Now, if you would, go back with
me, and we will be coming back to 2 John, but go back with me
to the book of John chapter 7. And here's my subject this evening. What is the doctrine of Christ? What is the doctrine of Christ? And I'm just going to jump in
here in John chapter 7 at verse 14. And those of you who weren't
here this past Lord's Day, I will advise you that I brought two
messages from these first several verses, primarily focusing on
14, 15, and 16. And those messages are available
on CD and on DVD, and I'm sure that they will before long be
uploaded to Sermon Audio. Let's go to verse 14, John 7.
Now about the midst of the feast, this is the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus went up into the temple
and taught. Our Lord was no coward. He knew
that those Jews who were in the temple, they despised Him. And we must remember, these people
who were against him, these are not drunkards, these are not
publicans, these are the religious leaders of the day. These are
the evangelists, these are the pastors, these are the rabbis,
these are the masters of the Word of God. At least they consider
themselves to be masters of the Word of God, but these are the
ones who oppose Jesus of Nazareth. You see, those that our Lord
so often tangled with were people who considered themselves to
be righteous based upon their own righteousness. They thought
they were good people. They said, we're not sinners
like you are. They said, we're Abraham's seed. And they had no desire for his
kind of preaching, because he said, I'm not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance. And they didn't consider themselves
to be sinful peoples, so they weren't interested in what he
had to say. And then, of course, he set before
them his deity. His deity. We go all the way
back to John chapter 5. He said, My father worketh hitherto,
and I work. And they became angry with him
because not only did he do a great miracle on the Sabbath day, which
to them violated the law of the Sabbath, but they also heard
him say, My father worketh hitherto, and I work. And therefore, they
understood him to be saying, I am the Son of God. And that
just infuriated them, and they were ready to kill him. And yet
our Lord, brave and courageous, a warrior, He goes right into
Jerusalem, He goes right to the temple, and He begins to teach
in the temple. Notice this back in the second
verse. Now, the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles
was at hand. And that's a very condemning
statement by the Spirit of God. The Jews' Feast of Tabernacles. It reminds me of what He said
back in John 2.11 and John 11.55 where it says the Jews' Passover. The Jews' Passover was at hand. You know whose Passover it was
originally? The Lord's. It was the Lord's
Passover. But these feasts had degenerated
and they had become the Jews' feasts. It was just a ritualistic
festival that they went through. And they didn't have any heart
worship for God. They didn't have any desire to
honor God and believe God. They were just going through
the motions. It is a very dangerous thing to be in religion and have
religion in word only and not from the heart. This was the
Lord's accusation to the Jews of His day. He said, you speak
great swelling words. Your words say you're with Me,
but He said, your hearts are far from Me. No wonder Solomon
the wise man said, my son, give me your heart. Give me your heart."
We're in the heart business. This is a heart relationship
with God. I know we have correct doctrine
in our minds and in our understandings, but we must from our innermost
being worship God and believe the Lord Jesus who is the only
Savior of sinners. And here, even this evening,
It's so easy for us to kind of slip into a ritualistic and a
ceremonial religion. No wonder we read that the Apostle
Paul says, I will pray with the Spirit. I will pray with the
understanding also. He said, I'll sing with the Spirit.
I'll sing with the understanding also. And we must listen with
the Spirit and listen with the understanding also. We must enter
into a worship service from our innermost being, from deep down
within us, from our very heart of hearts. This is what God desires. And this is what we must render
to Him. And not just go through the motions
like the Jews did. And so therefore, the Lord says
of the Passover, it was the Jews' Passover. And as He says here
of the Feast of the Tabernacles, He says the Jews' Feast of the
Tabernacles. That's all it was. There was
no honoring of God. There was no worship. There was
no devotion. There was no thanksgiving to
God for bringing their forefathers through the wilderness journey.
You know, for eight days, seven days fully, and then the eighth
day was a great day of the feast, but they all lived in booths.
