Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 143 from your hardback hymnal,
143. And let's all stand together. Rejoice, the Lord is King, your
Lord and King adore. Rejoice, give thanks and sing,
and triumph evermore. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice, rejoice again,
I say rejoice. Jesus the Savior reigns, the
God of truth and love. When he had purged our stains,
he took his seat above. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice. His kingdom cannot fail. He rules over earth and heaven. The keys of death and hell are
to our Jesus' gift. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice. Rejoice in glorious hope. Our Lord the Judge shall come
and take his servants up to their eternal home. Lift up your heart Lift up your
voice, rejoice again, I say rejoice. Please be seated. Good morning. We're going to be in the first
chapter of the Gospel of John this morning, if you'd like to
turn with me there. in your Bibles, John chapter
one. Let's go to the Lord in prayer
and ask his blessings. Our merciful heavenly father,
thank you for bringing us here that we might join our voices
and our hearts together to rejoice. Lord, we know that in order to
worship, you must send your spirit and power. You must make us willing. You must open the eyes of our
understanding. You must cause us to look in
faith to Christ. Lord, we confess our complete
dependence upon thee this morning, that we might truly rejoice in
the Lord and delight in his accomplished work of redemption for the forgiveness
of our sin. Delight in his glorious person
seated at thy right hand as our advocate and intercessor. Delight,
Lord, that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray for your lost sheep
and ask Lord that you would be pleased to call them into your
fold and Lord that you would give, add to your church such
as should be saved. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. All right, you have your Bibles
open to the Gospel of John, and we'll begin reading at verse
19, verse 19. And this is the record of John. Now that word record is testimony. And we get from that word, our
word martyr. And we know that John's ministry
was very brief. He had one purpose and that was
to to point to Christ and to identify him as the Messiah. And when he had fulfilled that
purpose, the Lord took him home. But here we have his testimony,
the very thing that resulted in his martyrdom. Pray the Lord would give to each
of us the grace to be faithful, to testify to the same thing
that John testified to, even if it meant the losing of our
physical life. I believe that he would if it
came to that. So this is John's testimony. This is his record. This is his witness. That's really the word here,
is the word witness, from which we get our word martyr. When
the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who
art thou? That's the title of this message,
who art thou? John's got to respond by saying
it really doesn't matter who I am. You're not asking the right
question. It doesn't matter what you think
of me. What matters is what think ye
of Christ and who is he and what is it that he's accomplished.
That's the question that we must face. These Pharisees sent priests
and Levites from Jerusalem to find out who John was. And here's
John's answer, and he confessed and denied not, but confessed,
I'm not the Christ. No ambiguity, no confusion, no
double talk here. John answers in the negative
twice and confirms it. I am not the Christ. And they ask him then, art thou
Elias, Elijah? Elijah was translated And the
last promise, in other words, Elijah didn't experience physical
death. He was caught up into heaven
bodily and translated along the way.
He had to receive as will all of God's people who are here
when the Lord returns, we're going to be translated like Elijah
was. And in the process of that translation, we're going to have
to be given a new body. a resurrected body. And so the
promise, the very last promise that God gave in the book of
Malachi, Malachi chapter four, is that Elijah would return.
And that was a prophecy. Well, let's turn
there, turn back with me to the last book of the Old Testament,
the last chapter. Now, 400 years have passed between
Malachi and the coming of John the Baptist. God has not spoken. There's not been a prophet. There's
not been a word from God. These Pharisees in Jerusalem
had the revelation that God had given, particularly in the book
of Daniel, that the Messiah was coming and exactly when he would
come. You remember when the wise men
from the east came at the birth of Christ? Well, Daniel was in
the east. He was in Babylon when God gave
him that revelation as to exactly when, the 70 weeks that would
be fulfilled, exactly when Christ would come. And so those wise
men from the east had the prophecy of Daniel. And here we have some
Gentiles that were able to discern when the coming of the Messiah
would be. And the Pharisees in Jerusalem
who had the same testimony and the same revelation couldn't
figure it out. They had no interest in the Messiah,
is really the point here. But here's the last prophecy.
