When the Lord Jesus Christ comes
near, God is revealed, and mankind
is revealed. If you want to know what you
really are, what you really, really are, deep down inside,
you just need to go to the cross at Calvary. we need to go to
the place where the Lord Jesus Christ is most clearly revealed. And this is the night, the night
of his betrayal, the night of his suffering. Within hours of
these words, he will be so unrecognisable, that you would hardly know that
he was a human being that was hanging on that cross. And yet,
knowing and ordaining and ruling and controlling every little
last bit of all of that event, here he is at this time with
his beloved bride, And all he has on his mind are thoughts
of comfort and love and her security and her peace in the midst of
what for these particular men will be three days of the most
appalling darkness. And not only the most appalling
darkness of being without the Lord Jesus Christ, but A darkness
accentuated by the fact that they all know that they fled
and they betrayed him. They all know that they made
great promises of what they would do and how they would stand alongside
him. And yet, all this is designed by God for
His glory and for the good of all of His people. And we, like
these apostles, will go through times where we will feel the
weight of our sin and the weight of His absence. And yet these
are words of comfort. He keeps saying, I'm writing
these things, I'm saying these things over and over again. I'm saying these things so that
when the time comes, you may remember. When the time comes,
when the time of all this darkness, when the time of all this distress,
when the time of this tribulation comes, when the time of all this
opposition to God expressed in hatred of his apostles and his
servants and his witnesses, you remember, you remember, I told
you, I am faithful. Every time you read a shall or
a will, happen. He evokes the strongest
emotions in humanity. He evokes the strongest emotions
of love, and he evokes the strongest emotions of hatred. It's extraordinary,
isn't it? It's extraordinary that you read
that they hate him. They hate him. And so these things,
chapter 16 verse 1, these things I have spoken unto you that you
should not be offended. you should not be offended. That
night they all will be offended. They all will run away from him.
Matthew 26, Jesus said to them, you shall all be offended because
of me this night. For it is written, I will smite
the shepherd and the flock shall be scattered abroad. And yet in the midst of that,
he says, don't let your hearts be troubled. I've told you, In
the previous chapter I told you of the glorious union and communion
between you and me. A union and communion which was
ordained and established before the foundation of this world
continues through all the trials of this world and continues into
eternity. He's writing, he's spoken that
you should not be offended. That word offended, if we actually
wrote out the Greek letters, we'd end up with the word scandalized. I'm writing this that you won't
be scandalised. You won't stumble. It's called
a stumbling block, a stumbling stone, a rock of offence. It's
to cause to fall away, to judge unfavourably, to be enticed into
a sin. The Lord Jesus Christ offended this
world. He offended particularly all
of this religious world. We don't have time to go back
to all of the passages where he did so, but in John 6, after
they'd heard that remarkable sermon where the Lord Jesus Christ
declares, These glorious words, all that
the Father has given me shall come to me and him that cometh
to me, I will no wise cast out. He says, I came down from heaven,
not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
And this is the Father's will, which has sent me, all of which
he has given me, I should lose nothing, but raise it up at the
last day. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that everyone that seeth the Son and believeth on him
may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last
day. I'll resurrect him to eternal
life with me. He says, it's written in the
prophets, they shall all be taught of God. What an amazing promise,
verse 45. Every man therefore that has
heard and has learned of the Father cometh to me. Verily, verily, verse 47, I say
unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. And he went on further to describe
all of these things, and then he says in verse 61, they murmured,
and he says, does this offend you? scandalized by John chapter
6. I think I told the story of the
time I was doing a Bible study with my students in India on
John's Gospel. And I got to John chapter 6 and
I thought, this will be interesting, and he left it out. So I said
to my students, he was a man that was scandalized by the Word
of God. And I said, Do you want to read
with me some really offensive words from the Lord Jesus Christ?
And we had the most wonderful time in John chapter 6. I thought
it was really amazing that someone was so scandalized by it that
they'd actually leave it out of a commentary. Believe it or
not. offended the depth of this offense
is going to be a living reality turn with me back to John chapter
16 verse 2 it says they shall promise from God they shall put
you out of the synagogues yea the time cometh that whosoever
killeth you will think that he doeth God service. In his mind he'll believe that
he is worshipping and serving and honouring God. Just as those
men gathered down the street in Jerusalem that night thought
that they were doing God's service. They thought that they had the
means to establish once and for all that the Lord Jesus Christ
was a fraud. He cannot possibly be the Messiah. and they had the most wonderful
way of doing it. If we can get the Romans to nail
into a cross tomorrow morning, we can take everyone back to
Deuteronomy 23 and say it's a curse. A curse that is everyone that
hangs on a tree. We can prove to everyone that
is a curse. We can get our sermons ready
for our Sabbath morning. In John chapter 9 the blind man
was put out of the synagogue. He was excommunicated from the
fellowship of Israel. They sent him to hell. In their
minds they sent the man who was born blind, who was healed, who
declared the Lord Jesus Christ. They sent him to hell and they
thought that they were doing God's service. They weren't going
to have their religion polluted by the likes of him. Everyone whosoever killeth you
will think that he doeth God's service. The Lord Jesus Christ,
as you remember, we go to Luke chapter 4 often, but we see the
Lord Jesus Christ Himself being cast out of that synagogue in
Nazareth, and He was cast out of their religion. All who proclaim
The free and sovereign grace of God will be separated from
this religious world. God calls on them to be separated,
but look what happens. They shall put you out. They
shall put you out. They will rejoice in you being
removed from their fellowship if you declare the free and sovereign
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God. God will make sure that
the enemies of the gospel separate his people from those who in
their hearts are religious and in their hearts they hate him.