And that was to remind them that God provided for the Israelites
when He brought them out of Egyptian bondage and He took them to the
Promised Land. And so during the Feast of Tabernacles,
they all lived in booths. It was a time of worship. It
was to be a time of thanksgiving. And of course it foreshadowed
that time when God would tabernacle in the flesh. But this has now, it's sunk down
to just a ritualistic day. And it's like so many people
in religion, and God forbid that we should go this route, that
we have a form of religion, we have a ceremony, we have a ritualism,
but we deny the power thereof. Oh God, give us your Spirit.
Oh God, give us life to our worship service. I don't want to just
go through the motions, we know when to do this, we know when
to do that. God help us to truly worship. It is very, very sad, horribly
sad, to see multitudes today doing exactly what the Jews did
in our Lord's day. They just have a form, they have
outward ceremonies, and they have no spiritual worship. Listen,
public worship means nothing. Your attendance, my attendance
here tonight, means nothing without heart worship. It's useless. It's useless. And notice what he says in verse
15. This is what the Jews said to him. Our Lord, he enters into
the temple and begins to teach. In verse 15, the Jews marveled. And we've said this so often,
and I want to repeat it again. Whenever John uses the expression,
the Jews, he's not talking about the whole nation generally. He's
speaking about the Jewish leaders who were against him. And so
the Jews marveled, they were amazed as they listened to him
teach, and they said, how knoweth this man letters? having never learned." In other
words, this man, here's Jesus of Nazareth, and He's teaching
in the synagogue, or teaching in the temple, and they said,
never a man spoke like this man, and He spoke with such authority,
He had such a grasp of the Scriptures, He broke open the Old Testament
Scriptures, which were about Him anyway, and the Jews just
marveled and said, now, where did this man get this kind of
understanding? He didn't go to our schools,
He didn't go to our Bible colleges. He didn't go to our seminaries.
He didn't sit at the feet of any of our rabbis. Where did
he get this learning? And Jesus answered them, here
in verse 16, He said, My doctrine... A lot of people today, they're
very afraid of doctrine. Doctrine is just the teaching
of our Lord. Doctrine. He says, my doctrine
is not mine. What he means by that is, he's
speaking as the righteous servant of Jehovah. And he's saying,
it did not originate with me as a man. It originated with
God. In Malachi chapter 3 and verse
1, Christ is called the messenger of the covenant. He is the prophet
of God. He came to speak the things of
God. He would say later in John chapter
8, I say only those things that the Father sent me to speak.
And He speaks these things unto the Jews and they're just amazed. How does He know these things?
And here's what they did not understand. All of the Scriptures
which he broke open, which he expounded to them, all of the
Scriptures, and what Bible did they have then? Only the Old
Testament. Correct? Only the Old Testament. That's all they had. The only
Bible they had was from Genesis to Malachi. But He has before
stated in Luke chapter 24 that all of the Scriptures speak of
Himself. And you and I have heretofore
read the Scriptures to absolutely no profit if we have not understood
that all of the Old Testament sets forth Jesus Christ the Lord. It sets forth who He is, what
He was going to do. And our Lord, as I said in Luke
chapter 24, after His resurrection, He spoke to the two disciples
on the road to Emmaus, and He said, O fools and slow of heart
to believe all that the Scriptures have spoken. Ought not Christ
to have suffered these things? And then to enter into His glory.
And then He took the Old Testament Scriptures And He gave them understanding
that they would know and see and perceive and understand all
of the Old Testament Scriptures is about Himself. Later, he would
speak to the 11 apostles. Of course, Judas has gone out
and hung himself. And so he speaks to the 11 apostles
and he did the same thing to them. He opened their understanding
that they might realize all of the scriptures from Moses through
the prophets and the Psalms, they all speak of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And these religious leaders,
they refused to see that He was God in the flesh and that He
was the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures. Listen,
they had a knowledge of the Scriptures. You remember when the wise men
came to Jerusalem and they're looking for a Messiah. Where
is He that is born King of the Jews? That's what they asked.
And where did they go? They go to Jerusalem because,
hey, that's the religious capital of the world. Well, surely, if
anybody knows, they'll know right there in Jerusalem. And Herod,
he calls for the religious leaders, and he said, well, where is Messiah
going to be born? Well, they knew immediately.
