Welcome to the Reign of Grace
radio broadcast. My name is Bill Parker. I'm the
pastor of the 13th Street Baptist Church in Ashland, Kentucky.
This program is sponsored by the members of Eager Avenue Grace
Church in Albany, Georgia, located at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany,
Georgia. I'll be bringing you a gospel
message of the sovereign grace and glory of God in the Lord
Jesus Christ from God's holy word. And now, the message. Welcome to our program. Now today
I'm going to be preaching from the book of John, the gospel
of John, chapter 14. And I'm only going to begin at
verse 15. where the Lord, in continuing to teach his disciples,
he makes this statement, and it's a very convicting statement,
and it's also a very encouraging statement in the way of obedience.
He says, if you love me, keep my commandments. Now, the title
of this message is Love and Obedience. And it speaks of the obedience
of God's children. It speaks of the love of God's
children. Obedience motivated by love. Now, many times, as you know,
as we look at these scriptures here, we know that our Lord here
is speaking to his disciples in the upper room. He's coming
to the time just hours away when he would go into the Garden of
Gethsemane when he would agonize over the sorrows and pains that
he would suffer in his humanity as the substitute and the sacrifice
of the sins of his people. And then he would be arrested.
Judas betrays him. He would be arrested and taken
before the courts of the Jews, the high court of the Jews. He'd
be taken before Pontius Pilate, he'd be taken before Herod, all
unbelieving, God-hating sinners. And then ultimately he would
go to his death on the cross of Calvary. Now we must remember
that his death on the cross was not a defeat. His death on the
cross was a victory. It was a victory over sin, a
victory over Satan. It was a victory over the curse
of the law. It's the woman's seed, as prophesied
way back in Genesis chapter 3, being bruised in his heel, dying
that death which he would accomplish for the salvation, for the redemption,
for the justification of his sheep. He had said back in John
chapter 10, he said the Good Shepherd gives his life for the
sheep. And he said, I lay down my life
for the sheep. He said this too. He said, I
lay it down willingly. He said, no man takes it from
me. You see, Christ went to the cross because he loved his people. And what I'm saying here is this.
The greatest evidence of his love for his Father, the greatest
evidence of his love for his people is that he was obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross. And what is more astounding
about this, when we talk about amazing grace, is the objects
of His love were such unworthy, unworthy sinners. None of us
who are saved by the grace of God deserve to be loved. You see, He loved the unlovely. We love those who love us. That's what man by nature does.
You remember Christ spoke of that in the Sermon on the Mount.
He said, what honor or glory do you deserve if you just love
those who love you? He said, even the heathen do
that. But He said, I say unto you, love your enemies. And we
must understand that the sheep, the ones for whom Christ laid
down His life, were by nature, in their minds, in their affections,
and in their will, they were enemies. The Bible says that
in the book of Romans, while we were enemies, God sent His
Son to die for our sins. Christ laid down His life while
we were enemies, not while we were friends. We didn't deserve
it. His love toward His sheep, toward
the people for whom He died, for whom He lived, for whom He
suffered and bled and died on the cross, for whom he was buried,
for whom he was raised again the third day, for whom he ascended
to the right hand of the Father and is now making intercession
for them, the ones for whom he's coming again, none of them, none
of us were deserving of his love. So when we speak of his love
for us, his love for his people, his love for his elect, his love
for his church, We're not speaking of deserving love, love that
we've earned, but it's love that we needed. It was unconditional
love towards us. The Bible says in 1 John chapter
4 and verse 10, herein is love, not that we loved him, but that
he loved us and gave his son, sent his son to be the propitiation,
the sin-bearing sacrifice who brought satisfaction for our
sins. Now that's the proof of Christ's
love for His sheep. He loved His sheep. It says over
there in chapter 13 and verse 1, He loved them unto the end. In other words, the proof of
Christ's love for His sheep is that He obeyed the law of God
for them and redeemed them from their sins and finished the work
that the Father gave Him to do. What about our love to Him? Well,
now we know that no man by nature loves Christ. It is not in us
by nature. We're sinful, ruined, wretched,
depraved, fallen human beings born in Adam without any desire
for godly things. Our desires are for ourselves
and for those that are extensions of ourselves. We do not love
God by nature. If any of us love God in any
way to any degree, it's a matter of God's grace towards us. The Bible says that God, by His
grace through the Holy Spirit's power working within us, sheds
abroad in our hearts the love of God in Christ. And love is
one of the gifts of the Spirit. You see, love for God now, divine
love, now we love by nature, but we don't love God. We don't
love Christ. We don't love His truth. You
see, by nature we hate the light. But God puts within each and
every one of His people in time a love for Him. Yet our love
for Him is not yet perfect. It is not yet complete. It will
one day be perfect and complete when we die and go to be with
the Lord. But right now, our love is still contaminated with
self-love. That's why we have a warfare.
