All right, brethren, good morning.
Let's turn to John chapter 8. John chapter 8. In John 8 and
verse 30, we read, as the Lord spoke these words, many believed
on Him. Then said Jesus to those Jews
which believed on Him, If ye continue in my word, then are
ye my disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free. Let's ask Lord's blessing. Father, we thank you for today.
Thank you that you've brought us here. Thank you that you've
given us a desire to hear your word preached, faith to believe
on your son. We ask you, Lord, that you would
be with those that aren't with us this morning, those that are
sick, those that are in other spiritual troubles. Lord, we
ask you would give faith and we ask that you would sustain
faith and increase faith. Keep us, Lord. I ask now that
you'd be exalted. That you'd teach us here and
speak into our hearts and make us truly hear you. Make us worship
you, Lord. Lord, clear our minds, clear
our thoughts of everything. and make us truly enter in to
the liberty we have in Christ, the safety we have in Him. Lord, thank You for forgiveness
of sins. We thank You that You're holy,
that You hallow Your name in Your people and amongst Your
people. Keep us from the evil, Lord.
keep us from the evil, keep us hedged about. We ask these things
according to your will. We ask them in Christ our Lord.
Amen. Our Lord says here, it says when
he spake, many believed on him. And we know as we read further
in the chapter, some did not believe. But take this to mean
some did believe. But I know this, what our Lord
says here is true. He said, if you continue in my
word, then are you my disciples indeed. And you shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free. Now Christ is the truth. He didn't say you shall know
a truth, or you'll know some truth. He said you shall know
the truth. And Christ is the truth. He's
the truth. He said, you shall know the truth
and the truth shall make you free. And at verse 36, he said,
if the son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. He's the truth. He said in John
14, in verse six, our Lord said, I am the way, the truth and the
life. No man cometh to the father,
but by me. Christ spoke His Word. It's by His Word that He makes
us free. He spoke His Word. As He was
preaching there and He spoke the Word and He makes free by
the Word, He births us again by the Word. Creates a life we
didn't have before, a new nature we didn't have before. And when
He does this, He draws you to cast it all on Him. He makes
you His disciple, His pupil, you're learning of Him. And He
makes you cast it all on Him. As He spake these words, many
believed on Him. And He makes us free by His Spirit,
by His righteousness. And as His disciples, He continues
to grow us in knowledge, by him, by him teaching and in grace.
And so he said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall
make you free. If you continue in my word, then
are you my disciples indeed. Now I've heard this preached
on and make us be all dependent on the believer and on him, on
his faith. Well, our Lord here is not saying
that perseverance in faith is what's going to make us his disciples.
It's not our perseverance in faith that's going to make us
his disciple, not even what's going to make us free. It's the
result of Christ making us his disciple. It's the result of
Christ making us free that we shall continue as his disciples. Those born of God and given faith
to believe on Christ are made disciples indeed. And they're
going to be kept by faith kept in faith by God. And so they'll
continue. They don't just begin in the
faith. We continue in the faith and we're going to end in the
faith by Him. Now I want to look at this in
three ways. First of all, Christ makes us
hear His Word. We must hear Him. We must begin.
There must be a beginning here. Christ spoke His Word and He
made His Word effectual. He makes it effectual in the
heart. He must make us hear Him so that we're born again. That's
the only way we're going to be freed from our sin nature, because
we're in bondage when we can't believe, we can't receive the
Word. We can't believe until He makes
you hear and gives you life by that incorruptible seed, the
Word, the Word which is preached. And He makes you then, by giving
you life and giving you faith, He makes you free to believe
Him, free to come to Him. Free to cast it all on Him. Look
over at Hebrews 11.6 and this gives us a good definition of
what faith is and what faith believes right here. Hebrews
11.6 He says, without faith it is
impossible to please God. Those that are in the flesh cannot
please Him. When He gives you spiritual life and He gives you
faith, that's the only way to please Him. Now here's why it's
pleasing, right here. For he that cometh to God must
believe that he is, and that he is, the word could be thee,
the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Now you think about
that. When he gives you faith to believe
him, that's what's pleasing to him because he's giving his son
the preeminence, he's giving his son all the glory. And that's
what pleased this God. It pleased God that His Son have
all the preeminence, that all fullness be in His Son, dwell
in His Son. And so, look at what it is. We
must believe that He is. And this is what faith does.