They didn't have to inquire among themselves. They said, Bethlehem. That's where He's to be born.
See, they had a head knowledge of the Scriptures, but they didn't
understand the one who was born in Bethlehem was the Son of God,
the Son of Man. And they refused to believe that.
And though He gave abundant evidence that He was the Son of God, that
He had all power over disease, over death, over demons, though
He gave abundant evidences of His deity, they just shut their
eyes and refused to believe the truth. And here they are hounding
Him again in John chapter 7. And he says, my doctrine is not
mine, but His that sent me. His that sent me. I was sent. What he's saying is I existed
before I was born here. You and I, and I made this statement
this past Lord's Day, you and I, we existed in the mind and
purpose of God, in the heart of God, in the covenant of God. We existed then, but as far as
our physical, literal existence, we had no existence until we
were formed in the wombs of our mothers. But our Lord Jesus, He existed
from all eternity. He's God of very God. He says
in the book of Proverbs, when He formed the mountains, when
everything was made, I was there, He says. I was there. This is the eternal being. He is the eternal Son of God. But He speaks in this passage
as being Jehovah's faithful servant. And he says, what I say, the
words that I speak, they didn't originate with me. Now they did
come forth from him essentially because he's God, but now he
is, he's speaking as that servant of Jehovah. And he says, my doctrine is not
mine. that came from the Father. It
kind of reminds me of what the Apostle Paul said in Galatians
1. Do you remember? He said, I certify
you, brethren, that the Gospel which you heard preached of me
is not after man. He said, for I neither received
it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of
Jesus Christ. He's simply saying, my doctrine
isn't mine. My teaching is not mine. The
teaching, the truth of God, understand this, is one. One connected,
linked body of truth. I've made this observation to
you before that most of the time in the New Testament and throughout
the Scriptures as far as that goes, whenever you see the word
doctrine, It's the doctrine of God. If you see doctrines, it's
Arab. For instance, our Lord here says,
my doctrine, my doctrine is not mine, singular. You see, doctrine
is one. It is one harmonious body of
truth. In writing to Timothy, Paul said,
take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine. Not the doctrines. I know we tend to say things
like we believe the doctrines of grace. It's the doctrine of
grace because it's all one body of truth. It's all linked together. Again, he wrote, all Scripture
is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. In striking contrast to this,
Scripture speaks in Colossians 2.22, the doctrines of men. Or in Hebrews 13 verse 9, strange
doctrines. Or in 1 Timothy 4 and verse 1,
doctrines of demons. You see, God's truth is indivisible. It is one. It is one. It's all harmonized. It's one
body of truth that magnifies God in all of His attributes
and always puts man in his rightful place in the dust before God. And this one body of truth presents
to us one Redeemer, one Savior, one Salvation that is all of
grace, and all in Christ Jesus. Now go back with me real quick
to the book of 2 John. And let me just make a few statements
to identify and answer the question, what is the doctrine of Christ? What is the doctrine of Christ?
What is this one body of truth One body of truth, and about
which we must not be wrong. There are a lot of things you
can be wrong about in this life, and you'll be okay. But you can't be wrong about
the truth and be okay. And if there is only one body
of truth, I want to know what it is. And I want to know him
who has identified himself in the Word of God as being the
truth. After all, he said in John chapter
14, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. No man cometh
unto the Father but by me. Here in 2 John and verse 9. He says, whosoever transgresseth
and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, he doesn't have God. He's got religion. He's got a
name. He's got a profession. He may
have a good reputation before people. But if you don't abide
in the doctrine of Christ, you don't have God. Now that's serious. You don't have God. And listen,
our Lord Jesus said in John chapter 17 in His high priestly prayer,
this is life eternal that they might know Thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. And if we deny, if
we forsake the doctrine of Jesus Christ, we don't have God. That means we die without God. And if we die without God, we
die without hope. We die without any help. We die
without a Savior. We die without a Mediator. I
don't want to die like that. I want to die knowing God. And God can only be known through
the doctrine of Christ. What is the doctrine of Christ?
Four things. Number one, the doctrine of Christ
has to do with His identity. You can't be wrong about this.