Look with me at verse 5 of Malachi chapter 4. Behold, I will send
you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Lord. It's a great day in that the
Lord Jesus accomplished the salvation of his church. His bride was
redeemed. When he bowed his head on Calvary's
cross and said, it is finished. Everything required for the salvation
of his people was accomplished. It's a great day of the Lord,
but it's a terrible day. It was a day of judgment. It
was a day of wrath. It was a day when the Lord Jesus
Christ bore the full punishment and weight of God's justice and
his wrath for the sins of his people. And so the Lord's saying,
before that great and terrible day comes, I'm going to send
Elijah and he's going to testify to me. The Jews expected a bodily Elijah
to return even as he had ascended into heaven. And when they asked
John that, they knew that that's what John, John knew that's what
they meant. And so he said, no, I'm not Elijah. Not in the sense that you think
I am. But the Lord Jesus confirmed that John the Baptist was Elijah. In the spiritual sense, he was
the fulfillment of this prophecy. And he, verse six, shall turn
the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the
children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with
a curse. You know, there is such a thing
as, what do we call it? Generational
differences. a generation gap. It exists,
you know. Our children and grandchildren
have interests in different things culturally than we might have.
They may use different words. They may dress differently. And
there are gaps between one generation and the next. There was between
my generation and my parents and that But you know what? When it comes to the gospel,
there's no generation gap, none whatsoever, none. The 13-year-old that the Lord
has revealed himself to and the 90-year-old that the Lord has
revealed himself to all rejoice in exactly the same thing. We
don't have to package the gospel in a certain way for the younger
generation than we do for the older generation. We declare
the same glorious truth about who Jesus is and about what he's
accomplished and every generation. The children's hearts are turned
to the father, the father's hearts are turned to the children. There's
absolutely no difference so that a parent can rejoice with their
children and with their grandchildren as brothers and sisters in Christ. What a glorious thing it is that
I don't have to try to figure out a relevant way to present the
gospel to one man over another. We declare what God has revealed
and the Spirit of God applies it effectually to the children,
the fathers, the old, the young, doesn't matter. What a bond we
have in Christ that no culture, no language, no time can mix and change in any way. So that was the promise that
the Lord gave. Elijah would come. And now John,
they're asking John, are you Elijah? Go back with me to our
text. And he answered, no, no, not
in the way in which you sense. Then said to him, who art thou
that we may give an answer to them that sent us? What sayest
thou of thyself? They didn't really have a need
for themselves, they were just trying to get an answer to give
to another man. And there are a lot of people
that will pursue religious things in order to be able to present
an argument to another person without any real need for themselves. Oh I pray the Lord would not
allow us to be that way. That he would create a need within
our own hearts so that we're not looking for just some response
to give to another man. We're coming asking for ourselves. Who art thou Lord? I need, I
need to be saved. He said, verse 22, I am the voice of one crying
in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. He said,
as the prophet Isaiah, Now John is quoting from Isaiah chapter
40 and we're going to go there in a moment and he's identifying
himself as the forerunner that God had promised all the way
back there in the days of Isaiah. Isaiah would have lived in the
7th century BC and the Lord gave prophecy then of a forerunner
that would come like Elijah. and John's identifying himself
with that prophet and we'll go look in Isaiah 40 in a moment
but I want to say some things about verse 24. And they which were
sent were of the Pharisees. Now what was John's ministry? It was the It was the baptism of repentance. And John was declaring to the
world that in order to receive Christ, the Lord must do a work
of grace in the heart called repentance. And these Pharisees saw no need
for that. If a person believes themselves
to be already saved, they don't see a need for repentance. They are proud and self-righteous,
They are already saved. They have a false hope. And so nothing to repent of. The Lord warned the disciples
to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. Now, I don't want
us to be guilty this morning of of pointing to other men and identifying them as unrepentant
Pharisees, when in fact, every single one of us come into this
world with one nature, and that's Pharisee. The word Pharisee means
separated one. Actually, the word saint means
separated one as well. The question is, who does the
separating? If we're a saint, God has separated
us unto himself. If we're a Pharisee, we've separated
ourselves. So we come into this world as
Pharisees and the Lord has to reveal to us and give us a spirit
of, we're going to talk about repentance in a moment now. He
has to give us a spirit of repentance. He has to change our minds. That's what the word repentance
means. He has to change our minds about how it is that God saves
sinners. Does he save them by their own
self-righteousness and by the establishing of their own righteousness?
