Good morning again. Next Sunday, we have a special
treat. Dan Culver is going to be here. That's Jessica Clark,
who's here with her husband Brad. Brad is Adam's brother, and Jessica
is Lauren's sister. Right? Did I get all that right?
All right. So Lauren and Jessica's dad is
going to preach for us one of the messages next Sunday. So
we look forward to that. Brad pastors the church in Ohio
where Charles Pennington used to pastor. You all remember him. Dan. What did I say, Brad? Dan.
Sorry. Sorry. Look at the bulletin you have
there. the hymn on the back of your
bulletin. I just am very encouraged. Bert told me he was going to
be reading scripture from John chapter 1 this morning. And along with this hymn, we
didn't coordinate any of this, but I prepared a message on the
deity of Christ this hour. And the hymn reads, did God become
a man, put on our mortal frame, Are Jesus born in Bethlehem and
God one and the same? Yeah. Yeah. We're here to worship
God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. May God be pleased
to send his spirit enabling us to do just that. So let's stand
together. Tom's going to come and lead
us in the hymn in the book. Back you both. Did God become a man, put on
our mortal frame? Are Jesus born in Bethlehem,
and God one and the same? My soul is mystified. I cannot comprehend. Such thoughts, alas, are much
too high for mortal thoughts and minds. But it is solemn truth
that God in flesh has come, and by His Spirit God has shown that
Jesus is that one His messengers have seen. His name is preached
abroad, And many in this impersed world have owned Christ as their
God. Jesus we cannot know, nor can
we fully see, how you possess created flesh and yet our deity. But in that sacred bond, God's
wisdom is displayed. He who could never die has died,
and thus our ransom paid. Please be seated. would you turn your Bibles to
Book of John chapter 1. And good morning. I've heard our pastor say many
times that As in Genesis 1, if the Lord would give us faith
to believe in the beginning God, or what we're about to read,
we would know something about the gospel. And I pray He would
do that this morning. He would send God the Holy Spirit
to you. Because often when we read these verses, we just kind
of, you know, they're so familiar to us, but this is a wow. So let's read. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And another part of scripture
says, and for these three bear witness in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and all these three are one. The same was in the beginning
with God. All things were made by Him,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And without Him was not anything
made that was made, In him was life, and the life was the light
of men. And the light shineth in darkness. Oh, and the darkness comprehended
it not. When we came into this world,
brethren, we could not see him. We could not hear him. We did
not know him. We were not interested in him.
We couldn't see ourselves. We couldn't hear what we were
saying. But when he came, he shed light. And there was a man
sent from God whose name was John. the forerunner. The same came for a witness to
bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, John,
but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true
light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He
was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world
knew him not. He came unto his own, and his
own received him not. Speaking of his old countrymen,
Israel. But, verse 12, as many as received him, to them gave
he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe
on his name. Does that mean if I receive and
that I didn't know? Read on, verse 13, which were
born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God. That's so clear to me. There's
no such thing as free will. In verse 14, and the word was
made flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, and dwelt among us. And we beheld
his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth. Pray this morning that he would
enable us just to see a glimpse of his glory. Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for your
word, the written word, but more importantly, the living word,
for we know that in him and through him, are you satisfied and pleased
And so we ask, Lord, that in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
you would once again come and enable us to meet with you, to
praise you, to worship you. Lord, that you would capture
our minds and our hearts once again this very hour and just
gaze and look and rest and lift them up. Lord, we're in need
of your Holy Spirit now to do so. Bless your word to our hearts.