It has to do with His identity. This is an absolutely essential
element in Bible doctrine and God's truth. You've got to know
His identity. He must be God And He must be
man. He must be God Almighty, Eternal,
having all the attributes of deity. And I'll try to be as kind as
I can be, but if anybody denies the deity, the absolute deity
of Jesus our Savior, he does not know God. He does not know
God. And I know there are a lot of
religious people and they're nice folks, but they say, you
know, he's a son of God, but he's not equal with the Father. We can't pat them on the back
and say you're our Christian brethren. They're not Christian. They're not our brethren. They're
deniers of the very truth of God's Word. when they deny the Lord Jesus
Christ. Jesus of Nazareth is the Lord
of glory. The believing thief, he said,
Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. after our
Lord's resurrection. And He appeared to His disciples.
And you remember, Thomas wasn't there. And then the next time...
See, if you miss church service, you never know what you might
miss. And he missed. And then the next service, he
said, I'll be there. And he was there. And he saw
the Lord of glory and he said, My Lord and my God, He called
Jesus God. And he worshiped Him. In Hebrews chapter 1, the Scripture
says, under the sun He saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever
and ever. A scepter of righteousness is
the scepter of Thy kingdom. And you know what God told the
angels to do? Worship Him. Know what He said? Worship Him. Well now, wait a
minute. The law of God says, thou shalt
worship no other gods before me. One God. God told the angels
to worship His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's God. If God called Him God, and He
did, then He's got to be God. Our Savior during His earthly
ministry, He made this assertion repeatedly. He often challenged
the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He said to
them, what think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He? And they said,
well, He's the Son of David. And He saith unto them, how then
doth David in spirit All him lords saying, the Lord said unto
my Lord, sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies
thy footstool. Do you remember in Isaiah chapter
six, in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah said, I saw the
Lord high and lifted up. His train filled the temple.
I heard the seraphim sing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And in the book of John, our
Lord Jesus said, in that day, Abraham, He said, He saw Me.
He saw Me. Creation is attributed to Him. All things were made by Him,
and without Him was not anything made that was made. Divine providence. is attributed to Him. Providence
is God directing all things to the end that He has appointed.
The Scripture says in the book of Colossians, by Him all things
consist. All things are held together.
And salvation is attributed to Him. He's the only Savior of
sinners. He has to be God. But wait! He
has to be man. He has to be the perfect man
answering to every demand of God in order that He would be
our perfect representative and substitute. And we know the wages
of sin is death, but God cannot die. God cannot suffer. God cannot bleed. God is Spirit. God is Spirit. Therefore, God
took upon Himself The tabernacle of flesh. Great is the mystery
of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. And in that flesh, He could suffer. In that flesh, He could feel
pain. In that flesh, He could suffer,
bleed, and die, which is the wages of sin. And He died for
His people in order to satisfy divine justice that demanded
death for sin. And He died. He died. The man Christ Jesus died. Behold the God-man. So the doctrine
of Christ has to do with his identity. Number two, the doctrine
of Christ has to do with what he did when he came into this
world and the reason that he did it. Most everybody that we
know acknowledges that Jesus was in this world 2,000 years
ago, but what was the reason for Him coming into the world?
Well, He wasn't to just set an example before us of how we should
live, although He was the perfect example. And He wasn't just the
perfect example of how we should be submissive to death, although
He was that. Listen, He came into the world
to save. That's why it came. Thou shalt
call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. How would He do that? By dying. That's the reason He came into
the world. He came to die. His people were
helplessly lost. We could do nothing about our
dilemma. We could do nothing about our
sinful state. Our alienation from God was great. Our sins, like a vast mountain,
separated us from God. He came to remove the mountain. He came to do something about
our sin. There was no other possibility
of salvation. It was the will of God for Him
to die. And he had to do this to fulfill his surety engagements. What do you mean by that, preacher?
Before the world began, God gave him this vast number of people
in electing grace. And the Son of God said, I'll
save them, I'll redeem them, I'll reconcile them to God by
my blood, and I'll bring them all safely home to glory in my
righteousness. He did it because He loved us.
