to eat, what color should we
paint our living room? It requires wisdom, doesn't it?
Not just choices, but wisdom. Now, certain acts and choices
that require wisdom, certain decisions, certain thoughts,
certain things require wisdom to a different degree. Sometimes
we can gain wisdom and say, hey, what kind of paint did you use?
Was it good? Oh, great, okay. Well, I used terrible paint and
it peeled off after 30 days. And we gain wisdom through other
people's experiences. But when we're talking about
the wisdom of the Lord, when we're talking about Christ, who is
our righteousness, we need to make sure that we're staying
in the context of what spiritual wisdom is. And that we're not
equivocating the idea of just, you know, wise choices, yada,
yada, yada, Christian faith's all the same. It's not the same.
As a matter of fact, I think some of the areas in our lives
where we lack wisdom is when we start to think that Christ
has become just a subset of doctrines and teachings rather than being
the God of eternity. Almost to the point where I've
almost decided that, and I do this now when I speak especially
to those in an evangelistic way, I don't use the term gospel anymore.
I just say good news. I just say good news. The good
news of Jesus Christ because it speaks to the wisdom who is
Christ. The wisdom of God who is the
person of Christ. Christ is salvation. Christ is
righteousness. Christ is wisdom, says Paul.
And so when I'm telling of Christ, I'm telling the good news of
Christ. I'm not, because people have this lack of wisdom and
they have determined that the point of gospel is some type
of doctrinal thing. It's a proclamation. Jesus is
not a doctrine, Jesus is the one teaching of himself. The
gospel is the story of who Christ is and what God has promised
in order to redeem his people in his righteousness, in his
justice through the person of Jesus Christ. So the teaching
of the gospel is the good news, is to tell of the news of Jesus
that is good. You see how subtle we can get
gobbled up in other things? We think the gospel can be a
tract, or that the gospel can, you know, check a box, or that
the gospel could come down an aisle, or that the gospel could
be all sorts of different things. The gospel is not anything but
the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ, the righteous, whom the
apostles wrote and the prophets wrote of. And that is how God
has revealed his redemption to us. In 3 John, we have these
characters. We have John, of course, the
elder, the apostle, the old elder apostle, the only one living
at the time of this writing. And he's writing because he loves
the body. He loves the body. He loves the
truth. Why does he love the truth? Because
Christ is the truth. He doesn't love the data of Christ.
He doesn't love the details of Christ. He doesn't love the idea
of Christ. He loves Christ. He loves Christ. And for some
of us, we may be thinking, what are you talking about? I pray
that the Lord will grant you understanding. Because I do believe
that in the way people receive the Word of God, By and large
can show us as to where they are in Christ. Because the spirit of God will
teach us and he would teach us in the spirit of humility. And Christ teaches. Through the
spirit of authority. As he would say, oftentimes in
John's gospel, they're not come to do my own will with the will
of the one who sent me. And when I leave, I will send another
the one that comes alongside you. and he will teach you all
things. That's what he tells the apostles.
You won't have to worry about remembering everything I've taught
you. I will cause you to remember all things so that when the apostles
wrote their letters and they wrote the doctrines concerning
Christ, the story of the good news of Jesus, for our benefit
and for our joy and in those gospel narratives for the salvation
of the elect. We know that we can trust what's
written here. We know that we can trust what has been shown
to us. But see, herein lies the problem.
A lot of times we say we trust the teachings that we know, but
we do not trust the person to whom they point. We say we rest
in these understandings of things, but we do not rest in the one
who displays himself through these things. And beloved, you
may be thinking I'm splitting hairs. You may be thinking that
this is some issue of semantics or looking from one side to the,
you know, half one way, what is it, half a dozen, six one
way, half a dozen the other. No, this is seeing Christ and
knowing him versus just being a student of some information
about him, which is 90% of the professors I had in all of my
seminary. Lost as a ball in high weeds, loved the teachings, loved
the stuff, loved the studies, loved the languages, but could
not give you any sense in which they had been given by the Spirit
of God the ability to rest in the person of Jesus Christ and
His finished work for them. Some people will come and say,
well, what am I supposed to do about it? You're supposed to
hear the Word of God. And as a believer with the same
spirit, you will not listen to the flesh when the word of God
confronts it. You will say, oh, wow, I'm listening
to my flesh. I need to stop. And I just don't believe people
read the word of God enough. And I don't believe I read the
word of God enough. And I don't believe that we read the word
of God in light of the gospel of free and sovereign grace.