That's why we have to fight. That's why we have to struggle,
not in our own power now, but in the power of the Spirit to
love God perfectly and love our neighbor as ourselves. Now, while
here on earth, even as a sinner saved by grace, my love is so,
so pitiful. I can say honestly before God
and men that I do love God. I love Christ. I love His people.
But I don't yet love Him or His people perfectly. And therefore
I don't have anything to boast of in my love. You see, my boast
is not in my love for Him. My boast is in His love for me. My salvation is not conditioned
on my love for Him. My salvation is conditioned on
His love for me. You see that? If it was conditioned
on my love, oh my soul, what a pitiful state I would be in.
There'd be no hope for me. There'd be no hope for any sinner.
So when you read a statement like this in John 14 and verse
15, it says, If you love me, keep my commandments. Now, most
people, when they read that statement, their mind automatically goes
to salvation by works. And they'll say something like,
see there, you must keep his commandments to be saved. But
that is not what this verse is teaching. First of all, when
he says, if you love me, he is not speaking of conditions or
stipulations or requirements that we must meet in order to
be saved. Now, you need to understand this
perfectly. You need to understand this clearly. Again, if our salvation
is conditioned on our love for Him, then none of us would be
saved. So the if here is not a condition
or a conditional if. The if here is an evidence. Now understand that. The love
that we have for Him is not a requirement we must meet in order to be saved. It is an evidence that we have
already been saved. Our love for Him is an evidence
of His love for us. And that is so important because,
I'll tell you, it's the difference between grace and works. And
that's important. That's vital. You see, grace
and works will not mix. If it's by grace, then it's no
more of works. If it's by works, it's no more
of grace. But salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is by grace. It's free, you see. And if I
have any love of God, if I have any of the fruit of the Spirit,
which includes love, divine love, godly love, love for God, love
for Christ, love for His truth, love for His people, if I have
any of that, my friend, it's a grace. It's not something that
I mustered up within me naturally. It's not something that I had
within me naturally. All I had naturally was self-love.
If God had left me to myself and my love, I would go merrily
my way to hell and not even think a thing of it. But here, he says,
if you love me. It's an evidence. It's like saying,
if you breathe, you will live. Now, we know that breathing is
not the cause of life. but breathing is the evidence
of life." Same way with this love, same way with faith. You
see, faith worketh by love, the scripture says. In other words,
if you know Christ, and if you're submitted to Him as your Savior,
your Lord, His blood for the forgiveness of all your sins,
His righteousness for your justification, if you know Him whom to know
is life eternal, then that faith will evidence itself in love,
love to God, love to Christ, love to his people, love to his
truth. So he says, if you love me, keep
my commandments. Now, somebody says, well, If
I don't keep his commandments, that means I don't love him."
Well, that's true, but you've got to understand the context
here. Now, people look at that, keeping the commandments, and
whenever we see that word commandments, our minds always go to the Ten
Commandments. That's not what he's talking
about here. The Ten Commandments was a moral code given to Israel
on Mount Sinai and the Old Covenant. And those moral principles are
still in effect. The Ten Commandments were not
under as a rule of life. But keeping the commandments
understands what Christ commanded his disciples to do. Now think
about that. What did he command his disciples
to do? Now let me tell you something.
God has never and will never command any sinner to keep the
commandments in order to be saved. If God were to command sinners,
to do works of the law, to keep the commandments, to be saved,
that would doom every one of us. The Bible says that, for
by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God, it's not of works, lest any man should
boast. Salvation by works would doom
every individual in the human race because we're all sinners.