What a horrible and terrible, terrible description the Lord
gives of those people who honour Him with their lips, but their
hearts are far from Him. May the Lord be merciful to us. We cry, we declare the best news
that a sinner could ever hear. sinners. Our God came to save
sinners. Our God saves them all by himself,
for his glory alone, and he doesn't require anything from them except
what he gives them. Isn't that good news? You would
think the good news, and our good news, continually says to
this world and to anyone that will hear, continually says,
come, come. I love what Moses said to his
father in Lord Jethro. He says, come with us and we'll
do you good. We're continually saying, come,
and the religious world is saying, no, you depart from us, you depart
from us. They cast them out, and this
has been the situation of God's servants throughout time. Cain did it to Abel. It's hard to imagine, but Isaiah
was put in a log Oh dear, all of these apostles
were put to death. Listen to what he says of them. This is this religious
world described by Isaiah 2,700 years ago, and this is the religious
world that says, Stand by thyself, come not near to me, for I am
holier than thou. You ever heard that before? Don't
come near me, because I'm holier than thou. You pollute my so-called
worship of God by your presence. The unjust man is an abomination
to the just, but he that is upright in the way is an abomination
to the wicked. He who is righteous in the sight
of God is an abomination to the wicked. The root cause of it
is they just don't know who God is. It's as simple as that. Man is naturally religious and
Satan delights in the religion that he brings into the hearts
of men, but they just do not know God. That's his declaration,
isn't it? They will do them to you because
they do not know the Father. To know the Lord Jesus Christ
is to know the Father. To know the one, the sending
one, and to know the sent one is to love him. And to love him
is to love his brethren. To hate the children is to hate
their father. If you want to stir me up, you
say something bad about my children that I love very much. You say
something about my wife. God's children. Love the Lord Jesus Christ. This is eternal life, says the
Lord Jesus Christ, that you know the Father and you know the Son. To know Him is to have eternal
life. To not know Him is to hate Him. To know Him is to love Him in
everything that He says and everything that He does. This hatred, this
offence, was expressed in the early days of the church, if
you recall, didn't it? Immediately, the apostles started
preaching, the opposition started, and they started mocking them.
You're drunk. Nine o'clock in the morning,
you're drunk, when they first heard the words that the Holy
Spirit had put on the lips of those people. In verse, chapter
five of Acts, they took counsel to slay them. They took Stephen
outside of the city and they stoned him to death. thinking
along with Paul that they were doing, as the Lord Jesus Christ
promised, they were doing God service. They persecuted them
and put them to death. And where was the opposition
from? It wasn't Rome. The opposition was from the religious
world. Verse 4, there's a word of comfort
in the midst of all this. This is what's going to happen
to you. But these things have I told you, that when the time
shall come, you may remember that I told you of them. The
time shall come when this offence is expressed openly, that you
might remember my words, that I'm faithful to everything that
I say. You can read this glorious book
of God and say Amen and Yes and True. Christ and his Gospel is
a scandal to the natural man, and it's particularly a scandal
to the religious men. You might remember in the history
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the more clearly he revealed himself
as God Almighty, the more enraged Christ and his gospel is offensive
to the natural man. It's extraordinary, isn't it,
that the good news of heaven brings offense to the people
of this world. And what causes the child of
God to rejoice is offensive to the religion of every age. Cain's a perfect example. But
they're all through history, aren't they? And they are living
and active amongst us now. The Lord Jesus Christ is declared
to be a stumbling stone and a rock of offense. There's an amazing
verse in Matthew chapter 21 that I keep pondering about how precious
it is. He said, this is the stone which
the builders rejected, Matthew 21, 42. The same has become the
head of the corner. This is the Lord's doing, and
it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say unto you, They
rejected this stone. The kingdom of God shall be taken
from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.