Now listen, if we're in error here, we've missed the Gospel. You see, the Lord Jesus, this
is what the average person thinks. He came into the world to make
salvation a possibility. That's not why He came. The Scripture
doesn't say, call His name Jesus, for He shall make salvation a
possibility. He came to save. He came to redeem. It says in Hebrews chapter 9,
He obtained. He obtained redemption by His
blood. You know what that means? He
got it. He bought and paid for His people and He will have them. Our Savior satisfied the vengeance
of divine justice in our stead. He put away our sins. The Lord,
our righteousness, justified us before God. He did accomplish our reconciliation. He came to save. This is what
he said, you remember when he converted, when he saved Zacchaeus. He said, the Son of Man is come
to seek and to save that which was lost. Not to try to seek,
not to try to save, but to seek and to save that which was lost. Thirdly, the adoption of Christ
has to do with where he is now and what he's doing now. He died. Did he stay dead? Last week I was a patient at
Bellefonte Hospital. In every room they have a crucifix. Hanging right up there, right
in front of me. And when they got me in the bed,
I was really sick, but I wasn't too sick to notice that. And
I told Nancy, I said, would you please take that off the wall
and put it face down? I don't want to look at that.
My Savior's not dead. He's not hanging on a cross. Nurse came in Tuesday evening,
changing of the shifts. She looked up there. I said,
are you looking for the crucifix? She said, yeah. I said, I don't
want to see Jesus on a popsicle stick. I said, I had my wife
take it down. I said, that's okay, isn't it?
She said, oh yeah. My friends, that's idolatry.
It is idolatry. He's not on a cross. He's not
still dead. He lives! He lives! We know He lived. The Bible says
He arose from the dead. And 40 days later, He went back
to heaven. What's He doing there? He's our
intercessor. He's our advocate. My little
children, these things write I unto you. John says in 1 John
2 verse 1. These things write I unto you
that you sin not. But if any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father. We have a go-between. We have
an intercessor. Jesus Christ the righteous. That's who my representative
is. Jesus Christ the righteous. And so in Jeremiah we read, He's
the Lord our righteousness and He represents us. We have a lawyer
before God, before the majesty on high. He's one who's equal
with God in every way and yet He's bone of our bone and flesh
of our flesh. He's our friend and He's our
brother. What's He doing? He's sitting
upon the throne of sovereign authority. And He's manipulating all things. And I know people don't understand
this. They can't grasp this. But there's
not a storm that arises apart from His will. There's not a
cancer that finds its way into somebody's body apart from His
will. There is not a death that ever
takes place apart from Him saying, it's now time for your life to
end. There are no premature deaths. There are no untimely deaths.
There's a time to be born. There's a time to die. And God
has ordained those times and our sovereign King Christ Jesus,
He governs those things. The issues of life and death
belong to Him. And He sends His Spirit to us. He sends His Spirit by means
of a messenger who comes and preaches the Gospel to us. And
the Spirit of God works within the heart and He brings us to
a state of life. We're born again. Don't listen
to these preachers who say believe on Jesus and get born again.
That's putting the cart before the horse. You're born again
and then you believe. And the new birth is a work of
God. Conversion is repentance and believing. And we do that. But regeneration, this being
begotten again of God, we don't have any part. We've got as much
to do in that as we had in our first birth. Nothing. The Lord does the work. And Christ
Jesus sends forth His Spirit. He sends forth His messengers.
The messenger stands and he preaches Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He preaches the doctrine of Christ. And the Spirit of God takes that
Word and He just miraculously, mysteriously works in the heart. And all of a sudden, it's like
the eyes of the soul are open. And you say, I see. I understand
what this is all about. It's a salvation all by grace
and all in Christ Jesus. This is the doctrine of Christ.
Now, do you believe the doctrine of Christ? Well, I can't answer
for you. But I can answer for me. I do. I do. This is the doctrine that
saves. This is the doctrine that magnifies
God. And no other doctrine will help
you. Every other doctrine are the doctrines of men and the
doctrines of devil. Oh God, give us grace to believe
the doctrine of Christ. Let's get our psalm books and
we'll sing A great old hymn, number 42. All hail the power
of Jesus.