We could go through Genesis chapter 1 and we could look at the apostolic
writing to show what its meaning and what its purpose was in the
very beginning. There's a large subsect of our
culture who think that Genesis 1 is supposed to fight and attack
the scientific community. God forbid it. Has nothing to
do with science, has nothing to do with how we're supposed
to understand biology and evolution and all these other things. Has
everything to do with God sending his son into the world. You realize
Genesis is a very long book. With three paragraphs about God
said let there be and there was. Because that is the bookend of
redemption, beginning. as John would say in the Greek,
in the beginning of all things, when things began, God was, you
see. Well, marriage is about populating
the earth, and marriage is about making good citizens, and marriage
is about good economy and capitalism. No, it's not. Marriage is a temporary
shadow, just like the showbread in the temple, of an eternal
picture who is Jesus Christ in reality. Marriage is temporary
shadow. God created man, gave woman to
man, and that is about Jesus Christ. Don't believe me? Then
you don't believe God because God's word says it. Paul says
it very clearly. I say this mystery is profound
and the creation of man and the creation of woman to become one
flesh is so that God could show the origins of all things redemptive. And it's temporary. It's temporary. The only thing that's eternal
is the Word of God. Who is that? Jesus Christ. Folks, we're not
going to walk around with ESVs in eternity. Or King James. Or the Nestle-Aland version 300,262. Greek. We're not going to have
all that. We're going to be with the Living Word. And so John
writes this teeny tiny sentence or two. He is expressing great
things with the foundation of the gospel clearly in check. Clearly in check. So the only
way we can really understand John's writing and his heart
and his purposes and what he doesn't say, which is as important
as what he does say in some sense, is to know the Gospel. And the Gospel is not distinctions
against other Gospels. The Gospel is distinct from other
Gospels. False Gospels. False teaching. The Gospel is not an evangelical
truth. The Gospel is Christ. The Gospel is the evangel. The
word evangel is The word good news, that we say gospel. We need to listen to the word
of God. Why? For the sake of our joy, for
the sake of the glory of his name. Well, I'm glorifying God
because I'm stomping my feet. You're not glorifying God by
stomping your feet. We don't glorify God by stomping
our feet. We don't glorify God by being intimidating. We don't glorify God by getting our own way, ever. The scripture is full of wisdom.
And part of that wisdom teaches us that we should remain quiet
and listen. Part of that wisdom teaches us
that we should remain calm. That song we just sang, I love
it. It's one of my favorite hymns in the book. Be still my soul. The scripture teaches us that
wisdom listens and carefully understands, seeks understanding. The scripture teaches us that
wisdom seeks reconciliation. You know what it looks like?
If we go to Solomon, if we go to Proverbs and we see some of
the writing there, we see that God teaches that wisdom doesn't
look to tell everybody what's wrong, but it listens. Because when we feel like we
have to say something, we're probably unwise in that. If we
have to say something, it proves we're American. We have to say
something. We don't have to say anything.
Who are we? We are not God. And to see that
James has to fix a problem is to say that God is unable to
fix a problem if I don't act. And this little old church, John
loved them dearly. He loved them dearly. And when
you look at John's writing, you look at Peter, you look at even
James, and we're there midweek. I pray that you're staying on
top of that. It's important to us as a body. When you read,
you know, Paul and others, even Jude, we see all of their joy
and their joy is not in the elimination of problems. Their joy is never
like, I'm so joyful now, I haven't had to deal with anything in
months. Because if our joy comes from not having problems, our
joy is sunk already. There's a huge Western idealistic
humanism that invades, I'll say this, it invades our very thinking. And that thinking is that if
something's wrong, if something is out of place according to
what the standard that we think it should be, if something is
a little bit stressful, then it's bad. that's bad. And then we respond. You know what the root word of
that is? Selfish. It's selfish. That's selfishness.
