All right. Good morning. Our text is going to be taken
from 2 John. 2 John, verse 9. John there writes, Whosoever transgresseth and abideth
not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine
of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. I want to speak
to you today about the doctrine of Christ. And the doctrine of
Christ is the word that Christ himself preached, what he spoke
when he was here in the flesh. He said to the Jews, if ye continue
in my word, if you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples
indeed. we abide in the Word, the doctrine
of Christ. And this doctrine, it's revealing
to us who Christ is, who our salvation is. It's revealing
that Christ is in all the scriptures. And we learn who he is, why he
came, what he accomplished, and why we worship Christ. Why do
we worship the Lord Jesus Christ? And so this whole Bible, this
whole book, these scriptures here, they declare the Lord Jesus
Christ. They speak of him. And so this
word, it concerns Christ. It's the word that he puts in
our hearts. He gives us this word. This is
how we are set free from sin and from darkness and our bondage. And this word is the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's Christ. I've titled this
message, Abiding in Christ. Abiding meaning continuing, continuing
in Christ. Now, I don't think I can stress
it enough, the importance of Christ to the believer, to the
Christian believer, because The religion of flesh, the religion
of this world, they take salvation and they defile it. They strip
it of truth. They strip the truth of God,
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they turn men and women back
to their flesh. They turn them to the flesh.
Really, the majority of religion today is nothing more than someone
identifying themselves as a Christian, or as a Catholic, or as a Hindu. And Christianity is just made
into something that's a lie, like all other dead, false religions
out there in the world. That's because they've stripped
it of the only one who is life. the Lord Jesus Christ. And so our hope, the hope that believers
have, is fixed in the Lord Jesus Christ himself. We're called
Christians because our name is from him. The Christians were
first called Christians in Antioch by unbelievers, by those who
didn't believe, because they are followers of the Lord Jesus
Christ. We look to him, we hope in him,
we worship him. We have no life apart from the
Lord Jesus Christ. And so this faith that we speak
of, This Christian faith that we speak of, all our faith, all
our hope, all our confidence rests upon the Lord Jesus Christ
himself. It's not resting in us. It's
resting in Christ himself. And so the scriptures, they declare
who Christ is. They declare who Christ is. And
we learn from the scriptures that Christ is fully God, and
he's fully man. Regarding his deity, if you turn
over to John chapter one, John chapter one, it speaks of the
word and the word creating all that we see. We're told in John
one, verse one, in the beginning was the word,
And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. So we see that this Word being
spoken of is very God, is very God. All things were made by
Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. And if you
think about it in Genesis 1-3, God said, Let there be light. And there was light. That spoken
word created the light. And it created the heavens and
the earth and everything that we see in them. And this word
is the Lord Jesus Christ. And I know that it's the Lord
Jesus Christ because he tells us right in verse 14, John 1,
14, and the word was made flesh. and dwelt among us. And we beheld
his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth." And so this word is the Lord Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is very God. He is fully God. And we're told he became flesh. He's fully God and fully man. And the Son of God, He came in
the flesh and He dwelt among the people. And this is a mystery. I don't understand this fully,
how He can be fully God and fully man. I don't understand it. But
I believe it. I believe it by faith. I receive
it by faith because God tells me this is who He is. And we're told this is a mystery.
a mystery to us. And without controversy, Paul
said, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in
the flesh. He came in the flesh and stood
before us and declared the doctrine of Christ, declared Christ. He declared who God is and revealed
him to us. And so this mystery of the doctrine
of Christ and the Lord our God, what he's doing is he's given
us the gospel whereby we preach and declare our Lord, our Savior,
our salvation, our hope that men and women in darkness and
in death, and having no knowledge of God, that they might hear
and know who the true and living God is. And our God graciously
comes upon whom He will, and He reveals that word in our hearts,
whereby we hear it and receive it by faith. And we believe Him. And He makes us to know it that
we may understand and know the salvation of our God, what He's
done for us. And so by faith we see the Son
of God who humbled Himself coming in this flesh. God taking upon
Him the weakness of this flesh. And He came to His people. He
came to the Jews who were looking for him. According to the scriptures,
they were to look for him. They knew what they were looking
for, and yet they didn't. And when he stood before them,
they reviled him. They despised him. They rejected
his word. They rejected his person. They
did not hear him. They did not believe on him.
And this was foretold. long before he came. This was
told that this would happen when he came so that we know this
is the very son of God, the very promised one whom the father
said he would send to save his people from their sins. Isaiah,
about 700 years before Christ was born in the flesh, said that
he is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces
from him. We didn't want to look at him.
