I am so thankful that Denise
can sing for us. I benefit tremendously from just
listening to that song. It teaches us that our worth
before God is only in Christ. And I pray that you would know
that in your heart. I'm going to begin the sermon
today with a word of prayer, and then I'm going to ask you
if you would turn in your Bibles to John 3. We're going to continue in John
3, our third sermon in this series. This is an important message,
I think. As far as I can tell, this is
a message that God has given me. I've thought a lot about
it and have been greatly blessed by what I've understood God to
be saying here from the scriptures. So I hope that you will also
be blessed and may the Lord Jesus Christ receive all praise. Let's
pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for your mercy to us in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Thank you that you've given us
your word. We don't have to guess. We know what you said. And we
pray, Lord, that the truth that you revealed to Nicodemus, that
you have recorded in your word we would understand it and it
would apply to us each one and we would see your greatness we
would see the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ in our salvation
from the depths of our shame and the foulness of what we are
in ourselves to the heights of heaven's glory in our Savior
we pray Lord that you would bless us for Jesus sake in his name
we pray amen In John chapter 3, if we read
this together, we're going to see a couple of things here that
I want to focus on. The first thing we're going to
see here is our own condition, our condition as what Jesus says,
flesh. He calls us flesh, what we are
by nature, what we've received from our first birth by our parents. And then He's going to reveal
to us that there's another birth, a birth that occurs because of
God's work by His Spirit. And in that work we're going
to see something that's absolutely amazing, that God would actually
take pity on who we are and what we are and raise us up from death
to life, from corruption to incorruption. And in all of this we're going
to see something that we perhaps haven't noticed when we read
John chapter 3, and that is the majesty and the power and the
greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ as our King. And so I hope that
you can see these things when we look at this. First of all,
in John chapter 3, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus who came to Him
by night And Nicodemus began the conversation by calling Jesus
Rabbi, which was a title of honor, and told Jesus he knew that he
was sent from God because he did these miracles and therefore
was a teacher. sent from God. Jesus immediately
seemed to change the subject in John 3, verse 3, when he said,
Jesus answered and said to him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So I want to ask this question,
and I hope that you will think about this question as we go
through this. What does it mean? What did Jesus mean when he said
the Kingdom of God? Why did he suddenly introduce
this, it seems like, this subject of the Kingdom of God and the
new birth to Nicodemus when Nicodemus hadn't asked anything about the
Kingdom of God? or the new birth, are all that
Jesus said. He starts, it seems like, into
something that was not even on Nicodemus' mind. But we know
that the Lord knew what Nicodemus was and knew his need, and so
he addressed, he touched the actual need that Nicodemus had,
even though he himself was completely ignorant of it. He didn't know
his need. He certainly didn't know the
impossibility of himself to meet that need. And he did not know
where that need would be met. And that all is being revealed
here in John chapter 3. And so this is done with a purpose.
It's not just done for Nicodemus. It's not just done so that we
might gain knowledge about the Bible. It's done so that God
would lay us, each one of us, open before the eyes of His gaze,
that He would reveal to us what we truly are, and we would see
from His Word how we are saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. So
in John chapter 3 and verse 3, Jesus uses these words, Verily,
verily, I say unto thee. Now when the Lord speaks that
way, we immediately understand that He speaks with authority.
Jesus Christ, He said Himself in John 14 verse 6, I am the
way, the truth, and the life. All truth is in Him. He's the
source of truth. He's the subject of all of scripture. He's the one who fulfilled the
truth. And He's the one who makes us know the truth. And so this
is all about His authority. And that authority is important
because we're going to see here that that's fundamental to what
this means when it says the Kingdom of God. What is the Kingdom of
God? We're going to see that it's connected to the truth that's
in Christ. And Jesus goes on in verse 4,
Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Nicodemus didn't understand anything
about the birth that Jesus was talking about. It was a spiritual
birth. It was a birth that was different than his first birth.
But because he didn't understand it, he only drew on his history
and he asked Jesus if he had to be born the same way he was
born the first time, since Jesus said he had to be born again.
But of course, that was nothing that Jesus was talking about.
Not talking about being born again in a way from his parents,
but born of a different source. When we're born by our parents,
we receive the nature of our parents. And a lot of ways we
think about it in our own lives, we find ourselves saying things
and doing things. It's just like our mom and dad,
and we wonder how that could be. As you grow up, you might
recognize that. You say something, you do something,
you think, wow, that's just like my dad or my mom would have said.