That's selfishness because it's completely myopic. It's completely
introspective. It's completely looking at what
I think should be happening, it's not happening, and what
I want to happen. So unless that happens, then
I can't be joyful. That's selfish. And beloved,
we do it everywhere. Don't we? We do it with everything.
It's innate to us, unless we're just really gifted by our personality. I even know unbelievers who have
this great stoic personality, like that doesn't matter, it's
fine. I'm not that way, it's fine. I may say it's fine, but
that means God Almighty has got it in his hand, so it's okay.
But the fire in the screen behind the stoic face is unbearable. And John, there were some real
problems here in this church. John was like, I have no greater
joy than to hear my children walking in the truth. Gaius,
you have made my day. You have given me great joy because
I see you walking in the truth. I see you loving the brothers
and the sisters. I see you helping the evangelist.
I see you doing the work of the ministry, not railroading this
entire body because of diatrophies who has damaged 90% of the entire
church. Now, if you think about that,
in large churches, oh goodness, churches that are in the thousands
in attendance, one stinker can make a big mess. Two stinkers
can tear things apart. But three can kill everybody
in there. You don't believe me? Three people single-handedly
split a church of 2,300 people in 2002. Three people. Because they didn't
get their way. One didn't get his way and he
found two other people to join his side. And within four days,
they'd called and visited. Not evangelistically, not for
ministry. They'd never done that for the sake of seeing on, checking
on people. But boy, when they had a bone
to pick, they learned to pick them. And they went and picked
the bones out of everybody they could find. And the damage was
done. And we had a large meeting one
night, and the senior pastor's standing up there, and he's trying
to get everybody just to listen and to talk. And when a decision was made,
a group of people by and large, a group of people en masse began
to cheer and put their hands in the air because they had defeated
the knuckleheads. And I ran out the back door thinking
I was about to throw up for two reasons. One is that I was this
close to cheering myself. And I didn't know that was in
me. And secondly, I saw that just how easy it is for God's
body to be destroyed in the context of our relationships. That is
why wisdom wins. Christ wins. Christ in his redemption
always wins, no matter what we do. He cannot lose us. We cannot
be lost, beloved. No matter how hard we try, we
cannot separate ourselves from the love of God. And we live in an American culture
where the idea of church is nothing but a spectator investment anyway.
I go to church, I come to church, I went to church, I'm going to
church. No, we're not. We are the body. And we do assemble. See, our
vernacular's even screwed up, isn't it? Wisdom. The flesh tells us that we need
to make much to do about all the things that are wrong. And
it doesn't mean that we don't call them out. Beloved, we are
called. Listen, the scripture teaches the body of Christ to
patiently, lovingly, and humbly point out problems. Not like
police officers. Not like, ooh, I see you. You
know what I'm saying? But, hmm, let me see what's really happening
over here. We don't know what's going on. This looks like something.
Let's inquire. What do you mean by that? Why
are you acting this way? And some things are black and
white. sweep sin under the rug. We don't sweep false doctrine
under the rug. We don't do that, but there is
a manner in which we do call it out. There is a way in which
it must be done. And the first thing and the most
important thing is that we do not in any way do anything that's
detrimental to the whole of the unity of the body. Diotrephes,
if he were in our church, I promise you we would be having meetings
a lot about Diotrephes because that's the way we do it in America,
right? We've got Sunday, we probably can't even worship today because
we're all upset about diatrophies. When are we gonna do something
about diatrophies? What was the apostles, what was God's remedy
for diatrophies? To raise up a man like Gaius
to continue in the body to do the work of the ministry despite
diatrophies. Now does that seem weird to us? And some people want to say,
well, Diotrephes was lost. We don't know that. Diotrephes
was acting lost. What are we to do with a brother
who does not commit to being corrected? We kick them out of
the church. And what does the apostles say?
