Thank you, Brad. Thank you, Phil.
I hope the Lord blesses you in proportion to His grace. I really
do. I pray He would bless us also
in proportion to His grace. Everything we ask of the Lord,
we want Him to give it according to His goodness. And so we always
ask in His name, don't we? We ask that he would do what
he does for us according to his name, for his name's sake. That
means to glorify himself, to do what is good in his sight,
to do what brings him honor, what fulfills his will and his
desire and his delight. We want him to do what he wants
to do, don't we? Do your will. That's our prayer. On earth as it is in heaven,
I don't want my will done. I do for the moment, it seems
like, and I get frustrated when things don't go my way, but ultimately,
I only want what the Lord Jesus Christ wants. I want his will
to be done. And I know that His will is good. His will is a saving will. What
a blessing that is. I so much enjoy hearing the Bible
reading and the prayers and the songs. It's such a delight. You know, give me the, there
was a man I was reading about, he was a martyr, and he said,
if the whole world was gold, I would rather spend my life
in prison with my family than to have the world. And yet, I
would rather live without my family than to live without Christ. And so that's the way that God,
he causes us. I remember as a child thinking
I needed to do certain things. read the Bible or witness or
whatever it was, pray, and I just couldn't make those things happen.
And then, somehow, in my sinfulness, the Lord showed me that it was
all entirely the will of God and the work of Christ and nothing
of myself that would make me acceptable in his sight. And
things started happening then that I could never produce. I trust that's the Lord's work.
Sometimes I pray, Lord, if I have found grace in your sight, in
the Lord Jesus Christ, then give me the ability to understand,
to know him, and to declare his word. He has to do that in spite of
my sinfulness, but I wanna bring a message today from John chapter
seven in verse 46. If you wanna look at that verse,
it says in John chapter seven, in verse 45, then came the officers
to the chief priests and Pharisees, because the chief priests and
the Pharisees had sent these arresting officers to go get
Jesus. And they said to them, the Pharisees
and the chief priests said to the officers, why have you not
brought him? And verse 46, the officers answered,
never man spake like this man. That's why. Never man spake like
this man. That's the title of my message
today. It's a simple message. Never
man spake like this man, not Adam, not Abraham, not Moses,
who gave the law and wrote the first five books of the Bible,
obviously under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, but not
Moses, not David, and not Solomon, the wisest man,
not Isaiah, the comforting evangelist and prophet, not John the Baptist,
Christ's forerunner, Not Peter, not John, not Paul, not Matthew
or Luke or none of those apostles. Never a prophet spoke like this
man. Never a preacher preached like
this man, and never a teacher taught like this man. No one,
by comparison, ever spoke like the Lord Jesus Christ. We have to stop and think about
the words of scripture when we read them, don't we? Never man
spake like this man. There was never a man who spoke
like this man. He spoke differently, not only
in what he said, but in the manner that he said it. Not only what
he said, but the way that he said what he said. And you think
about that. You know, whenever we talk, We
always have something to say. I learned something, I want to
tell you about that, or I have to tell you about what I did. There's always something behind
the things that we say. And a lot of times I find that
people have a difficult time even holding a conversation without
talking about someone else in order to you know, maybe point
out their own qualities in comparison. That happens on the news, for
example, all the time, public media, it's all about me or it's
all about them, you know, it's never about the truth. But the Lord Jesus Christ spoke
in a way, he spoke in a manner that was completely different
than any man ever spoke. For one thing, he only spoke
the truth. And that's not true of any man.
I wonder sometimes when you hear people talk, even authoritative
people, are they telling the truth? And there's always that
suspicion. When I was a child, I didn't
think that adults told lies. But as I became an adult, I realized
they were no different than little kids. Mom and dad would say,
who did this? I don't know. anything to get
out of the trouble or anything to make yourself look better
when you go to school with your friends. But the Lord Jesus Christ
never did anything to promote himself in that way, in that
human way. He only spoke the truth, only
the truth. In fact, he himself is the truth. He said in the verses we just
read in John chapter 14, I am the truth. I am the truth. We think about
the truth as something that's facts, something like gravity,
or something like the size of the earth, or that there's five
people in my family, or whatever the facts are. But nothing actually
can be true unless it's true in Christ, unless the Lord Jesus
Christ thinks it. Whatever he thinks, that's the
truth. Whatever he says, that is the
truth. He cannot lie. His nature is
consistent with himself, and everything that is is founded
on him, his existence as God. If God could, and if the Lord
Jesus Christ could be anything other than the truth, then he
wouldn't be himself. He can't be anything other than
truth. He is the truth. And this is
phenomenal. No one ever spoke like this man.