Faith believes. Being born again of Him and taught
of Him, we believe Christ is the Son of God. We believe He
is the Son of God. He is who He says He is in His
Word. He is the Son of God. He's the
Son of God, our Father. And believing on Him, we believe
on the Father. And faith believes He is the
rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. This is what this freedom
He's talking about is all about right here. Coming to Him, we
believe He's the rewarder. He's the one that gives freely
to us. Christ is the rewarder of those
that diligently seek him. What does he give? This word
reward doesn't mean you earned it, it means he gives it through
faith. What does he give? What does
he, those that come to him, no price in your hand, nothing to
commend you, you become a sinner, what does he give you? He frees
us from the curse and condemnation of the law, giving us His righteousness,
giving us free justification in and by Him, through His blood. This is what this freedom is.
He that is dead, Paul said in Romans 6, is freed from sin. That word freed means justified. Justified from sin. past, present,
and future. God has given you coming to Christ,
believing He is the Son of God. He is salvation. He is all to
us. He gives you all. He rewards
His people. He gives His people righteousness. His righteousness. Make the righteousness
of God in Him. And He's the one who gave us
the freedom in our sin nature, or not in our sin nature, but
gave us the freedom by giving us a new nature to come to Him. He gave us life, He gave us life,
but in that new man, when you come to Him, He gives you freedom
from a guilty conscience. When He makes you see Him, and
makes you see your sin, the conscience is heavy by knowing your sin,
by knowing what you are, by knowing you can't come to God yourself. And you might try to resolve
in yourself that you're going to please Him. That you're going
to try to do some things to please God. And you can't find any peace
there either. You might resolve you're going
to do something to make yourself presentable to Christ before
you believe on Him. You can't find any peace there
either. Finally, He just brings you to a place where you cannot
find any peace. in your heart, in your conscience.
You can't. Where does He draw you? He draws
you to Him. And the blood of Christ, making
you see His blood has put away our sin forever. His blood purges
the conscience of His child from dead works. All the things we
were doing, the sin we loved, He makes you hate it. You know, right now, as a believer,
there's no sin that you, there's a lot of sin we do that we don't
know about. But every sin we know about that we commit, we
commit it willfully. But you can't love it. Even while
you're doing it, God will not let you have peace in your conscience.
If you're thinking it, If you're speaking it, if you're doing
it, either in the midst of it or shortly thereafter, He's gonna
make you know this is against Him. And I'll tell you something
else about this purged conscience and this willingness to wanna
please Him. It's not the fear of hell that
does this. I think that our Lord before
this text, our Lord said, if you don't believe on me, you'll
die in your sins. And I believe that many of them
that believed on Him, that really truly did not believe on Him,
they only did it because they thought, I don't want to die
in my sins. Well, no believer wants to die
in our sins, but that's not what makes you come to Him. Hell and
a fear of hell is not what makes you believe on Him and not what
makes you want to honor Him. That's not what does it. In fact,
if there wasn't a hell, His people still want to honor Him because
of Him. But when He's purged that conscience,
this is the only peace we have. And He gives you that freedom,
that freedom from guilt. He's the giver of faith to walk
by faith in Christ. He not only gives you faith in
the first hour, He sustains it so that you walk by faith in
Him. He keeps showing you when we try to lean on the arm of
the flesh or lean to our wisdom, He keeps showing you, look to
Him. And He gives that to you. He's the rewarder of them that
diligently seek Him. The just shall live by faith.
The just shall walk by faith. Would we do that if it wasn't
for Him? No. No. He doesn't just wind you
up like a clock and set you going. He gonna keep you walking by
faith. Trust in Him. When He said there, He said,
if you know Him and you believe on Him and you continue in His
Word, the truth shall make you free. He's going to keep you
free. He's going to keep you free in
Him, by Him, by what He's giving. He's going to keep us free in
Him, walking in Him, in His liberty. And if we turn to sin, He's going
to freely give us His chastening hand. And that's a blessing. And He's going to keep you turned
to Him. Keep you walking in faith. Because he's the giver of access
to his throne of grace. He's the rewarder of them that
diligently seek him, giving you access to his throne of grace. In Christ our high priest, through
his blood, where you can come with some assurance that he'll
receive you, and he's gonna give you the help you need throughout
this walk. And he gives you safety. He gives
you that peace of knowing you have safety in him. Come to Him
knowing He is, He's the Son of God, He is all, and He's the
rewarder. He's the giver of everything
I need. He gives you a safety. He gives
you peace from that fear of death and that fear of falling away. He gives you a peace of safety. Safety. He said, He must come
to Him, believing He is. And Christ said, this is what
it is to do truth. He that doeth truth, he comes
to the truth. He that doeth truth comes to
Christ the light. Why? That it may be manifest
that all his works are wrought in God. He come confessing, He
is the one who worked it all and He's the one who rewarded
it all to me freely. That's what the Old Testament
saints said, Isaiah 26, 12. The Lord, our Lord, thou wilt
ordain peace for us, for thou hast wrought all our works in
us. This is the believer's liberty.