What does Jesus say? Treat them as an unbeliever,
not they are an unbeliever. How do we know if they are a
believer? When God restores them back to the church, We know that
he has worked in their hearts and we can say, well, look at
their confession is true because they've come back. What did John
say in his first letter? What did John say? And he reminded
of the church in his second letter. There are some of those who have
gone out from among us. They've refused to listen to
the apostles. Diotrephes has the same mindset, but he hadn't
left. He just left their teaching. Now, it's very easy for us to
say, well, only an unbeliever would not listen to the apostles.
Then we're all unbelievers. Yeah, the apostles are authoritative
on the doctrines of Christ. The apostles are authoritative
on justification. The apostles are authoritative
on the resurrection. But they're not authoritative
on how I'm supposed to live my life in my house. And they're not
authoritative on how I'm supposed to get along with them. They're
not authoritative telling me I gotta sit in the seat, subject
myself to somebody next to me. Yes they are. So we do all pick
and choose. So not that it's been to that
degree of causing willful division and upturning the church's intimacy,
but in some sense we're all guilty of being like diatrophies. The very fact that so many times
we put ourselves first in our everyday activities, and in our
weekly activities, and in our weekends activities, and we don't
once contemplate what is best for our soul and best for our
brothers and sisters in the faith, shows that we put ourselves first. Now, the answer to that is not,
oh, woe is me, guilt, tear our clothes, put ash on our head,
throw ourselves down some stairs, or off a tractor, or whatever
else might work. we rest in the sufficiency of
Christ. John says when he comes, if he's able, he's going to bring
up what Diotrephes is doing because he continues to talk against
the apostles and he's not content with just talking. He now refuses
to invite brothers who are evangelists, who need food, who need money,
who need shelter, who need rest. This is life changing situation
here. But he also is causing such stress
that people are scared to even go against him because he has
gained the power to put them out of the church somehow. How
did that happen? It's not like they were snatching
them up and throwing them out the back door. But through pressure, through
social pressure, people were just like, I can't, I can't do
this. And he might have stood up and
said, these people don't listen. This is what's right. We're not
doing this. Anybody who does this or wants to do this is wrong.
We're not having anything to do with them. Then what do you
do? Who holds the keys? And what does John call that
type of behavior in any way, for any reason? He calls it evil. And when we're looking at Christ,
the wisdom of God, our righteousness, And we look at who He is and
what He's done and what He calls us to. And we're looking at that. We can't be looking at Christ
and doing the opposite. Because to do so means we haven't
seen God, have we? How many people claim Well, not
even that. How many times have we heard
other people say, oh, that's such a good Christian man, that's
such a good Christian woman because of their benevolence and their
kindness and their love toward other people. And you know what?
These people are not wrong. That is Christian living. When the cults do better at Christian
life than the church, we have problems. But you know where they don't
have these problems? West Africa. Philippines I'm sure they do
but I mean there's some churches there some congregations there
that I know that They don't they're not worried about matching socks
on Sundays You ever been there you didn't know you had so many
different pairs and shades of black This might just wear this boot
for the rest of the year that I don't have to worry about it
Where you get these ideas from they're in my life. I I have
spent 30 minutes trying to find a pair of socks. And this one,
that sock's a little too tight. I want a thinner sock, because
I'm going to wear a different shoe today. These are first world problems.