And again, the message, the difficult message, Lord, that you have
placed on our brother. I ask, Lord, that you would give
him liberty and strength and power, which only can come from
you. Lord, we come into this world in darkness, blind, but
we confess you are able and ask that you would now enable us
to see you. to hear you and to believe that
thou art the Son of God. Lord, forgive us of our sins,
our unbelief. Bless us now with thy presence,
for we ask it in Christ's name, amen. Let's all stand together once
more. We'll sing hymn number 17 in your hardback hymnal, number
17. Come thou fount of every blessing,
turn my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon
it, mount of thy redeeming love. Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither
by thy help I'm come, and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to
arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God. He, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood. O to grace, how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy murder, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel
it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh, take and
seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. Please be seated. Bri Weishi
is going to come and bring special music now. Be still, my soul, the Lord is
on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief
or pain. Leave to thy God To order and
provide In every change Be faithful, will remain Be still, my soul
Thy best, thy heavenly friend Through thorny ways leads to
a joyful end. Be still, my soul, thy God doth
undertake to guide the future as he has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence, let
nothing shake. All now mysterious shall be bright
at last. Be still, my soul. The waves and winds still know. His voice will rule them while
He dwells below. Be still, my soul, the hour is
hastening on, when we shall be forever with the Lord. ? When disappointment, grief,
and fear are gone ? ? Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored
? ? Be still, my soul, when change and tears are past ? All safe
and blessed we shall meet at last. Thank you, Brie. It's our hope
this morning, isn't it? The Lord will still our souls
and enable us to leave this place this morning with hope, comfort,
and rest. Referring back to the message
of the first hour, I was thinking about that verse in Hebrews chapter
4 where the Lord says, labor to enter into His rest. Everything else we do is easier
to do than to enter into His rest. Because everything else
we do we are able to do in the power of our own flesh, but entering
into his rest is a work of the Spirit. If the Lord doesn't send
his Spirit in power and cause us to rest in Christ, we'll remain
disquieted all our lives and without hope in our death. Will you open your Bibles with
me to Mark Chapter 14, please? Mark Chapter 14. Paul, in describing the task
of preaching, said rhetorically, who is sufficient for these things?
No one is. We're dealing with a subject
that is far beyond our understanding. And yet, what understanding we
do have comes as a result of faith. As I said in the article
that's in your bulletin this morning, most folks would think
that you really can't believe something that you don't understand.
But the truth is they just have it backwards. Man's always trying
to hold God in judgment. We believe, therefore we understand. What understanding we have is
very limited, particularly when it comes to the nature of God.
the attributes of God, the character of God. We have words that we
use to try to describe them, and we have scripture that declares
them, but fully understanding them, even partially understanding
them, oh, but if God would give us grace to just believe that
the Lord Jesus Christ truly is God, truly is God. You have your Bibles open to
Mark chapter 14. It is the one charge that they
made against the Lord Jesus Christ that stuck. It was the charge
of blasphemy. We judge you not for your works,
they said, but that thou being a man, make us thyself out to
be God. Now, had the Lord Jesus Christ
intended to not be God, or if he wasn't God, he would have
clarified quickly their misunderstanding. Oh, no, that's not what I meant,
but he didn't. He went to the cross with the
charge of deity, king of the Jews. Mark chapter 14, beginning in
verse 55, and the chief priest And all the council sought for
witness against Jesus to put him to death and found none.
For many bare witness against him, but their witness agreed
not together. They brought in all these false
accusers, but they couldn't find two men to agree on the accusations. And there arose certain and bare
false witness against him saying, we heard him say, I will destroy
this temple that is made with hands, and within three days
I will build Another made without hands but neither so did their
witness agree together. In other words, another witness
would say, well, that's not exactly what he said, this is what he
said. And what he meant was the tabernacle of his flesh, you
destroyed this temple. That physical temple built with
hands was just a physical representation of the spiritual temple of God. in the body of the Lord Jesus
Christ. You destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise
it again." And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked
Jesus saying, they couldn't, they're frustrated. You can just
see these high priests and councils, they're frustrated because they
can't get a charge to stick on the Lord Jesus Christ. And so
he asked Jesus saying, answer is thou nothing? What is it that
the, what is it which these witness against thee? but he held his
peace. It reminds me of what Pilate
said later when Pilate asked him, he said, don't you know
that I have the authority to crucify you, the power to crucify
you or to let you go? And the Lord said to Pilate,
you have no power whatsoever except that which is given to
you from heaven. You can't do anything of your own. These men
holding God in judgment, trying to find a charge against him
that would be worthy of death But he held his peace and answered
nothing. Now that, my friend, is the worst judgment that God
can do for anyone. To be silent. To say nothing. Because the truth is that if
God doesn't speak to me and you, we'll have no way of knowing
the truth. God has to speak. And he has
to give us ears to hear. He has to give us a heart to
believe. We are completely dependent upon him. If he's silent, we'll
go the way of these chief priests and counsel. But he held his peace, verse
61, and answered nothing. Again, the high priest asked
him and said unto him, art thou the Christ, the son of the blessed?