This is our freedom. It's Christ himself. Christ Himself,
if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. He
makes us know He's the truth. We know Christ. You know the
Redeemer. You know God, knowing His Son. You know the truth. And the truth
has made you free. Well, the result of being made
free by Christ, secondly, is, and this is what He said there
in our text, is you're going to continue as His disciple.
You're going to continue, going to continue to the end. Being
made a true disciple by Christ, we're going to continue believing
in Christ, going to continue in his word, and we're going
to continue to the end. Colossians 1, let's go there,
Colossians chapter 1. I want to show you later, I thought
I was going to get further in our text, but I'm going to show
you later, all these things that our Lord is saying He frees us
from, we see them brought out in His exchange between those
Jews that did not believe and what our Lord taught them. And
what He said about Abraham, what He said about them, we see the
things He frees us from, all these things. And we'll look
at those later. Today we're kind of seeing How
we persevere, how do we continue in this faith? It's by Him. But those that He's made His
true disciple, we shall continue to the end. He says in Colossians
121, you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked
works, yet now hath He reconciled. He did it. He brought you into
unity and communion with God. He did it in the body of His
flesh through death to present you, this was the purpose, to
present you holy and unblameable and unapprovable in His sight
if you continue in the faith. Grounded and settled and be not
moved away from the hope of the gospel, from Christ, our hope. Don't be moved away from Christ.
The Lord said, this is how the proof is going to be, you're
my disciple. You're going to continue in my word. You're going to continue
in the hope of the gospel. Grounded and settled, knowing
there's no other hope but Christ. Which you've heard, which was
preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul,
am made a minister. Christ is going to make us willing
to never stop coming to Christ. Once He's made you come to Him,
made you willing to come to Him, you never stop coming to Him.
Don't you want to hear His Word? Don't you want to go to His throne
of grace? Isn't that the peaceful time
for you to go hear Him speak, read His Word, and go to Him
in prayer? He keeps you coming to Him. And
that's how he says it's manifest, you're my disciples indeed. It
doesn't make us Christ's disciples. Perseverance is the evidence
he's made you his disciple. Look back at Hebrews 3. I'm gonna
come back to Hebrews 11 at the end, but I want you to see here
Hebrews 3. Hebrews 3 verse 5. Moses verily was faithful in
all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things were
to be spoken after. But Christ as a son over his
own house, whose house are we, the house is his people. Whose
house are we? Here's how it's going to be made
manifest. We're really His abode. He abides in us. His word abides
in us, making us abide in Him. Here's how it's going to be made
manifest. He says, if we continue, if we
hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm
unto the end. He's our confidence and He's
our rejoicing. You don't ever lose those two
things. He's all our confidence. If a man ever loses confidence
that Christ is saving him, has saved him, is saving and shall
save him, he'll fall away. He'll prove he never was his
disciple to begin with. But if all your confidence is
Christ, you will continue trusting him. And also, he has to be our
rejoicing. And this will be so if we're
really his disciple. If it becomes drudgery to you
to worship Christ, and to walk honorably before Him, and you
feel like you're missing out on something, that there's more
for you out in the world, the world has more to offer, and
you stop rejoicing in Christ, in this hope, firm until the
end, that'll make a man fall away and prove he never had confidence
in Christ and never rejoiced in the hope of Christ at all. But you that have your confidence
in Him, you'll continue firm to the end. You that rejoice
in the hope, you'll hold fast firm to the end. This is because
of the unction. Go to 1 John chapter 2. 1 John chapter 2. It's giving you that unction.
This is Christ in you. It's the Spirit of Christ in
you. And this is what's going to keep you right here. 1 John 2.18. Little children, that's what we all are, little
children, it is the last time. As you've heard that Antichrist
shall come, even now are there many Antichrists. whereby we
know it's the last time. In our text, the Lord was dealing
with some anti-Christ. They're going to totally reject
Christ in the next few verses of our text. We'll see that another
time, but they're going to reject Him. They're anti-Christ. John was there. He was there.
He wrote John 6, telling us what happened when Christ was preaching
that day, and many who claimed to be His disciples left Christ
and walked with Him no more. He saw that. And look what John
writes here, verse 19. They went out from us, but they
were not of us. For if they had been of us, they
would no doubt have continued with us. But they went out that
they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. When
those went away that day, they manifest they weren't his true
disciples. If they were, they'd have done
what Peter and John and the other disciples did. Lord, to whom
shall we go? Look, verse 20, but you have
an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. Christ said, he said, if you're
my disciples, you'll continue in my word, and you shall know
the truth. You know all things. He's given
you the unction, you know all things. I've not written to you
because you know not the truth, but because you know it. That
no liar is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth
that Jesus is the Christ? He's anti-Christ. That denieth
the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the
same hath not the Father. That's what Christ's gonna tell
them later. You don't know the Father. You don't have the Father
because you don't believe me. That's what he's gonna tell them.