We didn't want to look upon him. We thought nothing of him. He
was despised, and we esteemed him not. We lightly esteemed
him. We had no regard for his person
or his word. Why did the Son of God come?
Why did the Son of God come to this earth, taking upon Him flesh? Why would He come into this world
that He created as a lowly servant in the flesh, knowing, telling
us that He was going to be despised and rejected by the people? Why
did He come? Well the reason why he came,
the scriptures tell us the reason that Christ came was to save
his people from their sins. He came to deliver his people
from the condemnation that we are now under because of our
sins. And he came to restore his people
in righteousness. He came to restore his people
in righteousness. Paul says, when he was writing
to Timothy, he said, this is a faithful saying, and it's worthy
of all acceptation. All men and women should receive
this truth and receive it as the truth, that Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners. And the Apostle Paul said, of
whom I am chief. of whom I'm chief. And that's
what the Lord reveals to his people through the preaching
of the gospel. He's showing us our need. He's
showing us that we're sinners. That he's merciful and gracious
to us, not because we're good and perfect and righteous of
ourselves and our own works. He's merciful and gracious to
us because we have no righteousness of our own. He showed us our
need of Him. And so the preaching of Christ,
it's to reveal the answer to this question. Am I a sinner? Am I the sinner? Did Christ come
for me? Have I so offended holy God and
sinned against His light and His word that I'm kicked out,
that I'm rejected by God? Do I need a Savior? and the coming
of Christ in the flesh reveals, yes, we need a Savior, we need
salvation because we are not righteous and we cannot make
a righteousness for ourselves to be accepted by God. So Christ came to do that which
we cannot do for ourselves. And so today, there are people
that call themselves Christian. There's many people that call
themselves Christians because they grew up in a Christian household
or they think they grew up in a Christian nation, but they
don't know that they're sinners. They look at people outside the
church and they say they need Jesus, but they don't see how
they themselves continually need the Savior themselves. We that
are here are sinners saved. We continue to depend upon Christ,
to feed upon Him, to need Him, and to desire Him. We look to
Him for all our grace and to provide all that we need to stand
before God in the day of judgment. A Christian is someone who trusts
Christ for all their righteousness, who has been stripped down, humbled,
brought low, to see that we're nothing in ourselves, that God
is holy, of purer eyes than to look upon me and be pleased and
satisfied with what he sees. He's holy, righteous, and just
in all his ways. And so the Christian is taught
that the true child of God, the true Christian, one who is made
so by the Lord and His mercy, we're brought to see that we
have no righteousness of our own. And we're brought to hear
and to know He, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Christ sent of God to
save His people from their sins. And so every true believer in
Christ is a sinner, and we confess it. that in me there's no good
thing. I have no righteousness to recommend
me to God. I'm looking to the one whom he's
declared is the salvation for his people, the Lord Jesus Christ. We read in the scriptures that
all we, all of us here, including especially us who believe on
Christ, all we like sheep have gone astray. We've wandered off
to our own way to do our own thing, and we've turned away
from the Lord. We've turned to our own way.
And the only reason why we're here and brought back, looking
to Christ, hearing of Him, is because of His grace, which found
us in darkness, which found us lost in the bondage of sin, and
has turned our hearts and brought us back to Him. And our Lord,
when He was here in the flesh, He taught us what we are. He taught us that our hearts,
our natural hearts, are vile. full of sin and wickedness. Our Lord said, those things which
proceed out of the mouth, the things that I say, they're the
result of what's in here, of a wicked heart, of a heart of
darkness and sin. Those things which proceed out
of the mouth come forth from the heart and they defile the
man. For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts. The evil thoughts we think, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, blasphemies. These are the things which defile
a man. It's our own heart. It's not
just a matter of us stopping the outward act of certain things.
It's our heart that's defiled. It's our heart that's black with
sin. We need a cleansing from, not just from head to toe, but
inside and out. We need spiritual salvation.