Tell us. Well, he had already told them
many times. Tell us clearly, plainly, who are you? Are you
claiming to be God? And Jesus said, I am. I am. And that's all they needed
to hear because the words that the Lord used to express I am
are words that the Jews only attached to God. This is the
name, the first name that God gave of himself to Moses at the
burning bush. When Moses asked the Lord, whom
shall I say sent me? What did the Lord say? Tell them
I am hath sent thee. I am that I am. What does that
name mean? Well, it means that he's self-sufficient,
that he's self-existent. You see, we could say I am because
He is. But we cannot say I am because
I am. What this name means is that
I'm not dependent upon you for anything. I exist within myself. I don't need anything from you.
I don't need you to make a decision. I don't need you to work a work.
I don't need you to help me with your sanctification. I'm not
dependent upon you for anything and you are dependent upon me
for everything. That's what I am means. That's
what I am means. I'm independent. I'm uncreated,
underrived. I'm self-sufficient. I'm not
contingent on anything or anybody. I am not like you in any way. And it was the name that God
gave to Moses, and every Jew knew that that name referred
to none other than God. So that when the Lord Jesus Christ
said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, he was declaring
himself to be the only way, all the truth, and the only light
that men have to know God. When he said, I am the resurrection
and the life, he that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall
he live. My resurrection is that I'm the
firstborn among many brethren. No one has hope of life outside
of me. No one has hope of life outside of me. When the Lord
Jesus Christ said, I am the bread of life, that bread that came
down from heaven, that feeds your soul, that's me. That's
me. Moses didn't give you that manna
from heaven. My father gave it to you. And I am the bread of
life. I am. I'm the good shepherd. The sheep
don't have any hope outside of my shepherding them. And that's
what David meant in Psalm 24 when he said, the Lord is my
shepherd, I shall not want. I shall not be in want of anything.
He is my shepherd. When the Lord Jesus Christ said,
I am the door to the sheepfold, there's no other way into the
sheepfold other than me. I am. I'm the one that controls
everything. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
speaks and he declares himself to be God. And look what they
said. In verse 62, when Jesus said,
I am, and you shall see the son of man sitting on the right hand
of power and the coming and coming in the clouds of heaven, then
the high priest rent his clothes and saith, what need we any further
witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy,
what think ye? And they all condemned him to
be guilty of death. And some began to spit upon him
and to cover his face and to buffet him and to say unto him,
prophesy. And the servants did strike him
with the palm of their hands. The deity of the Lord Jesus Christ
is at the heart and soul of the gospel. I believe I can speak by the
authority of God's word and say that if you believe that Jesus
Christ is God, you have reason to have hope for the salvation
of your soul. The natural man does not believe
that Jesus is God. When the Ethiopian eunuch, after
hearing Philip preach the gospel, said, what doth hinder me to
be baptized? Philip said, if thou believest
with all thine heart, thou mayest. And what did that Ethiopian eunuch
say? I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I believe
that he's full deity. I believe that he is God incarnate
and Philip baptized him. The deity of the Lord Jesus Christ
is at the heart of the gospel. In Acts chapter two, when the
first gospel message was preached after the ascension of the Lord
Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost, Peter concluded that message
with, God hath made this same Jesus whom you crucified, both
Lord and Christ. And the next verse says, and
they were pricked in their hearts and said, what can we do? And Peter said, repent, repent
in what you believed about Jesus, who is the Christ. Someone's thinking, I'm sure
every mainline Christian denomination affirms the deity of Christ.