But he that acknowledges the Son has the Father also. Let
that therefore abide in you which you've heard from the beginning.
Where'd John get that? He heard Christ say, if you continue
in my word, you're my disciples indeed. That's what he's saying. Let that word abide in you which
you've heard from the beginning. If that which you've heard from
the beginning shall remain in you, you also shall continue
in the Son and in the Father. You see the order here is His
word, His unction abiding in you is going to make you continue.
And this is the promise that He's promised us Eternal life. He said the truth will make you
free. He makes you free, and he's gonna continue to keep you
free, and in the end, he's gonna make you enter into that glorious
liberty, that glorious freedom of the sons of God. Eternal life,
in glory with him. You have it now, but you're gonna
enter into it. These things have I written unto
you concerning them that seduce you. It's concerning men that
would tell you there's something else besides Christ. Look to
Christ. But the anointing which you have
received of him abideth in you. And you need not let any man
teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and
is truth, and is no lie, even as it hath taught you, you shall
abide in him. You shall abide in Him. And now,
little children, abide in Him, that when He shall appear, we
may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. That's the only way we're not
going to be ashamed when Christ returns, is if we're in Him.
That tells us what we need. That's why Paul said, everything
I once counted dear, I counted loss. And it's no loss at all,
it's just done. that I might win Christ and be
found in Him, not having anything of myself, no righteousness of
the Lord, nothing of myself to commend me. I trust that He's
my righteousness, I trust He's my forgiveness, justification
from my sin, and I trust that He is all. And He's gonna keep
us looking to Him so that we're gonna be found in Him. That's
what John's saying. This is how you're going to persevere.
We're kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.
It's ready to be revealed. It's already ready. He made it
ready for somebody. He made it ready for his people. So when he gives you faith, he's
not going to let you fall away. He's going to bring you into
it because he made it ready for you. He said, I'll make an everlasting
covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do
them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts and they
shall not depart from me. The world doesn't look upon believers
as being anything or anybody, and often look upon us as in
the trials and the hardships and things you go through and
think, why on earth do they believe him? Why do they believe the
Lord? And they think they have freedom. The worldly man thinks he has
freedom. That's not freedom. There's freedom. Freedom is in
the heart. Freedom is in the conscience.
Knowing you're accepted of God and God receives you. That's
freedom. That's the freedom that gives
you power to walk. That's the freedom that gives
you power to keep state on Him. He said, I'm not going to turn
from you to do you good. Everything He's doing for us
in this life, as bad as it may appear to you and me, as bad
as it may appear to this world, it's good. Everything. Everything. Everything. And He's not going
to let you who are His depart from Him. Now, let me say this,
because this is important. A true believer can look like
he's departing from the Lord. He can. Sooner or later, I'm
going to preach on that text with David. David went down to
the enemy a second time and stayed a year and a half with the enemy.
Became the bodyguard of the king of Goth and was going to war
against his own people. You wouldn't have looked at him
and thought, that's a man after God's own heart. Well, what he
was doing, that wasn't after God's own heart, but he was still
the man after God's own heart. That really shows us this thing
is not based on good or evil in us. It's based on his free
grace, on Christ's righteousness, on what he's done and who he
is to us, and he's going to keep his people. And knowing that,
this is what that should make us do. That should make us be
gentle and try to speak the gospel to those that look like they're
departing. Because law's not gonna bring
them back. You can whip them all you want
to. You can throw things at them and throw the word at them and
throw gospel precepts at them and just make them hurt in their
conscience. That ain't bringing them back.
That didn't bring you to Christ. I made this mistake in the early
go. Folks would come in, they would sit down, they would be
complaining about this and that, and they'd go out and they wouldn't
be here for a month. And when they'd come in, I'd
preach about the importance of being on the sound of the gospel.
You know what I should have been preaching on? Christ the gospel. Because they were there then.
I should be preaching on Christ right then so they hear Him while
they're there. Because that's the only way He's
going to give you a heart to want to sit and hear Him having all
your confidence in Him and rejoicing in Him. But putting a guilt chip
on people is not going to bring them to Christ. It's not. Letting them know how much you
disapprove of what they're doing is not going to bring them to
Christ. Christ is who brings us to Christ.