By separating themselves? By living according to a certain
standard of the law? in order for them to have acceptance
with God? Is that how God saves? That's
what the Pharisee thinks. Now brethren, I can say this,
that the believers who have two natures know what I'm talking
about. If the Lord has revealed Christ to you and he's done a
work of grace in your heart causing you to believe, that you have
no righteousness outside of Christ and that you need the Lord Jesus
as all of your righteousness before God, you know that you
still have an old man. You know that when you would
do good, evil is ever present with you and that is your recovering
Pharisee. And so the children of God are the rest of their lives in this
world, recovering Pharisees. There is a self-righteousness,
there is a pride that lives within the flesh of
every child of God, which is the very reason why we need to
keep hearing the gospel. We need to keep, be reminded
that it's Christ and Christ alone, and it's all of him, lest we,
well, are deceived by the leaven of the Pharisees. Beware of the
leaven of the Pharisees. The Lord told the disciples that.
And then he went on to say, for a little leaven leavens the whole
lump. If you allow a little bit of
works, to enter in to your thoughts
about your salvation. That little leaven will leaven
the whole lump. In other words, if it is of grace,
it cannot be of works, otherwise grace is not grace. Either God
did it all, and he did it all by himself, or he won't do it
at all. And how we need to be reminded
of that. how easy it is for us to fall
into that pharisaical mindset and how dependent we are for
the Holy Spirit to continue doing a work of grace in our hearts. It's called the circumcision
of the heart. Now, many err in thinking that
New Testament water baptism is the equivalent to Old Testament
circumcision. John brought a whole, baptism
had never been practiced in the Old Testament, not in the way
John's doing it. This is a whole new sign. And
it's not the continuation of Old Testament circumcision. The
counterpart to Old Testament circumcision is the circumcision
of the heart. It's when the Spirit of God cuts
away from our hearts any hope that we might have for our salvation
being dependent upon a work of the flesh. The circumcision of
the heart, no one can be saved without it. This is what repentance
is. Repentance is the circumcision
of the heart. It's a change of mind about how
it is that God is pleased to save sinners. If circumcision
of the heart means that God cuts away all of my fleshly desires
and all of my fleshly interest in this world, I have no hope
that I've been born again. I have no hope that I have the
Holy Spirit or that I've experienced the circumcision of the heart.
But if the circumcision of the heart means that we are the true
circumcision, which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in
Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. I can find no confidence
in my flesh for my salvation. That's what John's preaching.
John's preaching baptism of repentance. When we practice baptism, what
are we saying? That when Christ died, I died. That when Christ was raised from
the dead, I was raised from the dead. Buried with Christ in baptism
and raised again to walk a new life in Christ Jesus. Yes, I'm
gonna need to continue hearing the gospel because there's a
pharisaical spirit in my flesh that I can't get rid of. And
he's ever present with me. But when I hear the gospel, and
what I know in my new man is true, is that I can have no confidence
in my flesh. The Spirit of God has done a
work of grace. He has given me repentance. He
has caused me to believe that Christ Jesus the Lord is the
only hope that I have. of standing in the presence of
a holy God, that I have no righteousness outside of Him, that I can't
go about trying to establish my own righteousness. I'm no
longer ignorant of the righteousness of God. I know that Christ Jesus
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And
Christ is all my righteousness. So that's what John's preaching,
and that's what these Pharisees weren't interested in. Why? Because
they already had a righteousness. A lot of folks get sick and tired of being sick
and tired. A lot of folks, because all men
are sinners, we fall into patterns of behavior that are self-destructive.
And I've seen it time and time, I've seen it in my own life.
I see it all the time, people get, people think they have an
interest in God. And they'll become religious
in order to clean up their life. But never experience a change
of heart. never have a work of grace done
giving them repentance, but rather believing that the work that
they've done to whitewash the tomb, the Lord called the Pharisees
whitewashed tombs. You know, you clean on the outside,
but the inside is full of dead man's bones. He called them hypocrites. Now we have the, this is that
pharisaical spirit. The Pharisees sent the priest
and the Levites to ask John, who are you? John said, it doesn't
matter who I am. It doesn't matter what you believe
about me. It matters who it is I'm pointing
to. It matters who is your righteousness? Who is your Lord? Who are you
trusting for the hope of your salvation? That's what matters.
And I'm just the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Oh,
we live in a wilderness land, a place where there is no water,
a place where there is no fruit. We are a wilderness left to ourselves. And how we need to to hear the
witness of John, the testimony of John. Who is Christ for us? That's the only thing that matters.