We need something that only God can do for us. And the Lord's
teaching his people that we were ruined by the fall in Adam. This goes all the way back to
the beginning. When Adam sinned, there were
no children between he and Eve. All his seed remained in his
body. There were no children yet conceived,
let alone being born. And so when Adam rebelled against
God and sinned against God, he became corrupt. He became defiled
with sin. He died spiritually, and all
his seed in him died as well, so that when he and Eve began
to have children, we came forth being born of corrupt seed. That's why we sin. That's why
we don't believe God. That's why we're spiritually
dead, because we all came from Adam's corrupt seed. We're told
in Romans 5.12, As by one man sin entered the world, into the
world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for that
all have sinned. Every one of us have sinned and
come short of the glory of God. We all fail to worship and honor
God as he is rightly due. We ought to worship God always
and love Him always, yet we're corrupt sinners, and we fail
to do it. We love ourselves, and we worship
ourselves, and we defend ourselves, and we despise His Christ, except
He be merciful and gracious to us. So the doctrine of Christ,
that word of Christ, is revealing to us who He is, who our God
is, and who we are. And we learn of Him that He is
righteous, And I'm sin. He is light, and I'm darkness. He is salvation, and I need a
savior. I need his salvation. That's
what he's teaching his people. He's showing us that we cannot
save ourselves. And so he's the God-man, and
I'm the sinner. that Christ came to save. He
came to save sinners and all for whom He reveals that to in
their heart, showing them they can't save themselves but that
He is salvation. He came for them. He came for
His people to reveal to them who He is and His salvation. So Christ was sent of God into
the world to be the Savior of God's chosen elect people. Now we don't know who those chosen
elect are. God reveals them in their hearts. He reveals faith in their hearts,
whereby they look to Christ and confess Him and believe and call
upon Him. We're told in Ephesians 1-4 that
it's according as God hath chosen us in him before the foundation
of the world. Before we did any good or evil,
God chose a people as it pleased him, that we should be holy and
without blame before him in love. And so to that end, Christ came
and fulfilled all righteousness for his people. He kept the law
of God perfectly. because we can't, we don't keep
it perfectly, but Christ came and kept it perfectly and he
fulfilled all that the prophets wrote of him. Everything God
spoke of Christ long before he came, Christ fulfilled all that
word spoken of him. And even when one faithful prophet
John the Baptist, when he tried to stop Christ from being baptized,
our Lord said to him, suffer it to be so now. Allow it, don't
prevent it, let it happen. For thus it becometh us to fulfill
all righteousness. When our Savior fulfilled all
righteousness, He was fulfilling it for His people. He is our righteousness. And
so Christ, when He came into the world, He came without sin. And while He was here in the
world, He remained without sin. And even beyond that, He not
only has no sin, but He fulfilled all our righteousness. He is
our perfection and our hope. And so that he came in and made
himself the perfect fit sacrifice for his people. And he made himself
an offering unto the father. to redeem us, to purchase us,
to put away our sin, to shed His blood so that His blood covers
our sin and puts it away. And He gives His people life
in Himself and restores that fellowship between us and God. And we're born now of His seed. That's why in Christianity we
speak of regeneration. We speak of being born again. Because first we were born by
Adam's corrupt seed. There's no life in that. But
now we are born of Christ's spiritual seed, incorruptible seed, righteous
seed, whereby we're alive. And we know him and rejoice in
him. And so Hebrews 2.17 says, wherefore,
in all things, it behooved Christ. It was necessary for Christ to
be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation
for the sins of the people. And so Christ came into the world
because he alone is the Savior of the world. He came into the
world because He is the Savior of His people who cannot save
themselves. And so this brings us to what
Christ accomplished. We hear declared who He is, and
in that we see what we are, who we are. And we now know why He
came into the world. Well, did He accomplish what
He came into the world to do? Did He accomplish what He was
sent here to do? Yes He did. He came and accomplished
the forgiveness of the sins of His people. He came and accomplished
our redemption so that He now gives us eternal life and He
delivers us from eternal death. We looked at a verse from Hebrews
chapter 1 and back there in Hebrews 1 verses 5 through 7 we read
that God has predestinated us. He's predestinated us unto the
adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to
the good pleasure of his will. And it's to the praise of the
glory of his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the
beloved. In other words, it's the will
of God that his people should not remain in death and perish
in eternity in hell, but that we should be brought into the
family of God and we're brought into that family in Christ, through
Christ. through the righteousness of
the Lord Jesus Christ sent to save sinners and to make us to
know what he's done. And so the purpose of God was
to save his people. And Christ accomplished that.
He's not a failure of a Savior. He is the successful Savior and
he accomplished exactly what he came to do. He saved his people
when he was crucified on the tree as an offering to the Father.