That's uncanny. Well, that's because we have
their nature. And so God is teaching us here
that our first birth we received a nature from our parents. We
need to be born again only this time. not from our parents, but
from God. And in that second birth, that
birth which is of God, we receive God's nature, and that's His
Spirit coming to us and giving us life. In verse 5, Jesus responded
to Nicodemus' question, if this second birth was by his parents
again, when he said, verily, verily. He uses those words again,
verily, verily. It means truly, truly. You can
take this as the truth of heaven. This is the truth that God Himself
is speaking to you. He is God, and He is God in human
nature. And when He speaks, He speaks
with all the authority of heaven. He's the only one, really, who
can reveal the truth of scripture. The only one who can interpret
it. And He does that here for us when He uses these words,
verily, verily. He draws our attention to the most important
thing. And He says, except the man be born of water and of the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Nicodemus
hadn't seen it, he hadn't entered it, and now Jesus is telling
him the only way that this birth can take place is by water and
spirit. Now he wasn't speaking of physical
water here. Jesus used earthly things to
teach us heavenly things. We can only really understand
earthly things until he connects for us in our minds the truth
of heavenly things from those earthly things. And I'm not going
to get into the proof of this in scripture, but let me just
say it briefly here now, that the water spoken of here is the
water of the Word of God, the Gospel concerning the Lord Jesus
Christ in His saving work. And this is the way God gives
us life. He speaks His Word, just like
in the beginning of creation God commanded. And everything
was created out of nothing. The light shined in the darkness. All these things happened by
the Word of God, and only by the Word of God. So when we're
born of God, and when we're created spiritually, we're brought into
spiritual life from the dead, actually. That happens by the
Word of God. And this is referred to here.
Jesus uses this because it's by His Word that He teaches us
the truth of our salvation. And then he says in verse 6,
that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born
of the spirit is spirit. Our first birth by our parents
produced only one thing, flesh. That's what we are by nature.
The Bible says that all flesh is like grass, it passes away. And the very best of what we
do is called the goodliness. of our nature, the goodliness
of our flesh. And God says in His Word that
that's like the flower of the grass, it just passes away. It's
here today and gone tomorrow. Because the flesh, Jesus says,
the flesh of man profits nothing when it comes to spiritual things.
What we are by nature, what we receive from our parents, all
that we are, the very best that we are, in ourselves is absolutely
worthless when it comes to things of God. We can't understand.
We can't please God. We can't enter heaven. There's
nothing we can do. There's nothing in us. We're
absolutely helpless. Jesus said, you cannot come to
me unless you're drawn by the Father. In John 6, verse 44. It just can't happen. It's outside
of our ability. And I was thinking about this
last night. If you wanted to lift 1,000 pounds,
I doubt that you could do that. Most people can't lift 1,000
pounds. I certainly can't. I doubt that any of you can.
Few people could in this world. But if you thought you could
and you really worked hard at it, maybe someday you would be
able to lift 1,000 pounds. That's something that you could do,
but this is way beyond your ability. Spiritual things are not even
in the realm of possibility for you and me by what we are by
nature. If I said, you can't go to the
moon, you might think, well, I could get there if I had a
spaceship. I could go to the moon in a spaceship. So, in some
sense, it's possible for you to go to the moon, but it's not
going to happen. None of us are ever going to
go to the moon. But it is possible within the realm of physical
things. But when it comes to the spiritual things, the kingdom
of God, Jesus is saying here, this is not even within the realm
of possibility for you in what you are by nature. In all that
you are by your parents, you cannot reach the kingdom of God.
It's a spiritual kingdom. A spiritual kingdom and only
spiritual people can be in that kingdom. And the only way we
become spiritual is if God does something. This is God's work.
And so he says in John 3 verse 5, it has to be by the water
and the spirit. By the word of God and by the
spirit of God. And this action of God produces
something. Look at verse 6. He says, that
which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born
of the spirit is spirit. Now, in Scripture, in Ephesians
chapter 2 and verse 1, it says that we're dead in sins. That's
what we are by nature. We're dead in sins. And so, what
he's saying here, and in other places in Scripture, is that
what we are by nature, flesh, is sinful. We're sinful, and
we're only sinful. In Romans chapter 7 and verse
18, the Apostle Paul says, I know that in my flesh, dwelleth no
good thing. There's nothing good in my flesh.