Lord, don't let me establish a righteousness based on what
I'm doing or not doing. You know, men become religious,
they quit doing things that they shouldn't have been doing to
start with. And you know, you hear people say, you know, come
to God, it'll clean up your life. Well, yeah, you know, I need
my life cleaned up anyway, so maybe that'll be a good way to
do it. And this gospel is a matter of the
heart. If the hearts change, the life will follow, but we
need to be looking at the heart. I'm for giving men a hand up,
not a hand out when it comes to government help, when it comes
to my help to someone. And really, when it comes to
someone helping me, help me out. But when it comes to my salvation,
I need a hand out. I don't need a hand up. I don't need God to depend upon
me to do my part in order for him to save me. I need for him
to do every bit of it all by himself. I need a hand up. I'm dead. I'm helpless. I'm hopeless.
I'm sinful. I need God to do it all. Don't count on me, Lord, to make
any contribution to my salvation. I can't do it. That's the message
John is preaching. I am the voice of one crying
in the wilderness, make straight. Make straight the way of the
Lord. Your way is crooked in that you've confused the simplicity
of the gospel with works. And this is who I am. This is who
John's identifying himself to be. So in order for them to be
able to understand what John's saying, they had to have some
understanding of Isaiah chapter 40. Let's turn there quickly.
Isaiah chapter 40. Verse one. Comfort ye. Comfort ye my people, saith your God. The gospel is called good news.
That's what the word gospel means, you know that. If my salvation is determined
or dependent in any way upon anything that God needs me to
do, in order for him to save me. It's not good news for me
and it's not comforting to me because I'm certain of this,
I didn't do it right and I didn't really mean it and I didn't do
enough of it and anything that I add to the equation is only
going to pollute it. If I I put my hand to the sacrifice. I polluted the sacrifice. I polluted
the altar. God said when you build an altar,
don't put your hand to it. And why? Because our hands are
dirty. Anything we touch, we infect
with our sin. Tricia and I walk this park not
far from our house and there's a guy sitting on a park bench
handing out gospel tracts. Good news, good news. And I tried
to engage him in conversation once and I'm never going to do
that again. He's not answering any questions.
But last night we passed him and he handed a tract to a lady
that took it. And he said, this is the gospel,
this is good news. I heard him say that to her.
And when I walked past her, I said, that is not the gospel and it's
not good news. What he just gave you is a lie.
And I just kept on walking. And there's no good news to it. I've listened to him. I've read
what he has to say. And he's saying that, you know,
after everything that God's done, here's what you need to do. That's
not comforting. That's not good news. That's
not the gospel. So when the Lord John's identifying
himself with this passage, speak comfort to them. Don't tell them
that there's works that they have to do in order to prove
their repentance, in order for them to be saved. Whatever work
God does for them, he will do in them first. He will do in
them first. They need a work done in the
heart. They need a baptism. They need to be buried with Christ. They need to be raised with Christ.
They need to have the life of Christ for their salvation. That's my comfort. And what I
know he did, he did perfectly. And I can't mess it up. It's
a perfect work. That's what John's preaching.
That's what the Pharisees had no need for. And that's what
my Pharisee and your Pharisee has no need for. Thank God that the new man has
a complete need for Christ and complete faith in him and
belief in him. Verse two. Speaking comfortably,
that word comfortably means from the heart to the heart. Anyone
speaking this message has to have first experienced it themselves. I hate listening to a preacher
who makes me feel like, you know, I've listened to men before,
men who claim to be gospel preachers, and I got the impression that
he was saying to me, if you were like me, you wouldn't have the
problems you have. I hate listening to that kind
of preaching. Preach to me as a sinner, sinners to sinners. I need a message that will comfort
me and I need it spoken comfortably to me. I need it spoken from
your heart to my heart. I need to believe that you've
experienced some of this yourself. Don't be talking down to me and
preaching at me. Preach to me and preach with
me. That's what the Lord's saying to his prophet. Speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem, the city of peace, where the peace of God resides
and gives men peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's the only way we're gonna have peace. And cry unto her. You know, this
is a passionate message. This is not, you know, well,
you know, what do you think about this? Or it seems to me. Or let's
debate this subject. Let's have a conversation about
it. No. No. Cry it unto me. Preach it unto me. Declare it
unto me. Don't give me any wiggle room.
Don't give me any arguments to make. Don't allow me to make
some, you know, to add my two cents worth to it. Just cry it
unto me and tell me that my warfare is accomplished. The gospel is
an accomplishment. The Lord Jesus Christ did not
die on the cross in order to make himself an offer to us to
be accepted or rejected. He made himself an offering for
the sins of his people, and he offered himself directly to his
father. And the father saw the travail
of his soul, and the father said, I'm satisfied. The warfare is
accomplished. Your conflict with death and
with sin has been accomplished. It's not something that is yet
to be finished. It is finished. You don't take
what God did and do your part in order to make it complete.