And you're right. You're right. In their confession, everyone from the Catholics to
the Pentecostals will say that they believe that Jesus is God. What do they mean by that? The
mainline Christian, and I use that word very loosely, denominations
would accuse the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses of being
a cult because they denied the deity of Christ. And they would
all say that our agreement that Jesus is God is the core of Christianity
and it is what unites us all together. Problem is that they
have redefined what it means to be God. And because they have
no love for the truth, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, they have set themselves
up on the throne of God. And God has sent them a strong
delusion that they might believe a lie. You see it all goes back
to the garden. It really does. It goes back
to the garden. The heart of the gospel is seen
in man's fall. When Satan said to Eve, God knows
that in the day in which you eat of that fruit, your eyes
are going to be open and you're going to be like God. And man's wanted to be God ever
since. And he honors God with his lips. He'll say Jesus is
God. He'll write in his confessions
that Jesus is God, but his heart is far from him. Truth is that
those who say that Jesus is God will accuse us of making man
a puppet. They will. When you tell someone
in Christianity that affirms the deity of Christ that we are
born into this world spiritually dead, unable to do anything for
ourselves, and that the work of regeneration, which is a unilateral
work of God's grace in the heart of man enabling him to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, is necessary for salvation, what
will they say? You made man to be a puppet. When we tell people that God
unconditioned on anything that he saw in the life of any man,
chose according to his own will and purpose before the foundation
of the world and elect people, wrote their names on the land's
book of life, what will they say? You've made man to be a
puppet. When we tell men that the Lord
Jesus Christ did not lay down His life for all men, that He
did not die for everybody, those who affirm the deity of Christ will out of the other side of
their mouth say, but he made an offer of salvation and he's
dependent upon man to do something with that offer in order for
him to be able to have his way of saving people. You see they've
changed the very definition of what it means to be God by accusing
us of making man to be a puppet. When we tell people that grace
is irresistible, When God's ready to open the eyes of your understanding
and make you willing in the day of His power, you are irresistibly
drawn to Him. You are made to come to Christ. You are given faith and repentance
and drawn to Him. What do they say? You've made
man to be a puppet. Now, what is a puppet? A puppet is a person whose actions
are manipulated by another. You see, those who affirm the
deity of Christ in their confessions and in their speech have made
God to be their puppet. They have. And they're offended
by the gospel because the gospel puts God as the one pulling the
strings. And they want a God that they
can control. And so they will say that yes,
Jesus is God. And yes, the confession that
he made at his trial here before the high priest and the, he clearly
identified himself as God. And the charge of blasphemy is
the only charge they had to take him to the cross. and we believe
that he's God. And yet they turn right around
and deny the very essence of God. In fact, they believe that
God has abdicated his throne and given it up to man. They have an imaginary God. You know, children, when they're
very young, cannot discern the difference between make-believe
and reality. And it's always a little disconcerting
for parents when their child comes to that stage in their
life when they realize that what they believed was true really
wasn't. Maybe that's going to happen
in the next short time with some children, but it happens, doesn't
it? And it's a setback in the heart
of a parent when that make-believe world of a child goes away, but
in fact, the parent's glad because if it didn't go away, that child
would grow up to be delusional. I have a cousin, first cousin. He had a make-believe friend.
He just told me this story a few years ago. I didn't know anything
about it, but his little make-believe friend His name was Johnny, and
he did all kinds of things with Johnny when he was three and
four and five. And then all of a sudden, my
cousin goes to school, and he's still got his make-believe friend.
His father put up with it for a little while until finally
my uncle realized, we've got a problem here. We've got a problem. And so my uncle wisely said to
my cousin, we're going over to Johnny's house right now. And after a short conversation
reduced my cousin to tears having to admit that Johnny didn't really
exist. You see the truth is that all
of these people who say with their lips that Jesus is God
have a delusion about God. They've manufactured in the idle
factory of their own darkened heart a God who does not exist. He is a figment of their imagination. They say he's God, but he's not
really God. They've stripped him of the very
nature and attributes of God. They don't believe that he's
I am. They believe that God is dependent upon them for something.
