Are you able to provide that
which God requires in order for you to be saved? Now that is
a serious, serious question. Are you able to provide to God
that which God requires in order to be saved? You know, it's amazing
to me how many folks who seem to think that they can. The answer
to that is no. You and I cannot provide that
which God requires. And the reason for this kind
of thinking as far as men and women thinking that they can,
first, I believe, is because men and women and sinners don't
understand that a holy and perfect God requires perfection. They think that God somehow is
pleased with our feeble and sinful efforts. But He requires perfection. It must be perfect to be accepted,
God said. Except nothing less than perfection. Sinners must provide a perfect
holiness and righteousness to be accepted by God. Secondly,
men and women don't understand that they're spiritually dead.
It don't take long to talk to a man or a woman to know that
they don't understand that they're spiritually dead. They talk about
what they do. But what can a dead man or woman
do? Physically speaking, those that are dead, we know they can
do nothing to help themselves. Why would someone think you crazy
if you said, I have a dead friend that did this? Well, you're nuts. And they would be, but that also
applies to those who are spiritually dead. They can do nothing. They're dead in trespasses and
sin. And this outlandish thought of
being able to do a work of righteousness that God would accept, this thought
of self-supplying, self-achieving redemption, that's what it is,
came about immediately after man had sinned. This is not something
that man evolved into. I mean as soon as man fell in
the garden. As soon as Adam and Eve sinned,
they immediately tried to do something by the work of their
own hands to cover themselves. Because of the curse of sin,
mankind believes that they have the divine ability to cover their
sin and put it away by the work of their own hands. The natural
man believes that he is his own God. In Genesis chapter 3, you
don't have to turn there, but we have that sad account of the
result of that serpent's great lie to the woman. And it's recorded
there so that we can look upon our first parents and see how
they are found immediately after they fell in sin. God said, if
you eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, you shall surely
die. And Satan disputed God's word
and said, you shall not surely die. God told you that because
He knows that if and when you eat of that tree, your eyes will
be opened. You see, God's trying to keep
you in the dark. And you shall be as God's, knowing
good and evil. Now listen, Eve chose to believe
the lie. Whose word will you believe?
The heavenly Father or the Father of lies? Both cannot be right. And I borrow the words of Paul
who wrote, I fear, I fear, lest by any means as the serpent beguiled,
tricked, deceived Eve through his subtlety, through his craftiness,
through his cunningness, so your minds should be corrupted, shriveled,
withered, that's what that word means, from the simplicity that
is in Christ. Can you hear me say this all
the time? It's not that men and women don't understand what God's
Word says concerning salvation. It's not that. I can assure you
it's not that. Why? Because our message is simple. There's great simplicity in the
preaching of Christ. The simplicity that is in Christ
is this. And much more. God requires perfection. We've already said that. You
and I are anything but. Jesus Christ was the perfect
man. God-man. God and man. You and I are great sinners.
Jesus Christ had no sin. You and I are nothing but sin.
Is that hard to understand? That's simple, isn't it? Jesus
Christ was made sin, made to be what you and I are, that we
might be made what He is, perfectly righteous. Jesus Christ has to
atone for your sin in order for your sins to be put away. Jesus
Christ has to pay for your sin debt. Jesus Christ must take
your sin upon Him. Jesus Christ alone must make
us righteous. Christ alone must exhaust and
satisfy the justice of God that is against you or you will forever
perish. Anything you don't understand
about that? Simplicity that's in Christ. There's nothing hard
to understand about the simple declaration of these truths. Yet, it is impossible to believe
these truths apart from the revelation of God. Don't eat that fruit that God
forbids. Not fruit at all. Don't buy into
that thought that you know what's best. Don't be deceived from the simplicity
in Christ. You know, that's how we wound
up in the mess that we're in now. And when the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wife, she took of the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her,
and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig
leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Now, would these man-made
aprons of decaying fig leaves that were separated from the