And all that we are by nature, when we're born, and in our lives,
and all that we become by the very best that we do, we can
read the Bible, we can learn, we can go to Bible college, and
we can do religious things. All of that profits nothing,
unless God does something. God has to act, and He has to
act of His own will, for His own purpose, by His own power,
out of His own grace. And that alone can produce in
us this spiritual nature. And so, if we look at the rest
of Scripture, we see, for example, in 2 Corinthians 5, in verse
17, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, a new creation. And also in Ephesians chapter
2 verse 10 he says that we are his workmanship created in Christ
Jesus. So this spirit that God gives
to us is an act of creation. God has to create us. spiritually. We're not spirit and He has to
create us spiritually. But it's also a resurrection
because in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 4 it says that we
who were dead in sins because of God's act, because of His
grace, out of the riches of His mercy and out of His great love,
He has raised us up together with Christ. And so this act
of God, by which we're born of God, is a creation and it's a
resurrection from the dead. Now when we think about resurrection,
we take it too lightly. We've heard about the resurrection.
Who hasn't heard about the resurrection from the dead? But this is not
something that any man can produce. There's no one who can go into
a hospital and immediately raise people up who are sick. Much
less has anyone, anyone ever gone to a graveyard and raised
up a dead person. It just hasn't happened. But
when we think about this, it should actually give us a great
surprise to think that God would raise the dead. And there's several
reasons why this should surprise us. First of all, if we really
understood what we are by nature, it would absolutely amaze us
that God would raise the dead. I want to read a verse of scripture
to you from Acts chapter 26. The Apostle Paul was talking
in Acts chapter 26 to a man. He was actually a king. His name
was Agrippa. And the Apostle Paul said this in verse 8 of
Acts 26. He said to him, Why should it
be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise
the dead? This is what the Apostle said
to this king. He said, Why should it be thought a thing incredible
to you that God should raise the dead? Now we need to think
about this very carefully. First of all, why do people die
in the first place? What is death? Well, according
to Romans 6.23, death is a payback. It's the wage that God pays us.
God is not going to let justice go unsatisfied. Justice will
be done in the earth. God will judge every sin. And
so, the payback of God for sin is death. The wages of sin is
death. Romans 6.23. But the gift of
God, it goes on in Romans 6.23, is eternal life, and that is
through Jesus Christ our Lord. So death is the result of sin.
Life, on the other hand, is the action of God But God doesn't
take that action apart from something else, apart from righteousness. So when you read in Scripture
of God raising the dead, the first thing that should surprise
us is that God would even be interested in raising the dead. Why would God raise the dead?
Now, I want you to think about this because we have a high opinion
of ourselves and a low opinion of God by nature. But what we
are by nature is, according to scripture, is called dead in
sins. And that means we're corrupt,
corrupt in ourselves. In John chapter 11, Jesus raised
a man named Lazarus from the dead and his sister Lazarus's
sister Martha Before Jesus raised him from the dead. She said this
to Jesus in verse 39. She said When Jesus said take
away the stone Martha said to him Lord by this time he stinketh
because he's been dead four days already and That teaches us something
about what death is. Death causes corruption. Death
is corruption. It's the ultimate corruption.
So, God is saying that in our nature, what we are by nature,
is corrupt. We're stinking. And you know
what this does to us. When you smell something that's
foul, like rotten potatoes, it's like, whoa, I can't tolerate
to be in the room with that. It's really foul. And there's
nothing like a rotting flesh that really is revolting to our
natural senses. When you smell a dead body, it's
horrible. And it makes you gag. It's nauseating. It makes you sick to your stomach.
You want to vomit and throw up. And this is exactly what we are
by nature to God. We're nauseating, sickening,
corrupt. Filthy. There's nothing in us
that God would find worthwhile. There's no worth in us. God has
to find a reason outside of us, in himself alone, called grace. A reason that moves him to raise
us from the corruption of what we are by nature. To create out
of the empty, dark nothingness of our spiritual selves, to create
us spiritually in Christ. and to give us His own nature.
And this He does out of pure grace. And this is the great
power of God. It's God's great power to raise
the dead. And this is a power that we can't even fathom. Why would God raise the dead?
How would God do this? Well, let me read another verse
to you in Romans chapter 5. It shows you that when God does
raise the dead, He has a requirement that must be met. Because God
can't tolerate sin. He will not look upon sin. And
so in order to overcome the penalty of sin, which is death, God has
to take away the cause of sin. I'm sorry, the cause of death.