He's not really the Alpha. We've got to make the first step
in order for him to be able to save us. And then, of course,
the Calvinists will say, no, he's the Alpha. You can't make
the first step. That's a work of grace in the
heart. But they deny him being the Omega. You've got to make
it happen in order for you to be able to maintain your salvation.
God's dependent upon you for your cooperation in your sanctification. And at some point or another,
every person who says they believe in the deity of Christ denies
his deity. They deny his deity. They believe things are true
that are not true. And the scripture, to quote that passage again,
in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 says that God has sent them this strong
delusion. Now when God deludes you, you're
deluded. You're just deluded. You'll grow up and die delusional,
believing something to be true that's not true, never being
able to escape the make-believe from the real. So when we affirm the deity of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And like I said, if you believe
that Jesus is God, you believe the gospel. You really do. If you believe that He's God,
now by believing I mean you're resting in the fact that He's
God. You're rejoicing in the fact that He's God. You're trusting
the hope of your salvation in the fact that He is God. That's
That's what the world doesn't know anything about. The religious
world in particular doesn't know anything about the deity of the
Lord Jesus Christ. They deny his deity at every
point. They deny his self-existence
and they will tell you that, yeah, he's God, but he's in need
of something from you in order for him to be able to save you.
That strips God of his deity. When we say that the Lord Jesus
Christ is God, what we're saying is that he's holy. He's holy. He's separate from us. He's set
apart from us. He's other than we are in every
way. And when Isaiah saw the Lord
Jesus Christ sitting upon his throne high and lifted up as
God, the seraphim could not look upon him. They had to veil their
eyes in the presence of God. They took two of their wings
and covered their faces. And when Isaiah got a glimpse
of his glory, the first conclusion Isaiah came to was, I'm not anything
like him. I'm not anything like him. Woe
is me, I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips. My
eyes have seen the king. My eyes have seen God. What am
I going to do? You see, the natural man doesn't
concern himself with the holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He'll
feign his worship. He'll say with his lips that
he's holy, but he has no fear of God in his heart. He doesn't
believe himself to be a sinner. He doesn't believe himself to
be separate from God. That's why I say if you believe
that Jesus is God, that is the heart and soul of the gospel.
You have reason to hope that God has revealed the truth to
you and saved your soul. The Lord Jesus Christ is God.
He is I Am. This is the charge that they
had against Him. This is the essence of His nature,
the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him. Thus saith the Lord, the Holy
One of Israel, the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,
whose name is holy. Holy. Do you believe that the
Lord Jesus Christ is holy? High and lifted up, separate
from sinners in every way. The Lord said, in whom will you
liken me? Who are you going to compare
me to? Or how shall I be equal to anyone else, sayeth the Holy
One? When the angel told Mary that
she was going to conceive of the Holy Spirit, he said to her,
the Holy thing, that amazes me, the Holy thing. That's
how the angel described the Lord Jesus Christ in the womb of Mary,
the holy thing shall be born of thee and shall be called the
Son of God. So how do I know that I believe
he's holy? Well, the same reason Isaiah knew he was holy. Woe
is me. Same reason that Job knew he's
holy. When Elihu preaches the gospel
to Job and then God speaks to Job, God asked Job some very
simple questions. He said, Job, where were you
when I separated the stars from the sky, the earth? Where were
you when I separated the land from the ocean? Job, where were
you? You think you can handle a Leviathan? Throw your hook into the sea
and see if you can handle. And God just interrogates Job
by describing his holiness to Job. Job, you're not like me
in any way. And the first thing out of Job's
mouth, behold. And that word means I see something
I never saw before. Behold, I am vile. He's holy and I'm not. I'm not anything like him. I
am nothing but unholiness and I'm completely dependent upon
him for everything. Oh, to believe that Jesus is
God. to believe that He's God. That's
the gospel. God has dwelt among us and we
have beheld His glory as the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and full of truth. He came into His own. Bert, you
read this. His own received Him not, but as many as received Him.
They did not believe that He was God. Daniel, you remember what Daniel
said, when Daniel was confronted with the holiness of the Lord
Jesus Christ, he said, my comeliness, my strength, my beauty, my ability
was turned in me into corruption. I came to a place where I realized
I can't do anything without him. He's going to have to do it all.
