all the seven churches, he concludes that revelation
by saying, let him who have ears to hear, hear what the Spirit
saith unto the churches. See, the Lord has to seek us.
He has to give us a spiritual ear. Otherwise, we'll not hear. We'll not hear. And this is not
a one-time experience, is it? We come together for worship.
We go to God's word. When we come before him in prayer,
Lord, unstop my ears. Lord, there are so many voices. There's so many things that I
would be turned to and look to. Lord, if I'm gonna hear you,
you're gonna have to give me hearing ears. If I'm gonna see
you, Lord, if I'm gonna seek you, you're gonna seek me. What
God requires, God must provide. And so Simon's name translated
means to hear, to hear. One of the verses that every
Jew would have memorized from the earliest part of his life
is Deuteronomy chapter six, verse five. Let's look at it. I think
it's verse four, Deuteronomy six. They called this verse the Shema
because the word Shema comes from the same word Simeon comes
from. and translated it means here,
here. And every Jew, every Israelite
would have known this verse of scripture in Deuteronomy chapter
six, verse four. Here, O Israel, the
Lord our God is one Lord, And thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all
thy might. These words which I command thee this day shall
be in thine heart." Again, the Lord is commanding his people
to hear, knowing that they can't hear unless the Spirit gives
them ears to hear. God speaks audibly from heaven.
This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him. God's commanded
us to hear. Oh, here's the message, brethren.
We, like Andrew and like Philip, might be tempted to think we
found something. But the truth is that he found
us and we are continually dependent upon him to find us. Lord, pursue
me. Lord, give me ears to hear. Lord,
increase my faith. Lord, give me a spirit of repentance. Lord, all the things that you
command. Lord, give me seeing eyes. All the things that you command
me to do in your word, I am dependent upon you for. Then, I love this verse of scripture. Then drew they unto him. to hear him, the publicans and
the sinners. The publicans and the sinners.
What did the self-righteous Pharisees say? What did they say? Are you saying
that we can't hear? Are you saying that we don't
understand? Are you saying that we don't see? We got this worked out. We've got the ability to understand
things. And what did the Lord say to
them? He had just talked about Him
being the light of the world. And they got it. They realized
that He was accusing them of being blind. And He said to them,
they said to Him, are you saying that we're blind? And what did
the Lord say to them? If you were blind, then you could
see. But because you say that you
can see, therefore your sins remain. Now there it is, brethren. The publicans and the sinners,
they come before the Lord, Lord, I'm blind. Lord, I can't see. I don't know anything. I can't
do anything. I don't have anything. The Lord says if you're blind,
then you could see. The blind are the ones who see.
The lame are the ones who walk. The dead are the ones who are
raised to life. Lord, I don't have any of this
in myself. Lord, what you command of me,
what you command of me, You must provide. In Exodus chapter 20, the Lord
gives us the moral law, the 10 commandments. And then in chapter
21, he interprets the moral law into the civil law. So here's
how the moral law is to be lived out in your relationships with
one another. And the very first thing he deals
with is slavery in Exodus chapter 21. He's not talking about a
slave brought in from outside of Israel, he's talking about
an Israelite who gets himself in trouble financially And the
only way out of that trouble is to indenture himself as a
slave or a servant to the one that he owes this money to. And the Lord in giving the children
of Israel the civil law at the very beginning, he deals with
this issue. And he says that that indentured
servant can only serve for six years. And after six years, he
must be set free. Whatever the debt was, the longest
that debt could be paid would be six years. But at the end
of the six years, if that servant says, I love my master, I love
my wife, I love my children, I don't want to be set free. Then the master is to take that
indentured servant to the doorpost of the house and take his earlobe
and drive an awl through the earlobe into the doorpost as
a symbol that that servant is now tuned his ears to the voice
of the master for the rest of his life. Now, that's every believer's
experience. When we're in Christ, we love
him. And we love his people. We love
his wife. We love his children. And we
don't want to go anywhere else. And we don't want to hear any
other voices. We want to. And he nails us to the door and
marks us. And we're always saying, Lord,
make me like Simeon. Simeon heard what Andrew said,
Simon, I'm sorry. Simeon was Old Testament name,
Simon. Cephas, by the way, he's called Cephas in this passage
too. You see that? Look at verse 42. And he brought
him to Jesus. Andrew brought his brother Simon
to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he
said, thou art Simon, the son of Jonah. And thou shalt be called
Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone. Now Cephas is the Aramaic
version of Peter. Peter being how we normally refer
now to Simon and Cephas, we typically call him Peter. And Peter, had his ear nailed to the door. And he's a lifelong servant now. Why? Because he heard, he heard. How do I know if I've heard the
voice of God? I just wanna hear more from him. I don't wanna hear other voices.
I wanna hear what God says. His voice and His word and His
truth is my life. Lord, to whom shall we go? To
whom shall 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. That's what Peter
said later. When the Lord said to Peter,
will you lead me also? Peter said, to whom shall we
go? My ear's been bore through with it all. Now the perfect
fulfillment of that picture in Exodus chapter 21 is the Lord
Jesus, who says to his father, after having served his father
perfectly to fulfill and satisfy the debt that was owed, he served
six years. And at the end of that six years,
He said to his master, his heavenly father, you gave me a wife. You gave me children. I love
you. I love my wife. I love my children. I will not go free. I will go
to the cross because of the word that we have spoken in the covenant
of grace before time ever was. I'm going to go to the cross
and I'm going to fulfill the Word of God by being bore through,
not just in the lobe of the ear, that's symbolic, but in the hands
and in the feet and in the head and in the side where he was
wounded for our transgressions. He bore our sins in his body
upon that tree in order to fulfill the requirements of God's perfect
law. Here's what we see a picture
of in this text. We found him. Well, who found
whom? He found us, didn't he? Are we still prone to wander? Prone to leave the God we love?
Are we still tempted to look somewhere other than Christ?
Are we still prone to listen to other voices? Yes. All the
more reason why we have to be reminded. Lord, send your spirit. Give me ears to hear. Give me
eyes to see. Give me faith to believe. Give
me a spirit of repentance. Lord, turn me and cause me to
come. Or I can't find you unless you find me. All right, let's take a break.