He has to take away the cause of death, which is sin. In Romans
chapter 5, he says in verse 21, As sin has reigned, like a king,
sin reigned, with all authority. Nobody escapes the reign of sin
in this world. We're all sinners. and we all
come to an end, the same end, death, because of our sin. As
sin reigned unto death, this is true of every person born
into this world, there's no one escapes this world without dying.
As sin reigned unto death, even so, listen to God's word, grace,
God's grace, not something in us, but what comes from God,
His goodness, pure mercy, and sovereign grace. Grace has reigned
like a king, with absolute authority, with no possibility of failure. His will is absolutely done. There's no changing of God's
will. He accomplishes what He wants done. It says grace reigns
through righteousness. You see that? Through righteousness.
In other words, God is not going to raise a sinner to life. He's only going to raise those
who are righteous to life. Life is the reward of righteousness. God doesn't give life to sinners.
He gives life to the righteous. But how do we become righteous
since we're dead in sins? And we can only sin. Nothing
in my flesh, Paul said. There's no good thing in my flesh.
I'm full of sin. He says, here's where the righteousness
comes from. Grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Righteousness is found
in one place only. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so life comes to us by God's grace because of His will and
that will is fulfilled by sending His Son, who fulfilled all righteousness
for us, and because of His righteousness, out of that grace, He gives us
eternal life. And this is the reason we're
born of God. This is the reason God creates
us. We don't contribute to it. We don't do anything to motivate
God. We don't influence God in this.
We don't control the action of God. God acts, and He acts of
His own will in order to exercise His own power, and to lavish
upon us abundant grace, and bringing us to life, creating us out of
nothing, and putting us in the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we
might know and have eternal life. We might know God in Jesus Christ
and have eternal life. This is fantastic. This is beyond
comprehension. Why would God do this? Why would
He take something that is so offensive to us? Have you ever
experienced the offense of sin? Maybe in yourself you've recognized
this. You hate yourself because you're
such a foul and filthy sinner. And sometimes we've experienced
this in our life. We've experienced evil in this
world. It didn't take long for evil
to show itself in this world. Remember Cain in the book of
Genesis in chapter 4? He brought an offering to God,
thinking that God owed him something for his labor in the ground.
He was an idolater. And he brought this offering,
and God didn't accept him. But his brother Abel brought
a different offering. He brought an offering of a lamb,
and he offered that lamb on an altar. because Abel understood
the Lamb pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ who would offer
himself to take away the sins of his people. And Abel came
to God trusting that God would receive him only for what he
found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And Cain saw that God received
his brother Abel and Cain felt envy in his heart for his brother. Envy. That's an evil thing. Have you ever envied somebody?
It's a bitter thing to realize that in your heart you envy somebody
else. You hate it because they receive
something good that you don't have. And so you hate them. And that's what Cain did. He
hated his own brother. And that hatred for his brother
actually came out. He murdered his brother. Can
you imagine the cruelty? The merciless cruelty because
of his own selfishness. that he would murder, take the
life, the most precious thing his brother had, that was in
God's hands, and he took it from his brother Abel because he hated
him, because God showed him favor, and because Cain was mad at God
because he wouldn't receive him for what he did. That's what
we are by nature. And there's so many other ways
God describes our sinfulness in scripture. In fact, God's
description of our sin is graphic. It's so graphic that if I were
to describe it to you, I'd have to give this sermon an X rating. It's horrible. Have you ever
had someone tell you about evil in the world and it shocked you?
That you were surprised that people even thought and did those
things. And it bothered you so much that
now, in your thought, that evil was in your thoughts. And you
hated the fact that it infected your own thoughts. that this
new concept of evil had come into your mind, and now it was
with you. And after a time, you grew accustomed
to it. In fact, you found yourself not
even bothered by it. That's the nature of our sinful
nature. It's evil, it's corrupt, it's
hateful, and we see it in ourselves. Now, I say all that to show you
that we're absolutely without any ability to change this in
us. In Jeremiah 13, 23, God says,
How can you that are accustomed to doing evil do good? You can't. It's not within your power. You
have no desire for good. But a greater question is, why
would God do this? Why would God be so gracious?