You see, this is what all those folks that say they believe that
Jesus is God, they don't believe, they don't believe he is the
infinite, eternal I am. They do not believe that he's
holy. God said, I will not allow my
holy one to see corruption. And all the attributes of God are under the umbrella of his
holiness. So we say God is sovereign. The Lord Jesus Christ is sovereign. He's holy in his sovereignty.
We say that he's immutable. He's holy in his immutability.
We say that he's all powerful. He's holy in his omnipotence. The holiness of the Lord Jesus
Christ is what the natural man will not believe. He will not
believe. God said you have made me to
be altogether such a one as yourself. You've created a God in your
imagination that's like you. And you can honor me all you
want by saying that I'm holy and by saying that I'm God. But
if you change the definition of what it means to be holy and
what it means to be I am, you don't believe it. the attributes of God, the sovereignty
of God. Nations love to refer to themselves
as sovereign nations. By that, they mean they're completely
independent and not involved in, you know, not going to be
told what to do by anyone else. Kings have been called sovereigns. But in the ultimate sense of
the word, there's no such thing as sovereignty apart from God. You see, these terms that we
are referring to God by only apply to God. They only apply
to God. They only apply to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Men change the definition of
sovereignty when they say a nation is sovereign or a man is a sovereign. But in fact, that nation is dependent
upon the sovereign and that man is dependent upon the sovereign.
There's only one sovereign. There's only one that's not dependent
upon anything or anybody. and is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Listen to what he said, I form the light, I create darkness,
I make peace, I create evil, I the Lord do all these things.
I'm the potter and you're the clay and I make out of the same
lump of clay some vessels of honor and some of dishonor. Nebuchadnezzar learned that lesson
when he said all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing,
nothing. And Isaiah said, the nations
are a drop in the bucket to me. They're a speck on the balance
scale. I'm sovereign. I rule and reign
over the inhabitants of the earth and the armies of heaven. And
no man can stay my hand or say unto me what doest thou? Are
you able to rejoice in, believe on, rest in the Lord Jesus Christ
who is holy, who is the infinite I am, who is sovereign, who is
not dependent upon you for anything, of whom you are dependent for
everything? You see, that's what the unbeliever
doesn't do. Let them refer to Christ as being
sovereign. Let them say He's God. That's
why preaching... I've said this before. Preaching
in a sense, yeah, it is declaring the gospel. But in another sense,
preaching is defining the terms of scripture. It's what we're
doing. So you can't tell what a man
believes by reading his confession. You've got to listen to his definitions.
You've got to listen to what he says about what he means,
about what he means by what he says. Isaiah chapter 14, verse 27,
the Lord of hosts hath purposed and who shall disannul it. Now in Isaiah chapter 28, the
Lord said, your covenant, the covenant that you made, the promise
that you, I'm going to disannul that. I'm going to do away with
that covenant. But here's what God says about
himself. The Lord of hosts have purposed it. Who shall disannul
it? His hand is stretched out and
who shall turn it back? No one can turn back the hand
of God. We rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ being God. You see, that puts all the responsibility
for salvation on Him. All of it. He does all the work. He gets all the glory. We bow
before Him. This is what the natural man
does not believe. They're offended by the gospel
because they think that the gospel makes man to be a puppet. And
the reason why they're offended by that is because they've already
set themselves up on the throne of God. But their gospel makes
God to be the puppet. So who's pulling the strings? Who's in control? The Lord Jesus Christ is not
only holy, is not only sovereign, He's omnipotent. Now, where do
we see the greatest demonstration of the power of God? Some people
might say, well, in creation. God spoke and there it was. In six days, just by the sound
of his voice, he created the whole universe. What a demonstration
of power. And that power is expressed many
times in the scriptures. You read it, Bert, in John chapter
1. He's the creator of all things. Nothing exists without him. but
that's not the greatest demonstration of his power. Here's what he
says, Paul said this, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone that believeth to the Jew first and also to
the Greek. The gospel is the power of God.