Preaching Him. Declaring Him. reminding each
other of what he's done. You know, when you stand up and
preach, you're preaching to folks who are sinners. And you may
have people come in that you know are profane sinners. You preach the same Christ to
them that you preach to everybody else. And so, you may see somebody
who looks like they're walking away from the gospel. Well, you
know this, if they're His, He's not going to let them go. What's
going to help them? Remind them of that. Remind them
of what Christ has done, what He is doing, what He shall do.
Speak of consolation. Speak of what He's taught you
when you tried to do the same thing. Have you ever tried to
leave Him? What did He do for you when you tried to leave Him?
Well, if you've never tried to leave Him, and he's never done
anything for you to keep you, you're unqualified to talk to
that one who's going away because you don't know a thing about
it. But if you're his, I just believe you probably know something
about it. Because we commit sin every day, and every day he's
keeping you coming to him. In some way, shape, form, every
day, you're experiencing this as a believer. And if there's
ever been a big thing that brought you to see your inability and
see that he was the only one that saved you from you, that's
what to talk about to that person who's trying to walk away, about
how he brought you back and what he did for you. Isn't that what
the Lord said, told everybody he healed, everybody he saved,
he said, go tell them what the Lord's done for you. The Lord will not cast off His
people. He will not forsake His inheritance. Where's His inheritance? He's
not gonna forsake that which is His prized possession. They that trust in the Lord should
be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever. Why? As the mountains are round
about Jerusalem, so is the Lord round about His people from henceforth
forever. You know when David went down
there and he was total unbelief and he was down there in total
unbelief walking under the dominion of his flesh is what he was doing.
A child of God, born of God, born of the Spirit who was overcome
by his sinful flesh. You know the whole time he was
there the Lord had him hedged about. There was not any remote possibility
David was going to go into war against his own people. He was
headed that way, but it wasn't going to happen. And the Lord tore his house down,
brought him down to dust and ashes, literally. But he didn't let him go. The
Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this
time forth even forevermore. By Christ, we begin in faith.
By Christ, we're going to continue in faith. He said, I promised the Father
I'd raise them all up. I'm raising them all up. Nobody's
going to plug them out of my hand. Look back at Hebrews 11.
Let's end with this. Here's what all who are his true
disciples. You get the point here. I'm just
trying to be as simple as I can be. He said, if you continue
in my word, you are my disciples indeed. It's going to be proven
that you were really made my disciples. You're not going to
turn away. You're going to be beset often. You know, that path
we're running, believers Believers can slip and fall. He says they
fall multiple times. But he says underneath of the
everlasting arms. Beset means you try to turn out
of the way. What's his chastening hand about? Keeping you partaking
of his holiness. He's going to keep you there.
You're not all going to run at the same pace. Not all going
to... Some are going to walk. Some
are going to be crawling. But he's going to keep all his
people going toward him. That Mississippi River is always
flowing through the ocean. But sometimes it's not flowing
south. Sometimes it's flowing north
and east and west. But it's always headed to the
same mark. And he's going to keep you going to him, heading
to him. But it's a long journey. He didn't
just bring them into Canaan. He let them go all through that
wilderness. And He's going to bring us all
through this wilderness. But here's what all of them have
in common that begin in faith. Hebrews 11, verse 13. These all
died in faith. And that's going to be true of
everyone that He's called. You're going to die in faith.
Those saints, it says, they didn't receive the promises, they saw
them afar off, they were persuaded of them, they embraced them,
they confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. So
He's going to confirm us to the end. He that begun a work in
you, a good work in you, He's going to perform it to the end.
And it's going to be said of all His people, these all died
in faith. That's what He means. If He's
made you His disciple, that will be the sure end. By Him making
you free and keeping you free and being the power, you're going
to end in faith. Amen. Let's stand together. Father, thank You for this Word.
We ask You to bless it and keep us. Lord, we really need You
constantly, every hour. We need Thee every hour. Lord, keep us from straying. Keep our hearts on You. Keep
our path straight. Make us walk toward You. Turn
us from our besetting sins. Lord, we pray for our brethren
who may appear to be going out of
the way. We pray, Lord, You would keep them, keep them looking
to You. Lord, we pray for those that are sick today and have
bodily infirmities. We know so many people just can't
be here. Age gets us and infirmities get
us and help us remember that. Encourage them when we can speak
with them and give them grace and power, Lord, by your mercy
to come and hear when they can. But keep your people, Lord. We
know you will. We thank you. Keep us looking to You. Forgive
us, Lord, our sin. Help teach us how to be helpers. Thank You, Lord, in Christ's
name. Amen.