Why would He raise those who were corrupt and foul and filthy
and detestable and nauseating and sickening to His holiness
and His justice? How could He do that? There's
only one way. He first had to make atonement. He had to make satisfaction for
our sins. He had to take away our sins
in the satisfaction Christ provided to Him in His own sufferings
as our substitute and His own obedience in fulfillment of His
law. And because of that righteousness,
God, in His mercy and grace, raises us from death to life
in our soul, in our spirit, and gives us this. In Romans 8, In
chapter 8, verse 10, it says this about this resurrection
of our soul. He says, if Christ be in you,
the body is dead because of sin. Our body is dead because of sin.
That's what's called our flesh, what we are by nature. But listen,
he says, but the Spirit, God's Spirit, and our spirit now, is
life Because of righteousness. Because of Christ's righteousness.
God quickens the dead. He raises the dead to life. And
this is an amazing grace. An amazing power. In the next
verse in Romans 8 verse 11 it says, Now think about this. Who
raised up Christ from the dead? God the Father by His Spirit.
And the Lord Jesus Himself took His own life by His own Spirit
up. He took it up again, like He
says in John chapter 10 verse 17 and 18. He had power to lay
His life down and He had power by His own Spirit to raise it
up again. And so it was the Spirit of the Father who raised up Christ. But think about this. Does God
do anything unless it's holy? God doesn't think anything. In
fact, holiness is what God thinks. Holiness is what God does. And
so if God raised Jesus from the dead, you know it was a holy
resurrection. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
actually completely and perfectly put away all sin, all that offended
God, all that was loathsome and filthy and foul in us, He put
it away before God's throne. and therefore God raised Jesus
from the dead. His resurrection was proof that
God had received complete satisfaction to His justice in the death of
His Son. And it was proof that the Lord
Jesus Christ had fulfilled God's law in every jot and tittle,
and nothing was left undone. He is the fulfillment, the end
of the law. And so, because of that, God
raised him from the dead, but not just for himself. Jesus died,
not because He was a sinner in Himself, but because of the sins
that were put upon Him by God Himself. So the Lord Jesus was
raised from the dead because of righteousness, and we're raised
from the dead with Him because what He did, He did for His people.
And this is the good news of the gospel. Now back to John
chapter 3. I want to take you back there.
I want to point out something to you real quickly here, which
really I should spend a good deal of time on. But I'm just
going to introduce this subject to you now. Because Jesus told
Nicodemus, you couldn't see or enter the kingdom of God. unless
you're born from God, unless this resurrection takes place,
unless there's a creation, God creating us spiritually out of
nothing, unless we're made spiritual children to God by the Lord Jesus
Christ, because of His redeeming work, because of the Spirit He
sent, that we might know Him and believe Him. This is the
act of God, but it's all founded on what Christ did. But when
Jesus said this to Nicodemus, he said, you can't see or enter
the kingdom of God. Now think about this. What is
the kingdom of God? Have you ever wondered that?
This phrase is used throughout the Gospels. And it's an important
phrase, and we won't have time to really get to this in completion
today, but I just want to give you at least some sense of what
this means, because this is a huge, all-comprehensive, really, topic
in Scripture. If you look at the New Testament,
you'll find one thing that's emphasized over and over again,
and that is this, that the Lord Jesus is the King. in the kingdom
of God. Where there's a kingdom, there
has to be a king. And where there's a king, there's
a kingdom and there are subjects, there's people in that kingdom.
The kingdom of God, let me tell you this from scripture, that
the kingdom of God is the same as the kingdom of heaven. And
it's the same as the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. These
are all the same in Scripture. And you can look at this by comparing
what you read in the Gospels where the Kingdom of God is spoken
of in one place and in another place the same thing is spoken
of as the Kingdom of Heaven. But when Jesus came, and when
John the Baptist came before Him, they said this, the Kingdom
of Heaven is at hand. And you wonder, what did they
mean by that? The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And the Kingdom
of God is at hand. And so, we need to understand
this. Well, first of all, what we see is that in Scripture is
that this kingdom is not of this world. I want you to see in John
18. If you look at John 18, Jesus
is standing before the governor, Pilate, and Jesus is at this
point, he's robed in a scarlet robe and his head is crowned
with a crown of thorns, his back has been laid open, his bones
are showing through, his face has been beaten by men and spit
upon. He doesn't look like a king at
all. But he stands before Pilate And Pilate says this in John
chapter 18. I want you to take a look at
this. In John 18 verse 33, Pilate entered
into the judgment hall again and called Jesus and said to
him, Art thou the king of the Jews? Now, to Pilate, this was
asking Jesus, are you really the king of the Jews, like I'm
a governor? Are you claiming to be a king
of these people, the Jews? But Jesus answers him in a different
way, on a different level. He understands. Think about this. It's frustrating for me sometimes
because I try to fit in one sermon a huge amount of information,
and that's frustrating for me. But think about the Lord Jesus.