It is complete. It's finished. It's accomplished. And tell her that her iniquity
is, is. Now, as I said, Isaiah is speaking
from the seventh century BC, and he's using past tense language,
prophetically speaking of what Christ would accomplish at the
cross, but he can use it in the past tense because this work
that Christ accomplished at the cross actually goes back before
time. It goes back before time. Before
time ever was, the Lord Jesus Christ entered into a covenant
promise with his father. He became the surety of his church,
of his people. And he was the lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. It is pardoned. And what God
purposed in eternity past, Christ accomplished 2000 years ago.
He fulfilled in time. That's a comfort. Oh, that's
my comfort. Tell them their iniquity is pardoned. Tell her, look at verse one,
verse two, that she hath received of the Lord double for her sins. Now, what is the double that
we receive for our sins? Here it is. God made him who
knew no sin to be made sin for us. That's justice. The Lord Jesus Christ bore in
his body all the sins of all of his people and he put them
away once and for all by the sacrifice of himself and God's
law and justice was satisfied. God made him who knew no sin
to become sin for us. that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. That's the double blessing. Not
only did God put away my sin, but he gave to me a righteousness. You see, I was, you think about
it on a line. with a zero in the middle of
the negative numbers and positive numbers. I was way over here
at the end of the negative side. He didn't just move me to a zero.
He moved me all the way to the positive end of that line. He
gave me a righteousness outside of myself that makes me acceptable
to God. Tell her that. Tell her that. That'll be a comfort to her.
Does that comfort your soul? You see, John wasn't bringing
a new gospel. Look, look, here's the verse. We've only got to it. Verse three.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye
the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God. Here's the picture of the king
coming through the wilderness on his chariot of fire. And the men in front, the servants
in front are saying, get out of the way, get out of the way. Here comes the King, make straight
his way. Oh, if we're standing in the
road thinking that we're gonna make some contribution to our
salvation, it's what he's saying, get out of the way. You got nothing
to offer. The king's coming, take straight
his way. Your way is crooked. There is
a way that seems right unto a man. What is that way? It's the way
of works. It just seems right that we would earn favor with
God the same way we earn favor with one another. There's a way
that seems right unto man, but in the end, that way leads to
death. So John's saying, get out of the way. Make straight
for the King. Every valley shall be exalted. Those whom God humbles, causes
to believe that they have no righteousness whatsoever shall
be exalted, they shall be lifted up. And every mountain, the proud,
the self-righteous, the unbelieving, The one who thinks I've got something
I can do to offer God, the one who is building a tower, a Babel
to heaven, trying to achieve favor with God, it's going to
be made a valley. It's going to be humbled. Tell
them that. That'll be a comfort to them.
And the crooked place should be made straight and the rough
place, plain, simple. Simple, Christ is all. That's
the simplicity of the gospel. And the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed. He's gonna get all the credit.
He's gonna get all the glory. He's gonna get all the praise.
Don't you love it that way? You can't take any credit for
your salvation, though we. We try, we have those thoughts. Evil is ever present with us.
There's a recovering Pharisee in that old man and he's gotta
keep being put down. He's gotta keep being put to
death. Paul said, I die daily. Daily
I have to be put to death. Why? Because my old man rears
its head and I get thinking good about myself and proud. God has
to once again make that mountain a valley, cause me to find all
my hope in Christ. All flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. What God has spoken,
God has fulfilled. And the voice said, cry. And the prophet, whether it be
Isaiah, whether it be John the Baptist, or whether it be me,
or whether it be you, those who present the gospel. What shall I cry? Well, he's
already told them what to say, but what the prophet's saying
here is, Lord, where do I begin this message? Where do I begin
it? How do I get this message started? Tell them this, all flesh is
grass. And all the goodliness thereof
is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely
the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth. But the word of our God shall
stand forever. Tell them they're sinful. Tell
them they're nothing. Tell them they don't have anything.
They can't do anything and they don't really understand anything. Tell them that. It'll be a comfort
to them because that will cause them to stop having confidence
in their flesh, to stop looking to themselves for any hope of
their salvation or for their righteousness before God. Tell
them that. Let's take a break.