He is the truth. That means everything he said
is absolutely true. And that's important to you and
me, isn't it? Why is that important? Because we're relying on what
he said. We're relying on the fact that what he said concerning
the salvation of sinners is the truth of God. that this is God's
mind concerning that thing. So he always spoke the truth.
And he spoke as no other man spoke because he is God. He is God. How can we appreciate that fact? As Brad was saying before in
the prayer, when Moses saw that bush burning, and he heard God
speaking out of the bush, he was overcome. He was unable to
speak. He knew this is God speaking
out of a bush that burned with fire but wasn't consumed. That's
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? Here is he in our nature,
in humanity, and God who is an all-consuming fire in the Lord
Jesus Christ, one with his nature, and yet he was not consumed.
humanity, the fullness of the Godhead in him. That's incredible,
isn't it? And not just incredible that
God could join humanity, our nature to himself, but the reason
he did that was to do the truth, which was to magnify his name
and the salvation of sinners. So he's God. God manifest in
the flesh. God revealed among men. God dwelling
with men. God seen by men and angels. God
heard. God handled in the flesh. 1 John
1, verse 1 says, we have heard, we've handled him, the word of
truth. This was truly God in human nature. No one ever spake like God. God
in our nature. And these officers recognized
that. The other thing Scripture says
that when he spoke, his word was with power. In Luke 4, verse
32, they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was with
power. He didn't rely on other men.
to substantiate His words. He didn't benefit from all of
the libraries of men's quotations. He didn't learn from men. He
had been with the Father. He had seen Him. He had heard
His words. And He spoke His Father's will,
His Father's word. He spoke of His Father. And so
He always spoke as God, as man, of His Father. He spoke with
power. When he spoke, his words actually
penetrated the hearts of the people he spoke to. And to some,
it was uncovering them and exposing them. And others, it was healing
them. He spoke with power. His word
accomplished his will. No one ever spoke like this man.
And he didn't just speak in a cold, disimpassionate way, but he spoke
with fervency. I was reading this morning in
John 11, those two words, Jesus wept. And there's a mountain,
an ocean of truth in that. What does it mean? His words
and his work, everything he did was beyond our comprehension
because he's God and man. He spoke with power. His word
was with power. He understood everything written
in scripture. The wisdom of God contained in
scripture. He is that wisdom. He is the
wisdom of God. He is the truth. He is the word
made flesh. No one ever spoke like this man.
So the way he spoke was as God speaks in man. And he spoke by
the Spirit of God. In John 3 and 34, John the Baptist
said, he that is of God speaketh the words of God, for the Father
giveth not the Spirit by measure to him. The Spirit of God knows
the mind of God. The Spirit of God searches the
deep things of God. The Spirit of God reveals the
hidden things of God. The Spirit of God was upon him
as man, and he spoke everything he spoke as if he was speaking. The Spirit of God was speaking.
And that's why it was such a great sin when the Pharisees accused
him of casting out devils by the devil, because he did it
by the Spirit of God. They were calling the Spirit
of God a devil. And he said, for that, there's
no forgiveness. The Spirit of God was speaking
by him. He spoke as God, the Word. He didn't deceive. He wasn't
speaking trickery. He spoke plainly. He spoke clearly. He spoke simply. Even children
could understand him. And when Brad was reading there
in the scriptures in John 13, when he said things, It was the
truth of God, so that when we read it, even now, we wonder,
like it says in 1 Peter 1, where the angels desire to look into
those things, we wonder, we want to look into those things. What
does it mean? He says in John 1, He says, now
is the Son of Man glorified. Listen to these words. Now is
the Son of Man glorified. He's about to go to the cross.