He understands everything in heaven and earth, the whole purpose
of God throughout eternity, and His own fulfillment of that purpose.
And yet he answers very short here. He says, Jesus answered,
he said, do you say this thing of yourself or did others tell
it thee of me? Are you asking this because you
thought of it? Or did someone suggest that I was the king of
the Jews? And Pilate answered, am I a Jew?
Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee to
me. What hast thou done? What have you done to deserve
this treatment of your nation? Now listen to what Jesus says.
He had asked Jesus, are you a king? Are you the king of the Jews?
And Jesus answered this way. Very carefully, listen to this.
My kingdom is not of this world. It's not in this world. I don't
get my authority from this world. It's just not of this world.
He says, if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants
fight? So my servants don't act like
political people do in this world. They don't fight with weapons
of this world. He says, if my kingdom were of
this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered
to the Jews, but now is my kingdom not from here. It's not from
hence. And so he goes on. He says, Pilate
therefore said to him, Art thou a king then? Oh, so you're talking
about your kingdom. You must be a king. So Pilate
asked him, are you a king then? He's trying to grab a hold of
something here where he can accuse him. And listen to what Jesus
says. This is very powerful. Jesus answered, thou sayest that
I am a king. In other words, what you said
is correct. I am a king. To this end was
I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should
bear witness unto the truth." The Lord Jesus Christ is the
King. He is the truth. He's the truth of heaven and
earth. And He's the truth. He came into this world, He says,
to bear witness to the truth. The King of Truth came here to
preach the truth and to reveal the truth. And this is the only
way we can know it. He says, and everyone that is
of the truth hears my voice. So the subjects of this kingdom
are those who hear the truth from Christ. The one who is the
king in this kingdom is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Himself
the truth. And He, as a King, reveals the truth by His own
will. And He does this through His
Spirit. Now, this is the first place, and I want to take you
to another place. There's so many places in Scripture that
I could take you to. Look at Hebrews chapter 12. In
fact, if you start reading the New Testament, you'll find that
in every book it's mentioned that the Lord Jesus Christ is
the King. The King of glory. The King over
His people. In Hebrews 12, verse 22, it says
this, You who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you who are
in the kingdom of God, you are come unto Mount Zion. You are
come to Mount Zion. Mount Zion is a title, really,
for the Church of God. On earth, it was a physical mountain. And on that mountain, Jerusalem
was built. And it was a symbol, really,
of the mountain of the Kingdom of God. And Jerusalem, which
is the people of God, over whom Christ is King. He says, You
are come unto Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God.
This is God's city. Remember Abraham, he looked for
a city which had foundations. The foundations of that city
and the city itself make up the people of God. And Christ is
the King. He dwells in them like a temple.
He says, you're come to the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem. Not the Jerusalem on earth, but the heavenly Jerusalem.
This is the place where Christ rules. The heavenly Jerusalem.
He's not a king of this world. He's a king of heaven. To an
innumerable company of angels. This is the armies of heaven. The angels are the armies of
heaven. They're the servants of Christ
to bring His people to Himself. to gather them from this world,
and to cause them to come unto the hearing of the gospel, and
to preserve them in their lives. This is the work of the angels.
They're holy, and they're servants of Christ. They're His army.
You come to them. And you come to the General Assembly
and Church of the Firstborn. The Kingdom of Heaven is not
made up of Jews only. It's not made up of Gentiles
only. It's made up of Jews and Gentiles
out of every nation under heaven. And this General Assembly is
called the Church of the Firstborn, because the Lord Jesus Christ
was the firstborn from the dead. He's the firstborn of creation.
He's the one in whom God has placed all of the fullness of
His Godhead. in his body and so he's the firstborn. But we are the firstborn because
we are born to God. We're born to God by what He
has done. He's taken away our sin and He's
saved us from the judgment of God. So like the children of
Israel were saved out of Egypt because of the blood of Christ,
we're saved as the firstborn. So we're the church of the firstborn.