And it's in him and him that we have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his
grace. So when Christ died, that reconciled
us to God. When he shed his blood, he justified
his people. were saved in Him. And the believer
knows now by the grace of God that when I die and stand before
holy God on the day of judgment, I have nothing to fear standing
in Christ. That man or woman who comes in
their own works, trying to work for their salvation, trying to
do enough good things to offset the bad things, they're going
to tremble in that day. They're going to be blown away
and carried away from God, from the presence of God, because
of their sins. Because we can never work off
our debt of sin that we've committed against God. We can never earn
a righteousness for ourselves. But that one who looks to Christ
and Christ alone has the righteousness of Christ and stands before God
perfect and accepted, received of Him. Jude writes of this,
that we stand faultless before the presence of His glory and
exceeding joy. If you would rest your head on
your pillow at night, having no fear or worry of death, look
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Rest in Him. alone because he
is the salvation God has provided for his people. So Christ did
not fail in his redemption. All for whom he died and shed
his blood, they shall be brought into a knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ. They are saved from the wrath
of God and because he saved his people, he gives them the gift. of the Holy Ghost, whereby we
know him, whereby we are separated out and brought under the preaching
of the gospel and are made to hear the glorious good news of
what Christ has done to save his people. Paul said, we're
bound to give thanks all the way to God for you, brethren,
beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen
you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the
truth. It pleases God to separate His
people out to this gospel to hear it and to believe the truth,
whereunto He called you by our gospel. just as I'm preaching
to you this morning, the Word of God, declaring the very doctrine
of Christ, because it's by this Word that the Lord is pleased
to take the truth of the Gospel and to apply it to the hearts
of His people. By His Word, secured in our heart
by the gift of grace, by His grace, we're delivered and set
free from that bondage, and so we're brought to the obtaining
of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so He makes His people
spiritually alive. In Adam we were spiritually dead,
in Christ we're spiritually alive. And our Lord cannot and will
not lose any of His sheep for whom He came to save. All shall
know Him and it'll be revealed to them by faith. They'll know
and rejoice in Him and they'll never fall away. They'll never
fall away though we go through trials and tribulations and persecutions
and hardships. The Lord keeps us and grows us
and settles us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this brings us to
why we worship Christ. We've heard that he is fully
God and he took upon him flesh. He's righteous and I'm sin. He alone is salvation and I cannot
save myself. And the Lord sent him. We've
heard he sent Christ into this world because he is the savior
of his people and that he's accomplished it. And that's why we worship
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the very salvation of his
people. And he did it for me. Those of
you who believe, those of you who hear of His righteousness
and His glory and believe Him, we rejoice in Him. He said to
Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will
have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then, it's
not of Him that willeth. It's not of the one who makes
a free will decision whether or not they're going to be a
Christian or not. They can take it or leave it,
and they just make a choice to be a Christian. That's not salvation. We don't save ourselves. It's
not of him that runneth, he says. It's not of that one who does
many good works to try and please God and offset their wickedness.
But it's of God who showeth mercy. Romans 9, 15, and 16. It's of
God who shows mercy. He chooses out whom He will,
and He sent His Son to save those whom He chose out. And Christ
offered Himself a perfect satisfaction unto the Father, and all who
look to Him and believe Him have eternal life and the forgiveness
of sins. And so we worship Him, we rejoice
in Him, we praise His name and speak of Him every time we come
together because He is our Savior. He's everything that we need
to stand before God. And that's just some of the many
ways in which we hear and learn the doctrine of Christ. It's
His Word which He taught concerning Himself, which He reveals to
us in these scriptures by the Spirit applying it to our hearts.
So I pray that He continue to grow us in the grace and knowledge
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, because that pleases
God, that we grow in Him and know Him and serve Him. So I
pray the Lord bless that word to your hearts, brethren. All right, we're gonna close in prayer,
and then we'll take a 15-minute break. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your mercy. Lord, we thank you that you give it
to your people, this word, that you sow it in our hearts, that
you fix it in our hearts so that it can never be lost. And Lord,
you've given us hope and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to look
to him alone for all our salvation. and all our righteousness. And
we thank you, Lord, for this accomplished work in the Savior.
Lord, we pray that you will continue to bless your people, to reveal
your son more and more to us in the preaching of the gospel,
as we read your word, and as we speak to one another, that
we would speak of these edifying things in the body of Christ.
Lord, we thank you for our visitors today. We pray that you would
bless them and give them safe travel mercies, bring them home
safely. And Lord, we pray for those that
are sick and not doing well. and pray that you would heal
their bodies, that you would give their doctors wisdom and
help them to be compliant and do the things they need to do.
Lord, we pray for your mercy and kindness. And we even think
of those that are not in this fellowship that are struggling
and suffering. Lord, we ask that you would use
it to teach your people, call them out of darkness, and bring
them into the fold of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in his name
that we pray and give thanks. Amen. All right, so 15 minutes.