The nation of the elect is going to be taken. Their house will
be left under them desolate. Verse 44 is remarkable. And whosoever
shall fall on this stone shall be broken. You fall on the stone,
whom is the Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be broken of all of
your righteousness, of all of your wisdom, of all of your religion. But on whomsoever it shall fall,
it will grind him to powder. The same stone, the same stone,
is the foundation stone. It's the rock, isn't it? Israel in Romans 9. They stumbled at the stumbling
stone. As it is written, Behold, I lay
in Zion a stumbling stone. That's that same word offense
in John chapter 16 verse 1. A stumbling stone and a rock
of offense. Whosoever believeth on him shall
not be ashamed. What was Israel's problem? Israel's
problem is that they thought. They thought that they could
obey the law of God. They basically didn't believe
God and they didn't trust him. And they were offended. And the
great offense of the religious Jews is that God accepted the
dog Gentiles as they saw them. And they accepted them without
any obedience to the law of Moses. 1 Peter 2, verse 7 says, unto
you therefore which believe, he is precious, but unto them
which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallow,
that same stone that the builders in Jerusalem, building their
religion, building their righteousness, the same is made the head of
the corner, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. The Lord
Jesus Christ is a stone of stumbling and he's a rock of offence, he's
a scandal, even to them which stumble at the word. They stumble at the word of God,
being disobedient whereunto also they were appointed. All of this happens exactly as
God had promised. The Jews require a sign and the
Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified
under the Jews a stumbling block and under the Greeks foolishness. That's that word scandal again,
everywhere you read the stumbling block. But under them which are
called of both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the
wisdom of God. The offence is about the Lord
Jesus Christ and Him crucified, always. There is just one big
issue, always. All of the issues go to one place. If you have any doubts, any challenges,
you take that particular part of scripture or that particular
circumstance that you're in and you take it to the cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ and you will find the most extraordinary light
shed upon us. And how do you stop the offence?
Why is there, amongst so many professing believers, offense
towards the gospel and no offense amongst themselves? And they
can all join hands together and rejoice that they're all going
the same way and following the same God. Paul puts it really
bluntly in Galatians chapter five, verse 11. You preach circumcision. You preach man doing something. You preach man's works at the
beginning of his salvation, to maintain his salvation, to be
rewarded at the end of his salvation. You preach circumcision. Circumcision
is just the entrance as a child into the covenant of the law.
Why was Paul suffering persecution? Because he preached the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ. How do you get rid of the persecution?
you preach works and you preach law. Then is the offence of the
cross ceased. The Lord Jesus Christ is declared
by God to be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. Christ
offended man's religion and self-righteousness He offended men by the words. It's always about the words that
he spoke. They weren't upset about the
miracles he performed. They were offended by what he
said that those miracles meant, that he's God Almighty in human
flesh, that he and he alone is the covenant that God has made
with people, and he and he alone is the door, the way into heaven. He was offensive to them. because
of his humanity. This is just a carpenter. Look
at him. Look how ordinary he looks. He claims to be the Messiah,
the King of Israel. He claims to be God Almighty,
and here he is with a bunch of fishermen, sinners and lepers
and harlots following along, and not very many of them We know his mum, we know his
dad, we know his brothers and sisters. As I said earlier, he was offensive
because he welcomed publicans and harlots and sinners. He welcomed Gentiles into his
company. They were offended by him, they
were offended by his teaching. He says to his apostles, and
he says to us, he's writing these things so that you won't be offended.