And God is glorified in Him. And if God be glorified in Him,
God shall also glorify Him in Himself and shall straightway
glorify Him. It's about God's glory, isn't
it? As a child, you might not understand that, but you know
this, that whatever the Lord Jesus Christ did honored God. It brought glory to Him. It made
known God's mind, God's will, and fulfilled God's work. And
then in that, you see God's greatness, His goodness. The Lord Jesus
Christ glorifying his Father. This is the way he spoke. He
spoke with sincerity. There was no hypocrisy. Everything
we do has hypocrisy with it, doesn't it? Not only all of this,
but the manner in which he spoke with power, he actually gave
life, spiritual life, and physical life when he spoke. Just his
words, his will, executed with his words brought to life the
dead. He said to Martha, I am the resurrection
and the life. It's incredible, isn't it? It's
remarkable, it's unbelievable, it's incomprehensible that no
one spoke like this man ever spoke. And here we have his words,
don't we? Here we have his words. And it's
amazing. In Matthew, I want to take you
to a scripture in Matthew to show you how the Lord Jesus Christ
spoke with the wisdom of God, the wisdom of God. Look at Matthew
21. And this happened a lot to his enemies who spent all of
their time plotting his death, and trying to trip him up in
his words. All of the chief priests, and
all of the elders of the people, and the scribes, and the Pharisees,
with all of their man, of the wisdom of man, could come up
with, they tried to trip him up. And listen to these words
in Matthew 21. In Matthew 21 and verse 23, this
is a snippet, just an example. When he was coming to the temple,
the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him and
said, as he was teaching, and said, by what authority doest
thou these things? And who gave thee this authority?
Okay, there's the question. You're teaching, who's your authority? How did you get here? Who sent
you? What's the basis for what you
say? Notice what Jesus said. Now these were his enemies. Jesus
answered them, I will also, or I also will ask you one thing.
Since you asked me a question, I'll ask you one thing, which
if you tell me, I and likewise will tell you by what authority
I do these things. I tell you what, if you can answer
this question, I'll answer your question. Here's the question,
the baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or of men? All
right, there's the question. Now these are the most learned
among the people. They exalted themselves because
of their supposed learning. And they have a simple question.
A child could answer it. Was John's baptism of heaven
or was it of men? It's a yes or no question, really.
It's either heaven or men. Now, they were like us. They
were always thinking about how to either promote themselves
or protect themselves from shame. And they didn't want to be tripped
up by the truth. So they immediately began to
connive and scheme how they're going to get out of this. So
they thought, on the one hand, if we say, well, John's baptism
was from heaven, and all the people are standing around listening,
what are they going to say? then the people will say, and
the Lord Jesus will say, then why didn't you obey him? Since
it was from heaven and you didn't receive his word, didn't believe
him, you didn't repent, then you obviously are in rebellion
against heaven. So they thought, well, we can't
answer that way. Let's see. If we say from men, what will
happen? Well, if we say from men, the
people knew, they believed that he was sent, John the Baptist
was sent with the power of God from his mother's womb, the spirit
of God was upon him. And he spoke of Christ and he
spoke in fulfillment of scripture. John the Baptist prophesied before
in Isaiah 40. And so whatever John spoke was
a prophecy, was a message from God concerning Christ. The people
believed him and they, therefore, the publicans and the harlots
came to John to be baptized in Jordan, confessing their sins
and believing on Christ who should come. That was his message, the
Lamb of God. And so if these people, these
men said, well, John's baptism was of men, then we know that
they are false because they're denying the obvious truth that
his message, his baptism was from heaven. So they thought,
the Pharisees, these chief priests and the elders thought, we can't
say from men. That only leaves us with one
option. I don't know. That's what I always
used to say to my dad when I was afraid that if I said anything
else I was going to get in trouble. I took the fifth, as they say. I don't know. They didn't answer.
We can't answer. So they really saw three options.
One, agree, yes, it was from heaven, and condemn ourselves.
Two, go against John, which would be to make ourselves the lowest
of the low in the eyes of the people, or three, plead, we're
ignorant, we don't know, or we refuse to answer. In which case,
Jesus said, I won't answer you. And there could be nothing worse
in all of eternity than that the Lord Jesus Christ would be
silent to us. What a dreadful thing to bring
upon themselves. But there was a fourth option
they did not exercise here. What was that? They could have
said, yes, his baptism was from heaven. And no, we did not believe
him. But yes, you are the one God
sent of whom he spoke. And we are yet in our sins. And unless you have mercy upon
us, and pardon and take away our sin, we have no hope before
God. If they would have believed on
the Lord Jesus Christ and confessed themselves to be sinners and
trusted Him and committed themselves into His hand to do with them
as He saw fit and ask Him to save them and to give them, a
new heart and take away their sins so that they might believe
him. Then he would have done that, but they did not do that.