The Bible says, for all have sinned and come short of the
glory of God. We're sinners. We've missed the
mark. It says that the law was given
to expose our sinfulness and the impossibility of salvation
based upon our best efforts to keep the law. Our best efforts
to keep the law fall way short of what God requires to save
us. God requires holiness. God requires
righteousness, perfect righteousness. And you don't have it, and I
don't have it in ourselves, and we cannot work unto it. The only
way we can have perfect holiness and righteousness is through
the obedience of another, the Lord Jesus Christ. If I'm to
be saved, it must be by His holiness and His righteousness, His works,
His law-keeping, His death on the cross, not my own. So God never commanded any sinner
to seek salvation based upon His law-keeping. If He did, we'd
be doomed. The Bible says that it is impossible
that a sinner can be justified before God by deeds of the law. So what did God command us to
do? Well, first of all, He commands us to look to Christ. He commands
us to follow Him. He commands us to trust Christ
for all of salvation. He commands us to trust and rest
in Christ for all righteousness, all holiness, and all eternal
life. He forbids you to look anywhere
else. God forbids you to look to yourself
for salvation. God forbids you to look to your
works for salvation. God tells you plainly that to
look to your works for salvation is deadly. He made that plain
from the beginning. You think about the first example
of two men coming for acceptance before God, to worship God, Cain
and Abel. Now here comes Abel, he's the
keeper of the sheep, and he brings the lamb, the lamb that God commanded. God said bring a lamb, bring
a sacrifice, and he said bring the blood, the blood of the lamb. Now that blood of the lamb that
Abel brought was a confession of sin for Abel. Abel was saying
when he brought that blood of the lamb, he's saying Lord I'm
a sinner, I have no right, I have no worth in myself, I have no
right to be here by my works, I cannot save myself, my sins
are too much for me, have mercy upon me, I need grace. And that
blood, that lamb, and the blood of the lamb was a type and a
picture, a symbol of Christ, the Lamb of God, and His blood
shed for sins. So that's what God commended
Cain and Abel to do, bring the blood of sacrifice. My friend,
today God commands you and me to look to Christ, to plead his
blood and his righteousness alone for our whole salvation, our
attaining salvation, our maintaining salvation, and our final glory. And here comes Cain now. Cain's
bringing the works of his hands, He worked hard in the field,
and I'm sure he had a good crop, and I'm sure he brought the best
that he had out of that crop. But you see, his sacrifice was
not according to the command of God. He brought what God commanded
not to bring. He brought it the works of his
hands, and he was rejected. He didn't bring the blood. And
what that shows us, my friend, is that God commands us to look
to Christ, to plead his blood and his righteousness, and he
forbids us to look to anyone else, look anywhere else. He
forbids us to come based on our words. So when he says, if you
love me, keep my commandments, understand that that begins with
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Realizing that I am justified,
I'm redeemed, I'm saved based on His work and His work alone. My work's excluded. Now we're
to follow Him. Now God sheds abroad in our hearts
the love of God in Christ. And He gives us a desire to obey
Him and to strive toward the perfection that is in Christ.
And even though we will not attain that in this life, And we'll
attain it in glory, but by the power of God. It won't be by
our own power. We're not saved by works, we're
not kept by works, and we will not be brought to glory by works.
It's all of Christ. It's all of grace. So our keeping
the commandments, our following Christ, our seeking to do what
he commands us to do in faith, in repentance, in love, in obedience,
in not being conformed to the world is all an evidence of our
love. Now, what that does is this.
It should do this. It should convict us of our sins. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord, keep me. I don't love you perfectly, but
I do love you. And it should inspire us to do
better in the way of grace and gratitude and love. In other
words, he says, if you love me, keep my commandments." This is
the obedience of love, not the obedience of legalism. It's not
the obedience of works, free will, salvation. It's the obedience
of love. In other words, you obey God
because you love Him, because you're grateful, because He loves
you. You're not obeying God trying
to get Him to love you, trying to earn His love. His love cannot
be earned, but obey Him. Now, the Lord goes on here in
verse 16. Now, he mentions the Holy Spirit. I'm going to talk later on in
another message about the work of the Holy Spirit. But let me
just, that love and that desire to obey is the operation and
work of the Holy Spirit within us. It comes in the new birth
and he abides with us, in us and with us in his truth and
in his presence. And Christ says in verse 16,
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter,
that he may abide with you forever. Verse 17, Even the Spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him
not, neither knoweth him, but you know him, for he dwelleth
with you, and shall be in you. Now, like I said, I'll deal with
that later in the next message more in detail. But this Comforter
is the Holy Spirit. The word comforter here means
one who is given alongside of to aid you and to help you. Just
like Christ was with his disciples, he was their comforter while
he was with them. But there he says, I'm going
to pray to the Father and he'll give you another comforter. Now
the word another there is a word that doesn't mean another of
a different kind, but it means another of the same kind. And
there the Lord Jesus Christ is testifying to the deity of the
Holy Spirit, the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit. And he said the Comforter, the
Holy Spirit, the divine Comforter, will abide with them forever.