Why are you all laughing? You all had the same thing today. Or like
it used to be. You slip on socks, and you're
colorblind. You walk out the house like a clown. That's popular
today. But John tells us not to imitate
evil, but to imitate good. Beloved, we imitate good when
we submit to the Word of God. We imitate good when we hold
fast to the truth. We imitate good when we say humbly,
this is not true, this is wrong behavior, this is what we should
believe and do. We imitate the truth when we
love one another and we are patient with one another. We imitate
the truth when we are subject to the apostles and we join together
in the assembly despite how we feel about somebody else next
to us. That is one of the greatest evils of our day, is someone
who says that they are truly in the faith but refuses fellowship
because of someone else in the proximity of those in the faith. Self-excommunication. It is a
wicked thing. And it doesn't mean that people
shouldn't be leaving churches. I have that conversation with
folks all the time. In fact, even recently, I've
had that conversation with a couple of people. What are you waiting
on? What are you waiting for? I don't know. Well, may the Lord
give you wisdom. May the Lord give you wisdom. There's a time
to depart, but it's not in haste, not in fear, but it's a calculated
wise choice. Because the ultimate issue that
John is writing is not to bring up diatrophies. As a matter of
fact, that's not even the context of this, is it? It's the fact
that Gaius is doing what is right and Demetrius is praising God
for it and giving credit to the Lord for the ministry he received. I said this last week. But this is not how we work in
our culture. We don't work in our culture about praise God
for the word that was preached for me and to me and I learned
this and I grew here. Praise God for the prayers of
the saints who helped me here. Praise God for the encouragement
I received from brother so-and-so or sister so-and-so last week
when we gathered because what it did is God used it to remind
me of his power and sovereignty. Praise God for the fact that
when I was without a job, people brought me groceries and paid
my mortgage. Praise God when I was sick, or I was imprisoned,
or things were not well, or my marriage was on the rocks, that
the body of Christ came around me. You don't hear those testimonies,
but you hear the testimony. Yeah, I went over there and nobody
talked to me. Well, there's a guy up there that don't
look like I think he ought to look. I'm gonna meet a woman
that sounds like that one day, or a man that sounds like that
one day, and go, you've been mocking me your whole life. That's just the old
country nag. Hey, you know what's going on
in that church? Pastor doesn't do anything about false teaching.
Liar. Whoever says that is a liar from
the devil. They're liars. But isn't that what liars do? Diatrophies was a problem, but
the testimony from Demetrius was not about diatrophies. It was not about the problem.
The gospel is not what the Jews did to try to usurp the authority
of God. The gospel is not about their
unbelief. The gospel is not about what
Moses has given. The gospel is about who Christ
is. Peace be to you, John says in
verse 15 of this letter, the friends greet you, greet the
friends each by name. So even in John's closing, he
is saying, hey, beloved, love one another, greet each other,
the peace of the Lord is with you. Now I want us all to turn to
John chapter one. Because you can't get out of
John's letters, and of course I preached, no I didn't really
preach, I did a reading of Revelation in 2016 or 17. And it's a short
series, about 27 sermons. And one day I might do exposition
of Revelation, but it won't be any time in the next few years.
But I think it would be appropriate for us to go all the way back
to the beginning of John's whole purposes of writing everything,
and go back to the prologue of John's gospel, the first 18 verses, and specifically verse 17, 16
and 17, and 18. Let's hear the word of the Lord
in John chapter one, all the way through verse 18. It says,
in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and
the word was God. He was in the beginning with
God and all things were made through him and without him was
not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life
was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness
and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from
God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear
witness about the light that all might believe through him.