Now, this is the Lord speaking with authority, isn't it? This
is how he spoke. You couldn't avoid the penetrating
words of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you were his enemy, they would
find you out. The word of God is sharper than
any two-edged sword. It pierces even to the dividing
asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and
there's no flesh that is not laid open in his sight. All things
are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have
to do. The Lord Jesus Christ spake as no other man. But he
spoke as no other man, especially to his disciples, and this is
what is most amazing to us. And in John 13, where Brad read,
I wanna take you to that text of scripture, he spoke as no
other man here. There's never a more precious place in scripture than when
the Lord Jesus was speaking to his disciples before he went
to the cross. And here is that place. He says
in John 13, he says, Anuk in verse 34, he says, actually verse
33, little children, I don't know why the mic is doing this,
but I think it's this mic here. Little children, yet a little
while I'm with you, You shall seek me, and as I said to the
Jews, whither I go, you cannot come, so now I say to you." Everything
the Lord Jesus did, he told his disciples. He didn't tell the
Jews, but he did tell that to his disciples. A new commandment
I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you,
that you also love one another. This is God. speaking to his
disciples, those he loved. In John 13, now before the feast,
verse one, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should
depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own,
which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. He loved his
disciples. He loved them and he would give
himself for them. God in our nature giving himself
entirely for them. And when he was with Lazarus,
remember what he says there? Now Jesus loved Martha and her
sister Mary and loved Lazarus. Remember that in John 11? In
John 11 it says, In verse five, Jesus loved Martha
and her sister and Lazarus. He loved them. And then in John
11, verse 33, when Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews also
weeping, which came with her, he groaned in the spirit and
was troubled and said, where have you laid him? They said,
Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. And the Jews said,
behold, how he loved him. This is God, God in our nature,
the sinless man loving these people. And he said here in John 13,
34, a new commandment, I give unto you that you love one another
as I have loved you. If God loves us, what a stoop
that is, isn't it? The love of God for a man? Why would God ever love a person,
a created man? It would be one thing for God
to stoop to look on his creation, but it's something entirely different
for God to love a man. It says in 1 Samuel 2, he lifts
the poor out of the dust and lifts the beggar from the dunghill. That's what we are. We're beggars
on a dunghill. And this is the infinite holy
God angels have to hide to be in his presence. They have to
hide their eyes. And he charges his angels with
folly. And yet here, the Lord Jesus
Christ sets his love upon men. He stoops and takes their nature
in union to himself, in love for them, in love for them. God, in our nature, loving people,
there was nothing in us to attract His love, nothing in us to cause
Him to love us. In fact, everything in us to
repel His love. We had no worth. We were sinful
against Him. We had offended God, and the
Lord loves His people. We are lower than the beasts
in that sense, that we would rebel against God, having no
hope and no reason for any regard. And yet the Lord loved us in
Christ. He loved us and the Lord Jesus
Christ loved his people. He loved them before he saved
them. He laid his life down for them
in order that he might make them holy and without blame before
God in love. The love of the Lord for us,
it's incomprehensible. It passes all knowledge, doesn't
it? That he would love us who are the children of wrath as
others, that he would love us with a distinguishing love, a
love before time, a love that would join us to himself. He
would call us his own body. and He would give Himself for
us, even if He didn't give Himself for us, if He just loved us,
without that, that would be incomprehensible. But that the Son of God would
take our nature and then in that nature give Himself for anyone,
especially the lowest, the beggar on the dunghill, the sinful,
wretch, the foul and the filthy and the offensive, the one that
should have been cast out, and the Lord loved his people. He
took on all that God required for them, fulfilled the law for
them, and died in their place, and paid their debts, and got
all blessings from God for them. and made peace between them and
God and fulfilled a righteousness for them and obtained an eternal
redemption. And then now he departs, here
as he says in this chapter, to go into glory and to prepare
a place for them with his father so that they might be with him
where he is, see his glory. And God would be in them and
they would be in God, in union with God. with the Lord Jesus
Christ. Can we understand that? I can't,
can I? I don't know how to explain these
things. I don't know how to understand them. All I know is that the
Lord Jesus Christ says, as I have loved you, then you love one
another. And what a call, what a privilege this is, to consider
the love of the Lord Jesus. Do you ever wonder sometimes,
how could God even allow me to take his truth into my mind and
consider it, let alone believe and know him and love him for
it? We're so dependent upon him, aren't we? No one ever spoke
like this one. And so he speaks to his disciples
here, He tells them he's going away. Peter says, I don't know
where you're going, but I'm not leaving you. I'll follow you
wherever. I'll lay my life down for you.