The salvation of sinners is the power of God. The power that
the Lord Jesus Christ had to bear in His body on Calvary's
tree all the sins of all of God's people and the power that He
had to suffer the full wrath of God in order to put away those
sins in the sight of God Almighty. The power of His blood to wash
away all of our sins. The power of God to make a dead,
unwilling, rebellious sinner to bow in submission to the Lordship
and the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's power. You see, the greatest power of
God is what the child of God experiences in the new birth,
in their salvation. There's the power of God. Paul
said the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.
but to us which are saved, it is the power of God. The preaching
of the cross is the power of God. We preach Christ crucified
unto the Jew, a stumbling block, and unto the Greek, foolishness,
but to them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ,
the power of God and the wisdom of God. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the power of God. And what he did in redeeming
his people is the greatest demonstration of omnipotence that has ever
been shown to man. And we bow to and believe that
the Lord Jesus Christ. Is God. And the same power that saves
us is the power that keeps us. Peter put it like this, we are
kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. Kept by
the power of God. Lord, I need your power every
day. Save me. Save me. By thy name and by thy
strength, Lord, you're gonna have to do the saving. You're
God. I'm completely dependent upon
you for everything and you need me for nothing. The natural man makes God dependent
upon man. The gospel makes man dependent
upon God. The Lord said, I am the Lord
and I change not. Immutability is an attribute
that can only be ascribed to the Lord Jesus Christ, to God.
Everything else changes. You're changing, the world we're
in is changing. Why is the Lord Jesus Christ
called the Rock of Ages? Because to the outward appearance
of man, a rock never changes, but in fact we know that the
molecules in that rock are moving and that they do change. But
in our world, a rock is something that's changeless. So the Lord
condescends to our experience by saying, I'm the rock of ages.
I'm the immutable one. I change not. And that's the
only reason you sons of Jacob are not consumed is because the
commitments that I made in the covenant of grace before your
changing life ever was made will never change. I'm the same
yesterday, today, and forever. You see, the people who say that
Jesus is God believe that He changes. He changes His mind. He has plan
B. And if that doesn't work, He'll come
up with a plan C. But He's always changing. The truth is that our
God has never had a new thought. He's never learned anything,
ever. We're talking about something
we can understand here, because we're always learning. But he's
never learned a thing. How could you learn something
when you already know it all? He's omniscient. Our God, in fact, has never changed
His mind about anything. He decided that He was going
to save a people. He chose those people and He determined to do everything
necessary to redeem them from their sins. He came into this
world born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem them that
are cursed by the law. A body thou hast prepared for
me, for I have come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the
first that he might establish the second. He took away the
law to establish the covenant of grace. He sends his spirit in power
to change the minds of his people and convince them, convince them,
thoroughly convince them that he is God. He's God. Let man change the definitions
all they want. You know they say a rose by any
other name still a rose and I guess that's true. But if you call something that
stinks a rose, that doesn't make that a rose. And that's what men have done.
They called the Lord Jesus Christ God. But the Christ that they
have is not God. He's not God. We rejoice, we bow to, we trust
in and rely upon the deity of our Savior. Our Heavenly Father we're thankful
for your word and we ask now Lord that your Holy Spirit would demonstrate in our hearts by
faith the power of God. For it's in Christ's name we
ask it. Amen. Number 28, let's stand together. So, God has mercy on whom he will,
and whom he will, he hardens still. To whom he will, he gives
his grace, and when he will, he hides his face. Let none despise God's sovereign
throne. He does what he will with his
own. It is his right to save or kill
according to his sovereign will. Yes, God saves some and others'
lives to reap the fruit of their own ways. In the eternal ages
past, God made His choice and it stands fast. Aware that I'm
a guilty man and that I'm in God's sovereign hand, ? Prostrate
I fall before his throne ? A wretch and helpless guilty one ? Lord
if you will you can I say ? Take all my guilt and sin away ? A
guilty sinner at your throne ? I beg for mercy through your
son Now trusting Jesus Christ, God's son, I know that I'm his
chosen one. And God's eternal sovereign choice
makes this poor sinner's heart rejoice. Oh.