It's not a kingdom on earth. It's not the Jews. It's not the
Gentiles. It's not people of a particular race or place. It's the people in whom God's
Spirit is. He says our names are written in heaven. Now, whatever
God does is eternal. He knows what He was going to
do before He ever did it. It says in Acts 15-18, If God's
people's names are written in heaven, their names were written
there before the world began, and He knew He was going to save
them, and He purposed to save them, and actually did save them,
that's going to be the result of His eternal will and of Christ's
work. Our names are written in heaven.
not on earth, not in a kingdom on earth, but in a kingdom in
heaven. And we're come to God the judge of all. Now the judge
of all we think of as the one who brings sinners to judgment. But in this case it's talking
about God who justified His people because He looks upon the blood
and righteousness of His Son and He says, you're not condemned
for His sake. My law has been answered. All
the demands of justice have been answered and all the law fulfilled
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we stand before our judge
accepted in the blood of Christ, in the righteousness of Christ.
We're come to God the judge of all. And we're not intimidated
because we are not accepted in our own person, but in Christ.
And he says this, and we're not only come to God the judge of
all, but listen, we're come to the spirits of just men made
perfect. Do you see that? We're born of
God. We're spiritual people now and
we're righteous before God in the righteousness of Christ and
we're come in this kingdom, we're come to the spirits of others
who have been made just in the righteousness of Christ. Our
spirits have been perfected because God's spirit is in us. We've
been created a spiritual person, born of God, children of God.
We're partakers of His divine nature. We've been renewed in
our spirits. We've been born and regenerated in our spirits,
all of this by the Spirit of God, because of the righteousness
of Christ. And this is God's Kingdom. The
Kingdom of God is Christ ruling over His people, the Church,
and ruling in the hearts of His people. He rules in Heaven because
He conquered His enemies and fulfilled God's will on Earth
for them. and he rules with absolute power.
He says in Matthew 28, verse 18, all power in heaven and earth
is given to me. And so when he sent his spirit
at the day of Pentecost, he began the process of gathering his
people into this kingdom in an open way. And this was God's
eternal purpose. It wasn't a kingdom of people
born to Abraham physically. It was a people born to God spiritually,
and they believe on Christ like Abraham did, and so they're called
Abraham's children. It's not Jews, it's not Gentiles.
It's all who have the Spirit of God in them, who believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's so much we could
say about this, but if you read the book of Revelation, if you
read Ephesians, there's one body, one spirit, And there's one salvation,
and it's all in Christ. And He's the King in this kingdom.
And we hear of His saving work. We hear of His ruling power.
We hear of how He's going to deliver His people from all their
sins. And by God's Spirit, we trust Him. And this is the action
of God. God gives us this grace. Spiritual
people trust Christ. The children of God believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is the result of His work. And
I pray that God would give you this grace, that He would raise
us from the corruption of what we are by nature and glorify
Himself. Why should it be thought a thing
incredible to you that God should raise the dead? He raised His
Son because His Son made propitiation to God for our sins and took
them away. And He raises us in our spirit when He gives us His
own spirit. And He will raise our bodies. He will raise out
of the corruption of our nature and the corruption of our body,
people to Himself. And this is great grace on God's
part that He would raise what is loathsome and filthy and foul
to Himself. and bring us to Himself in all
the holiness and righteousness of His Son, and He would make
us spirits, just men, made perfect in the blood and righteousness
of Christ. And we would come to God through our Mediator,
the Lord Jesus, who sits on heaven's throne and reigns over all things
forever and ever, and will save His people without fail, and
they will be brought to Him in glory, and we will give glory
to God, and He will give us this kingdom that He earned for us
and has given to us. It's a kingdom of righteousness
and peace in His own blood. A kingdom where Christ reigns
without question and without challenge. And He will present
us to Himself without disappointment, with all the joy that could possibly
be in the infinite heart of God, because His love is fulfilled
in what Christ has done for us. May God give us this grace to
see this and to live to God by faith in Him. Let's pray. Dear
Lord, we thank you for this message of the Gospel, this eternal will
you have in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, that you would bring
foul and filthy sinners, helpless and ourselves, to the Lord Jesus
Christ to see our salvation in Him, and we would glorify you
for your mercy, and we would praise you all our days, and
we would realize that we've been called into this kingdom by your
power, and you cannot fail. You will have us, And You will
present us to this onlooking universe to see Your greatness
and Your salvation, that You would take those like us and
make us Your own children, and holy in Your sight by the blood
and righteousness of our Savior, and by Your own Spirit in us.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.