He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the
world. He was in the world and the world was made through him,
yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, to his own
people, and they did not receive him. But to all who did receive
him, verse 12, who believed in his name, he gave the right to
become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor the decision of the mind, but of God. The Word became flesh and dwelled
among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son
from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness
about Him and cried out, This was He of whom I said, He comes
after me, ranks before me, because He was before me. Verse 16. For from His fullness we have
all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through
Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever
seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has
made Him known. Now, we have spent a lot of time
in that text some years ago. We spent a lot of time in that
text. And I don't know how many sermons we spent, but I can promise
you this, we didn't spend enough. We did not spend enough in this
gospel presentation, in this gospel proclamation, in this
gospel, just amazing, amazing gospel picture. In one of the
purest and simplest ways that you'll ever see it. This is clearer
than Ephesians 1, it's clearer than Colossians 1, it's clearer
than everything, because everything that has to do with everything
redemptive is right here. Beloved, remember when we went
through John's gospel and I kept saying that everything that John
wrote and in the manner and the order in which he wrote it and
the things that he emphasized in his writing, he pulled them
out in the outline of John 1, 1 through 18. That it is the
outline of the entire gospel letter and that everything that
we see falls in this teaching. But beloved, his epistles, 1st,
2nd, 3rd John are no different. The gospel is the foundation
of these writings. And the church and its business
is about the gospel and the proclamation of the gospel and the gospel
ministry. The ministry of good news to
each other because Christ has given his ministry to us. And we have all these debates
and all this stuff that takes place. And beloved, we don't,
by the Lord's mercy, have diatrophies in our fellowship. But we all have the propensity
to be like Him. We all have the opportunity to
get real selfish and to get real flustered and to get real aggravated
and to get real broken and to get real fearful. And those emotions
are real and they're important and they're vital. We pay attention
to them. But I've seen recently that people's conscience is greater
than God. The scripture says that our heart
is deceitful above all things. It is inherently wicked and depraved. And so though we may have a conscience
that tells us, I wonder if this is pleasing to the Lord. Beloved,
we don't live in fear Because of lack of wisdom, we ask for
it. And then that was my sermon this
past Wednesday. And God, without reproach, gives
freely to those who trust him in that asking. It's funny, though. We trust in the gospel and the
death of Jesus and the life of Jesus, but oftentimes we don't
trust in the gospel of the power of Jesus. The divine power of
God that gives us all we need for life in Godliness, as Peter
would say. And we're not talking about transformative power to
be something better. We're talking about the subtle
reality of resting in the faith that God is handling and going
to handle all of our circumstances. And that God is sovereign and
that everything, everything, everything a piece of dirt flies
in your eye on the way out today when this tropical winds blow
God is responsible for ordaining that speck of dirt and beloved if it doesn't do
anything else it ought to help you be reminded of just how sensitive
your eyes are just how immaculate Your created body is. Just how
amazing it is that God can cause you to see spiritually that which
you can barely see with your own eyes. And oftentimes in our world,
and I believe it's getting worse, men are smarter than they need
to be, rather than being like Paul who says he'd rather be
an idiot. Paul was not a good orator. That was not his thing. He was terrible at it. You ever
seen a really bad movie and really bad acting, really bad script
writing? And you just, you really want to see the story, but like,
give me the wiki, I cannot tolerate it. You know, yeah, you know
what I'm talking about. I mean, I'll read a wiki, I'll
turn a movie off, go watch a wiki, because I can't stand bad acting.
Paul was a bad actor. Paul was a bad teacher in the
context of his craft. He says that, I come and I don't
speak well, but it's not about my power, it's about the substance
of my message. And I know you wanna hear Apollos,
who stands and says, ladies, men, brothers, and all, be in
all of that which is divine and godly, all before thee this way.
Who doesn't wanna hear that kind of stuff? I mean, everybody sounds
authoritative with a somewhat British accent. I know Paul sounded like Elmer
Fudd. Nobody wants to hear that. But
you can make a meme out of it. I can see him. I mean, you know,
you can see it. Paul was not a professional preacher. Preaching is not about professional.
It's about proclamation of that which is absolutely ridiculous
until God shows us the truth and then it's absolutely marvelous. And it all points to Christ. See, God created the church to
be the glory bearer. The image of Christ. His glory
bearer. Eternally. We see the book of
Genesis. It's the book of beginnings.