You will live in a world that's offended by the gospel of God's
free and sovereign grace. He says, don't be offended. Don't
be offended. But in fact, what offends men
causes You see, he offends men's sense
of righteousness, doesn't he? And God's children rejoice in
the fact that they don't have any righteousness and God is
not looking to them for any righteousness. The only righteousness we have,
the only righteousness that God knows anything about and accepts
is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the righteousness
of God. He offends men's religious wisdom,
and God's children love the fact that Christ is our wisdom. I
have all the wisdom of God if I'm just clinging to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Nicodemus, the brightest and
most intelligent and knowledgeable man in all of Israel, came to
the Lord Jesus Christ and he said to him, you haven't got
the foggiest notion of who God is. See, people think that by
searching you can find out God, and God says you can't. God says
you can't. Everything that we know about
God comes from God by divine revelation. And when he teaches,
he teaches perfectly. And when he teaches, his people
come to the Lord Jesus Christ, and they rejoice in the Lord
Jesus Christ. He offends man's pride. Nothing causes men to be more
proud than to believe that they have done something, that they
have achieved something, and that they are worthy of some
recognition for the things that they have done, or worthy of
recognition for the things that they have not done. Who makes
you to differ? What have you got that you haven't
received? Man thinks he's God. We, the children of God, love
to be abased before him. Men think that they have rights
because of the things that they've done. God has the They stumbled at this stumbling
stone. Christ offends all the distinctions
between men. One of the things he says twice
in the book of Revelation in his letters to churches that
he hates, he hates the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans, nico means to
be above. means to be the common. It's a word for common. He hates priestcraft of any sort. He hates the distinction between
clergy and lady. He does raise up Servants and
pastors after his own heart to teach his people with knowledge
and wisdom. They're just servants. Any of them that think that they're
above the people are in a very, very sad state of affairs. God's
children look out at the rest of their believing brothers and
sisters and esteem the others better than themselves. Because
I see what's in my heart. and I have absolutely no confidence
in the flesh, and I'm thankful that God takes it away. God, our Lord Jesus Christ and
his gospel offends men because salvation is free. He says, son, your sins are forgiven
thee. to that probably harlot who met
the Lord Jesus Christ in Luke chapter 7. It's a remarkable
story isn't it? He says, you go in peace. Your
sins are forgiven you. What has she done to deserve
that? Salvation is a free and sovereign
gift. Lord Jesus Christ and his church
is offensive, a scandal in this world because they look upon
them wherever they have been throughout time and say, well,
look at you. There are so few of you and there are so many
of us. And we have all of these institutions
and we have all of these things that men can see and be proud
of and be joined to and feel comfortable in joining in a big
network of people. We can say, We have to say that
we're here on our own, because the Lord has revealed himself. And that's what all of God's
people have said all throughout time. Here we stand. Here we
stand. I can do none other. The gospel is offensive, because
it's narrow. The road to heaven is narrow. It is Jesus Christ and him alone. And God's children love the fact
that it's not Jesus Christ plus something that I've done. It's
not Jesus Christ and my good deeds or my wish to do good deeds. God lays it on the hearts of
his people that we don't want to be an offence in anything
we ever do to the glory of God in this world and to our brothers
and sisters. The gospel is offensive because
it makes demands upon people. It says, you deny yourself. And God's children cry out, I'd
love to deny myself even more than I ever do. And you take
up your cross and you follow me. You take up what it is for
the Lord Jesus Christ to have done what he did on the cross
and you declare that before men and you will find this religious
world. fulfilling the promises that
we read here in this text, that they will hate you. They'll cast
you out of their synagogues, and they will think in casting
you out. And these days, they don't kill
us much, but they'll kill our reputation and they'll kill our
character before people, even people that we love. And they'll
think that they're doing God's service. He said these things,
I said unto you at the beginning because, I didn't say these things
at the beginning because I wish you, I was with you. How wise
is our God in teaching his children what they need at the time they
need it. We grow in the grace and knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our God is a great teacher. He's
a glorious teacher. He teaches us what we need at
the time we need it. I didn't say these things to
you at the beginning because I was with you. All the time
he was with them, he stood between his people and his enemies and
he says, they're mine, you leave them alone. I answer for my people. These things I've spoken to you
that you should not be offended. Nevertheless, I tell you that
it's expedient for you that I go away. If I go not away, the Comforter
will not come, but if I depart, I will send him unto you. There is offense coming. Offense has come. Scandal has come. The children
of God will journey through this world as their saviour did, as
he is, so are we in this world. Persecution is promised. Persecution is promised. And
people will be offended and we are hurt by people who are like
the thorny ground hearers. And so many are scandalized,
and when they heard the word immediately received it with
gladness, and have no root in themselves and so endure but
for a time. Afterward, when affliction or
persecution arises for the word's sake, for the sake of what God
says, for the sake of who the Lord Jesus Christ is, immediately
they are offended, they are scandalised. The cares of this world, the
cares that may be in themselves good, but when they take the
place of Christ in His worship, people are scandalised. How does the scandal be ceased? Compromise and accommodation. We preach Christ Jesus, a scandal. I just want to finish by contemplating
what it is for us that this, we should not be those people
who offend. He's writing this and he's declaring
these things that we should not be an offence. How do we offend
our brothers and sisters? by causing them to look at themselves
and what they have to do rather than having their eyes fixed
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Again and again and again, we
just need, by the grace of God, to stand with our brothers and
sisters in the midst of the persecution and be there in fellowship. By
this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you
have love one for another. In the midst of these promises
of our God, in the midst of this persecution, We have to remember
that the Lord said, blessed is he whomsoever shall not be offended
in me. John 15 and John 16 are glorious
chapters. I pray the Lord might cause you
to go and read them again and apply the promises and do the
asking and keep on asking that we should be there. We should
be there standing at the end. You shall ask, he says, you shall
be persecuted and you shall ask. In this world you're going to
have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I've overcome
the world. The persecutions that come upon
the Lord's people are for his glory in this world. May he cause us not to be scandalized
by his glorious name. Let's have a break and may the
Lord bless us.