And Jesus asks the question of him. So he would really consider
what he's saying. Will you lay down your life for
my sake? And then he tells Peter what
you're going to do. You're going to deny me three times. And yet
in the very next verse, let not your heart be troubled. Is your
heart troubled because of your sin? Mine is. It troubles me
immensely. Sometimes I can't even lift up
my eyes. It should be like that all the
time. Unless we see the Lord Jesus Christ, we have no basis.
But here he says, will you lay down your life? You're gonna
deny me three times before the morning. Let not your heart be
troubled. You who are so weak that you
would deny your master, don't let your heart be troubled. You
believe in God, believe also in me." These Pharisees and these
chief priests and these elders, they wiggle, they squirm, they
hide. Like Cain, my punishment is more
than I can bear. Or like Esau, go out and wept
bitterly. Balaam and Pharaoh and all of
those who went out of the presence, Judas went out of the presence
of Christ. And here there's a man who's denying Christ and the
Lord says, don't let your heart be troubled. You believe in God,
believe also in me. He's speaking as no other man
ever spoke, isn't he? In my father's house, As the
son, he's the son over his own house, his people, and his father's
house. This is his father's household,
these people he's speaking to, are many mansions, many dwelling
places, dwelling with God, with God, and he in us, and we in
him. Who can describe it? If it weren't
true, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
receive you to myself. He would go to God by going to
the cross and rising from the dead and ascending to heaven
and obtaining our eternal redemption and then coming again for us.
That's love. That's eternal love. That's speaking
like no man ever spoke before. And then he goes on. He speaks
of his eternal, his own self. He says, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No one ever spoke those words.
No one true. I'm amazed. Just read the scriptures. Listen to it. How he spoke when
he said what he said. He spoke with such humility.
Come unto me, you that are heavy laden, you who are burdened.
I'll give you rest. Take my yoke. I'm meek and lowly
of heart. Everything you find as a sinner
that is endearing and disarming is the Lord Jesus Christ in our
nature. He came into the world to save
sinners, of whom I'm chief. He spake like no other man. His
apostles went on to speak and speak of him I'm going to turn this microphone
off, it's bothering me. He spoke of him, and they spoke
of him revealing the mysteries that he revealed to them, and
what a blessing that was. that these men would be given
to speak the words from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,
and with his authority, with the very authority of God, they
would speak this gospel to us, that Christ came into the world
to save sinners. He died for our sins, and he
rose again, and we're justified in him. No one ever spoke like
this. That's why we love him. And so
we find our all in him and we say, Lord, save me and give me
the grace by your spirit. Give me the grace to know and
believe you and to love your people, loving you. And help
me to hope by your grace for your word to be fulfilled. in your presence, that I might
see your glory, and even stand in the presence of God, accepted
by the blood of Christ." Never a man spoke like this man. That's
why we need to hear him. He said, if you eat my flesh
and drink my blood, you have eternal life. He that believeth
on me hath everlasting life. This is the work of God, that
you believe on him whom he has sent. Believing Him who spoke
like no other man, we have everlasting life in Him. We're joined to
Him by His Spirit. We can't do this unless He does
it for us. And how much grace we need, don't
we? Let the Lord be glorified by the word of the Lord Jesus
Christ. We're nothing and we all hang
on His words. We hang on them. And when those
who are in the power of the religious world that we live in, when they
haul us into their courts and they take away our life or our
goods or whatever we have, let us be like these officers who
came back to the chief priests and the Pharisees and say, never
man spoke like this man. The words of eternal life. the
words of eternal life. He spoke them. He spoke as God.
He spoke of salvation by God, the truth. It can't be denied. It can't be changed. It cannot
fail. His word upholds the universe. His word. He's the foundation for everything,
everything, life, truth, the way to the Father, it's all in
Him. Let's pray. Father, we're so ignorant. I speak of myself, so ignorant
and foolish and unworthy to hear, to even contemplate your word.
And we are like Isaiah or Moses. We don't know what to say. Our
mouths, our lips are uncircumcised. We've never been able to speak
right. We can't think clearly. We're
foolish. We have nothing to claim. We're
sinful. We've rebelled. Even in our ignorance,
we've maintained our pride. We've done all these things,
and yet, Lord, we hope in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His love,
in His grace, in His blood, in His righteousness. We have no
other plea but that He plead for us. No other life but His
life. No other faith but the faith
that He gives. No other obedience but His obedience. We have nothing but Him. And
we pray, Lord, according to Your goodness to glorify Yourself.
to glorify yourself in our salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ, our
Lord and our Savior and our God, our Master. In his name we pray,
amen.