vine, that's what gave them life. You separate a leaf from the
tree and it'll soon wither and die, won't it? It'll soon just
disintegrate and your nakedness would then be again exposed. This fig leaf righteousness,
that's what it represents. Will these man-made aprons cover
you? Before a thrice holy God? No. And then we read in Genesis 3.21,
unto Adam also and to his wife, did the Lord make coats of skins
and clothe them. That's the only hope that you
and I have, that God may clothe us. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission for sin, Hebrews 9.22. Turn with me to
Matthew chapter 20 if you would. Matthew chapter 20. We'll begin
reading in verse 17. Matthew chapter 20 verse 17. And Jesus going up to Jerusalem
took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them,
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be betrayed
unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn
him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and
to scourge and to crucify him, and the third day he'll rise
again. Now the first thing that I want
us to see in our text is this. It's the Lord's announcement
of His own approaching death. This is the third time that the
Lord gives His disciples notice of His impending betrayal. This is the third time that He's
told them of His earthly condemnation. This is the third time that He's
told him that he's going to be murdered by death of crucifixion. And each time, each time that
He said it all three times, He said, and the third day he shall
rise again. He didn't leave that out. This
time our Lord was going to Jerusalem not to celebrate the Passover,
but He was going to Jerusalem to offer Himself as the Great
Passover. And can you imagine? I thought
about this. Can you imagine the suffering? That's really what it is. Imagine
the suffering that would be brought about by knowing what awaited
us in this life. You know, I think sometimes we
think we'd like to know what lies ahead. I don't think we
would, really. Truly, it's a blessing from God not to know how and
when we're going to leave this earthly life. How different we
would act, how different we'd live, how different we'd carry
on if we knew the unknown. We walk by faith, not by sight. From the beginning, now you think
about this, from the beginning Christ knew that one of His disciples
would betray Him. Before Judas ever joined Him,
He knew that Judas would betray Him. I wonder how much of a friend
He'd have been to me if I'd have known that. Christ knew that
one of His dearest friends, Peter, would deny Him three times. Oh,
he loved Peter, but he knew from the beginning that Peter would
deny him. I wonder how I would have acted towards Peter if I'd
have known that. The Lord Jesus knew the fierce persecution that
he'd face from those religious leaders of the Jews who were
of his chosen nation. Those who claimed to love God.
He knew the unjust judgment that he'd receive at the hand of Pontius
Pilate. Before He ever went to Jerusalem,
He told His disciples three different times that these things would
come to pass. Our Lord knew that those whom
He had created would one day mock Him, beat Him, place a crown
of thorns on His head, and He saw the nails that would be driven
into His hands and feet, and He saw the cross upon which He
would hang and die. He even saw that spear that would
be thrust into His side. Yet, none of these things moved
him. Through the prophet Isaiah, hundreds
and hundreds of years before, he said, I was not rebellious,
neither turned away my back. I gave my back to the smiters
and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, and I hid not my
face from shame and spitting. He knew before they ever came
to pass. His whole life, Christ saw Calvary
in the distance. As He laid hands on the sick
and they recovered, as He cast devils out of those who were
possessed, still He could see Calvary, the light ahead. His
whole life He walked calmly towards Calvary. He never turned to the
right or to the left. Then on top of all that, you
consider that He went to the cross voluntarily. He suffered
intentionally. He suffered deliberately. He
died according to his own free will. You want to talk about
free will? There's free will. He said, I
lay down my life. No man taketh it from me, but
I lay it down of myself. He knew that He was the Lamb
of God who must die to take away the sin of His elect in the world. He knew that His death was the
appointed sacrifice. Knowing all things, He went willingly. Isn't that amazing? He went willingly,
deliberately, intentionally to the cross. His heart was set
on finishing that work that God gave Him to do before the foundation
of the world. He was well aware that the salvation
of his people depended totally upon his own death. The next
thing we see here is that mixture of both faith and ignorance found
in the most dedicated believer. Verse 20, look at it with me.
Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons,
that being James and John. They came worshiping Him. They came to Him in the right
way. But they came worshiping Him and desiring a certain thing
of Him. And He said unto her, What wilt
thou? And she said unto Him, Grant
that these My two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand and
the other on the left, in thy kingdom." You know, James and
John were two of His first three disciples. They and Peter seemed
to be his favorite, and I say that because they accompanied
him at the Mount of Transfiguration. He took with him Peter, James,
and John. In the Garden of Gethsemane,
when he poured out his soul unto death, he took with him Peter,
James, and John. And John, the disciple who referred
to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and I believe only
because he could never get over Christ's love for him. I don't
believe that John thought that he was special. I believe that
John just said, I'm the one whom Jesus loves. Can you believe
that? That he would love me? That's why John referred to himself
that way. And their mother asked that they
may in heaven's glory sit one at his right hand and the other
on his left. Now in Mark's account, Mark chapter
10, you don't have to turn there, their mother's not mentioned
here. Mark tells us that they themselves made this selfish
request. There's a great lesson for us
to learn here. Well, what is it? Even those who know and love
Christ are still at their best state. The most faithful men,
at their best state, are altogether vanity. We're so selfish by nature. We're so self-centered. We're
so full of pride and thoughts of self. Pride is one of the
oldest and most wicked sins. By it, the angels fell and kept
not their first estate. Through pride, our first parents
ate of the forbidden fruit. Pride is a coat that we put on
first and take off last. James and John seemed to have
immediately forgotten all that our Lord had just said about
how He must suffer. Their selfish minds can think
of nothing but themselves. Their prideful thoughts were
full of nothing but His throne. Their main concern was their
preeminence. There was some faith in their
request, we have to admit that. They believed Christ to be the
King of Glory. They believed and recognized
that He would sit upon a heavenly throne. There was something to
be commended in what they said, but they display their ignorance
by soon forgetting that their friend, their Lord, their Redeemer,
must be crucified before He could ever reign. Truly the flesh lusteth against
the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and all the children
of God. And truly our flesh always seeks to be glorified before
it's crucified. We've got a picture of that here.
Now listen to me. Men and women have a wrong perception
of heaven when they expect heaven to give us crowns and rewards. A man starts talking about crowns
and rewards in heaven, I'm telling you, he has no understanding
at all of what heaven is. Christ alone is our eternal reward. Do sinners really believe that
because of some quality and value of their own that some will reign
higher in heaven? I remember years ago someone
said to Brother Winford Cavanaugh, I said, y'all going to be waiting
on tables on us in heaven. And Winford said, will Christ
be there? And he said, oh yeah, Christ will be there. And he
said, that's fine with me. As long as Christ's there, I'll
wait on tables. It don't make any difference.
Why? Because Christ is our reward. That's all that matters. Truly
we see in part and we know in part the things of God. And it's
true that we have enough faith to follow Christ. I have enough
faith to know where else would I go. He has the words to eternal
life. I have enough knowledge to hate
my sin. Not as I ought, but I do hate
it. I have enough understanding not to love the world and the
things of it. Yet our insight into our own hearts is very small. Because of that, we commit many
sad and pathetic mistakes. We must learn now, we've got
to learn that our own nature is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked. We talked about that in the first
hour today, those that are pure in heart. By nature, we're not
pure in heart. Our heart is deceitful and desperately
wicked. Only God can know it. We don't
know it. We don't know it. God reveals
a little of it to us, enough for us to cry unto Christ for
help, but only God truly knows the heart of man. Oh, our insight
into our own hearts, not very strong. How absurd. We plainly see that, don't we?
How absurd James and John's request was, especially in the light
of what the Lord had just told them. Look at verse 16. Look at what our Lord said. He
said, So the last shall be first, and the first last. Boy, that
went right over their heads, didn't it? Lord, when You come
into Your glory, let me and my brother sit on Your right and
left hand. They wanted to be first. He had
just said the first would be last. The Lord asked in the book of
Jeremiah, he said, seekest thou great things for thyself? We're seeking wrong if we're
seeking that way. How could they now ask such a
vain and prideful thing? How could they? The same reason
we do. All we are and all we do is tainted
by sin, affected by sin. My best thought, my best prayer,
my best message. Full of sin. The flesh wars against
the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. As long as we're in
these bodies of death, the battle continues. Until we're completely
conformed to the image of our Lord and Savior. Until our corruption
has put on incorruption, and our mortality has put on immortality,
we're going to battle with these things. Now, thirdly, here we
must consider a very urgent question. In verse 22, look at it with
me. Jesus answered and said, you know not what you asked.
Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of and to
be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized with? Now the
Lord exposes their ignorance here and ours by saying, you
know not what you ask. We think we know, but we don't
know much, do we? He said, you don't know what
you're asking to sit one on the right and one on the left. They
had asked to share in their master's reward without considering at
all that they must first partake of his sufferings. They had forgotten
that those who would stand with Christ in glory must first drink
of His cup and be baptized with His baptism. Do you and I ever
commit the same mistake that the sons of Zebedee did? They
know not what they ask. And most of the time we don't
either. Do we ever fall into their error and make thoughtless,
inconsiderate requests unto our God? Have you considered these
heart-searching questions that our Lord asks? Will you consider
them with me now? Are you and I able to drink of
the cup that Christ drank of? Are you and I able to be baptized
with the baptism of our Lord, the baptism that He was baptized
with? You know, we ask our Lord to save us and receive us into
His glory. That's a good request. That's
a good desire, isn't it? But are we able to take up the
cross and follow Christ? Are we willing and able to give
up the world for His sake? We ask the Lord to take away
our sin and give us His perfect righteousness. Isn't that a wonderful
desire? But are we able? Do we have the
ability? That's what that's asking. Do
you have the ability to put off the old man and put on the new
one? Are we able to fight, to labor,
to run with patience the race that is set before us to obtain
these things? We beg our God to be conformed
to the image of Christ. To be made like Him. so that
when God sees us, he may say, this is my beloved child in whom
I'm well pleased. But are we able to withstand
a taunting and mocking world and endure many hardships for
Christ's sake? Our Lord said, for which of you
intending to build a tower sitteth not down first and counteth the
cost? Whether ye have sufficient to
finish it, lest happily, after he hath laid the foundation,
is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock,
saying, This man began to build and wasn't able to finish. We ask that our God would make
us holy, and unblameable, and unreprovable. What a good prayer
that is! Are we able to be sanctified
by fire and purified by affliction? Our Lord, in just three words,
asked that question that should forever, ever burn in our minds
and our hearts. Are ye able? Are you able to be weaned from
this world by trouble and drawn nearer to God by losses and sicknesses
and sorrow? And I know these are hard questions,
but they're needful ones. Are you able to drink of the
cup that Christ drank from? Now I'm speaking of that bitter
cup of suffering. That's what this is talking about.
This is speaking of that cup of God's holy fury. This is speaking of that cup
of God's wrath and indignation. Are you able to drink of that
cup? I speak of that cup of God's fierce anger and wrath. Are you
able to drink of His cup? The cup of which Christ spoke
when He said, Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will,
but as thou wilt." This is speaking of that cup which he said, if
this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will
be done. Are you able to say, Lord, thy
will be done? Are you able to drink this cup?
Oh, I sincerely ask you, are you? Are you able to be baptized
into Christ's baptism? I refer to that baptism, Our
Lord, which Paul referred to in Romans chapter 6, as a baptism
into death. I refer to that baptism that
immerses the sinner in the waters of affliction and suffering. Are you able to be baptized in
that baptism, into that baptism? Are you able to be baptized into
Christ baptism? The baptism that I speak of is
done here. Not here in this tub behind me. And it's in the baptism of the
heart that makes us want to get baptized into this tub. And the question of this hour
is this, are ye able? And again in verse 22 we read,
are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of? Are
you able to be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized
with? And they say unto him, we are
able. Just as they knew not what they
asked, they knew not what they answered. Had they answered correctly? Obviously they knew not what Christ's cup was nor what
His baptism was. And you know those that are usually
most competent in themselves are those that are least acquainted
with Christ and His cross. Sad but true. Yet, they answered correctly. How can that be? Well, notice
our Lord's response in verse 23. And He saith unto them, Ye
shall drink indeed of My cup. and be baptized with the baptism
that I'm baptized with. How so, Lord? How so? I want
to know. How can that be? Well, we are able only as we
are enabled by God. We are able only as we are enabled
in Christ. We are able only as we are enabled
by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Our Lord
said, I'm the vine, and you're the branches, and he that abideth
in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth fruit, much fruit. For without me, you can do nothing. Nothing. Not a little, not some
things, nothing. Paul later on wrote, I can do
all things. How can you do all things, Paul?
Without Christ you can do nothing. Paul said, that's how I can do
all things. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth
me. I can do all things through Christ
who enables me. In whom we have redemption. In
whom we have been enabled, that's what that means. In whom we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according
to the riches of His grace. In whom all God's people also
have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according
to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel
of His will. How are we enabled? In whom ye
also trusted after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel
of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed. So I leave you again with the
question, are you able? I am if Christ enables me. You
are if Christ enables you. May God enable us to trust in
Him and Him alone. Danny, would you dismiss us in
prayer?