It's how God created the beginning footprint of redemption. Every bit of it. And it's something
that I always try to help people understand is that the gospel
in Genesis is not just the promise of the seed of the woman crushing
the work and the head of the serpent. That's the definitive
act of Christ dying on the cross and his death propitiating, his
person being propitiation. He is propitiation. He satisfied the wrath of God. But as Jesus says in John 17
that eternal life is knowing the one true God and knowing
the son whom he has sent, knowing him, we see 50 chapters of Genesis. We see a large text in this Old
Testament of beginnings. And we need to understand, and
I'm gonna preach some out of Genesis next week. I'm gonna preach out
of Genesis next week. As we're preparing to get into 1 Timothy,
I'm gonna preach some Psalms. I'm gonna take a few weeks as
I study 1 Timothy, and I'm gonna do some Old Testament narratives. And when we look at the very
introduction to Genesis, the gospel is there from the very
beginning. Pun intended. When Moses writes these words,
when God through his prophet Moses says, in the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth, this is to show us, as
Paul would say to the Hebrews, we by faith believe that God
created the heavens and the earth. We believe by faith that He's
done all these things. He's made the preparations. Out of nothing
came all things that are. There was nothing. Guess what?
There were no people. We don't believe like Latter-day
Saints who believe that every soul is like this eternal spirit
baby that's plucked off of a tree and then sent down into a body.
God creates us. So God created the heavens and
the earth, and it talks about the formlessness and the void
and the darkness that overtook all things. Now picture this
for a second now. Why did John use this language in his gospel?
Because John is explaining what Genesis is telling. And the Spirit of God was hovering
over the face of the waters, and then God said, let there
be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was
good, and God separated the light from the darkness. That is Christ himself. That is the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ being able to be seen. God's not creating Jesus. God is creating something to
behold Jesus. God is declaring, I will send the light into the
world that is dark and formless and void. That's what Genesis 1 is about.
It's not my philosophy, it is God Himself revelation. Jesus, John says it, God says
it in John 1. He uses that same phraseology,
the same thing that Paul says to the Hebrews in Hebrews chapter
1. This is the point. We see that God has orchestrated
His glory to be revealed through the creation of a people for
Himself. So therefore, in order for God to have a people for
Himself, eternally God decreed he would send his son to be a
human and to be propitiation for people who were not righteous.
So therefore God, in a moment, created the first moment and
created the world so that he could save a people out of it.
That's why the world exists. We're not Greek and Roman mythologians,
if that's even the right word. I don't think that's right. We
don't believe that these gods created all sorts of stuff and
things just sort of got out of hand. We don't believe that God
intended to create a perfect race of beautiful Garden of Eden
forever. Garden of Eve is a symbol, just
like the temple is a symbol, is a shadow. The garden is a
shadow. It was not the eternal point.
It's the presence of God in all of His righteousness where the
Son of God, Jesus, walked in the garden in the cool of the
day with His created beings. And they fell. Therefore they
were not worthy to be in the presence of God. But the whole
point that they existed is that God would bring them into His
presence by grace. Not by law, not by obedience. There's never life in obedience.
Never life in obedience. There's only life in the life
giver, the light who is the life of man. Or the life who is the
light of man. And so in John 1, when we see
all of this, we see that no one can see the light unless they're
born of God. No one can understand what we're
talking about this morning unless the Spirit of God has given them
understanding. No one can rest in this truth. No one can know Christ unless
God grants them this great truth. So how is it that God is going
to grant this great sight? By His will and His Spirit alone
through the Word. We can't convince people to be
right. We can't convince people and
argue and debate and proof text and use evidences and archaeological
things and logical debates. We cannot do that and expect
people to come to the knowledge of the truth. The knowledge of
the truth is given by God Himself. God sent the light into the world. Jesus says it in Nicodemus in
John chapter 3. He says it in Nicodemus that the judgment is
this, that the light has come into the world, but that the
people love the darkness because their works are evil. I mean,
think about the totality of human religion. Think about the totality
of Christian history. And it's wide. I've studied a
lot of Christian history, but man, there's a lot of stuff that
I've learned in the last few months that I didn't even know
had happened. Even in a more contemporary sense. I've been reading a lot of Synod
documents lately, and I'm like, wow, there's some crazy stuff
been going on. People have been debating and
fighting and arguing and voting. And we voted, this makes it heresy,
we voted it as heresy. Really? Is that what makes a
heresy? No, what makes a heresy is that
it doesn't agree with the word. No matter what we vote, we could
all vote that it wasn't. It's still a heresy. But people
have, throughout history, have come to a place where they have
created their own rules and regulations of how they should worship God.