And he says even the Spirit of Truth. Now this Comforter is
the Spirit of Truth, not a lie. Satan is the father of lies.
His evil demons and spirits are liars, but God's Spirit is the
Spirit of truth, and the truth that He leads sinners to is Christ
and Him crucified. In other words, He's going to
abide with His people and in His people as the Spirit of truth,
the light of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the glory of
God. And He says the world cannot receive Him. Now, why cannot
the world receive Him? Because the world by nature hates
God. This world here refers to the
world of unbelieving sinners, those who do not want Christ,
those who exalt themselves, those who are so tied to this earth
and themselves that they will not hear the truth. And he says
it's the natural man, he cannot receive the things of the Spirit
of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he says, "...because
it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but you know him." Now,
he's talking to his disciples here. You know him. "...for he
dwelleth with you, and he shall be in you." Now, what I believe
he's talking about there is the providential work of the Holy
Spirit in their lives and the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit
in their lives. You see, when Christ goes out
seeking his sheep, it's the Spirit who brings them under the preaching
of the gospel and keeps them there providentially until he
brings them to a saving knowledge of Christ, and then he indwells
them. He indwelled these men in the
new birth, but there was coming a time when Christ would ascend
unto the Father that the Spirit would come in a special way to
where he would indwell his people as their comforter. Now how does
he comfort his people? He comforts them by causing them
to rest in Christ, to find their peace, their comfort. and their
hope. And Christ says in verse 18,
He says, I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. One of the translations interprets
that word comfortless as orphans. And it can be translated in other
ways, but that's a good translation. Christ is not saying this, I'm
not going to leave you out there as orphans. You're the children
of God. You've been adopted into the
family of God. You've been redeemed by the blood
of Christ. You're a full-fledged free son
of God in Christ. And I'm not going to leave you
as orphans, without any support, without any foundation, without
any sustenance. Christ cares for his people.
And he says in verse 19, yet a little while when the world
seeth me no more, but you see me because I live, you shall
live also. You see, the life of a child
of God is Christ Himself, Christ and Him crucified. We live eternally
spiritually because He lives. Sin demanded our death. Well,
He made an end of sin. Righteousness demands life. Well,
He brought in righteousness because He lives, we live. And He says
in verse 20, "...at that day you shall know that I am in the
Father, and you in Me, and I in you." You see, Christ is in the
Father. He's one with the Father. And
He says, and I am in the Father, and you in me. We are in Christ. He is our representative, our
substitute. He's our surety. And He says,
and I in you. He indwells His people. How does
He indwell His people? By His Spirit, the Comforter,
and by His Word. Christ within us. By His Spirit
and by His Word. And he motivates us by the Spirit
who applies life to our hearts, knowledge to our minds, desires
for godly things, for Christ in our hearts and in our affections,
and he guides us by the Word. And he says in verse 21, "...he
that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth
me. And he that loveth me shall be
loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself
to him." You see, all of that is the evidence of Christ within
us by His Spirit and by His Word. The love of God shed abroad,
our desire to follow Him and to obey Him and to rest in Him. All of this, Judas, verse 22,
saith unto him, Not ascariot now, he'd already gone. Lord,
how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto
the world? And Jesus answered and said unto
him, If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father
will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode
with him. That's how he's going to manifest himself unto the
disciples, and not unto the world, to his children. That love that
is shed abroad in their hearts which causes them to rest in
Christ for all of salvation and desire to follow Him. That's
the evidence of His indwelling presence within us, His abode
within us by His Spirit and by His Word. And my friend, that
love and obedience is the product of God's grace and God's power. It's not of us. It's not of ourselves. Just like faith and repentance,
it's the gift of God It's not of works lest any man should
boast. I hope that's been helpful to
your understanding of the scriptures and the gospel of God's grace.
If you'd like a copy of this message, listen to the announcer
and he'll give you the details. The title of this message is
Love and Obedience. And I hope you'll join us next
week for another message from God's Word. We're glad you could
join us for today's message. If you would like to receive
a copy of this message, or if you would like more information
about Eager Avenue Grace Church, remember we are located at 1102
Eager Drive in Albany, Georgia. You can call us at 229-432-6969. or visit our Reign of Grace website
at www.rofgrace.com. Thank you, and may the Lord be
with you.