The only way that they're supposed to do the Lord's Table. The only
way that they're supposed to sing and dance and do whatever
it is they do. They emphasize certain aspects
of certain little, small little pretexts of the Bible. And they've
created not only a crazy religion, but they've created false gods
and false Christ galore. And then they've all come together
to agree that we are all one in these distinctions. And so
now, or distinctives, now we're going to become an association.
Now we're going to become a denomination. And nobody knows what they believe
about anything because nobody's using the Bible for anything
except for a pathway to a Sunday school class or for a sermon
series that's topically driven anyway. Or to get to a point. People accuse me of avoiding
issues, but when the Bible tells me what to preach next, I have
to preach what's next. And that's the beauty of God
driving the pulpit rather than James. Because I have a lot to
say. I have a lot of thoughts and
opinions and pastoral wisdom. Yes. And that's a joke. Don't look at me like, man, he's
a little haughty. No, I'm joking. By the mercies of God, I don't
destroy everything around me. No one could see, no one received
him. No one could believe in his name,
but those he gave the right to become the children of God, who
were born by the will of God, who were born by the Spirit,
they could see. And what is it that they saw? They saw verse 16 and 17. And they understood that the
fullness of all that God is is revealed in Christ. They saw
in John 1 16. From his fullness, see our namesake
is verse 14 and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and
we have seen his glory. Glory is the only as of the only
son from the father, full of grace and truth. For from his
fullness. We have all received grace upon
grace. Verse 17 gives a further explanation
as a contrast. And if you remember when I taught
this, beloved, remember that it is to be understood as grace
continually. So if we were to write it out
in third grade, it'd be grace upon grace upon grace upon grace
upon grace upon grace upon grace. Could you see? Could you see
that in a third grade classroom? Oh, yeah. All right, everybody go
right. And upon grace, comma, on the board. I don't think they
have boards in schools anymore. Nobody writes. I can see it. That's what the
scripture teaches, that it's grace upon grace. From His fullness, from the reality
of all that He is, from His essence, from His person, from His being,
we receive grace continually, forever, non-stop. See, God's
grace is not this material It's not this power, it's not this
substance. I want you to hear me. God's grace is not some magical
dust that he goes, and then it goes out on somebody and then
they get grace. God's grace is not an exercise
of his power. God's grace is a disposition
of his essence. Revealed fully in Jesus Christ
to his elect alone. Alone. Period. And this is a gospel center.
The systematic theology behind all that is not necessarily gospel-centered,
but the doctrine from the Word of God is the good news of Jesus
Christ. We have seen the fullness of
the glory of God from the Son, who is God, who makes Him known,
who is full of grace and full of truth, and we have received
all of His fullness from continual grace given to us. In other words,
Christ has been given and that is the grace of God. Grace is not an operation of
God, grace is God himself. And more specifically, in the
context of the gospel, grace is Jesus Christ. Don't believe
me? Let's look at the comparison. Verse 17, for the law was given
through Moses. The law was given through Moses.
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. You may not see
that right off. You may not see it, but there
is a night, pun intended, and day difference between these
two things. There is a night and day difference
between these two things. Moses was a servant of God. He was a mouthpiece. He was a
vessel created for mercy to be used by God to proclaim His glory
and he wrote about, he wrote about Jesus. Remember John chapter
5? Where Jesus tells the Pharisees,
you search the scripture diligently because in them you think you
have eternal life, but it's they that write about me. And then
he says, I will not indict you before the Father, but Moses
will, for he wrote about me. And I've always had these questions
coming. Well, where is it that Moses
wrote of Jesus? Oh, I bet it's the prophet that
is to come, for sure. But he wrote about him when he
said in the beginning. He wrote about Jesus and he says
in the beginning, and God separated the light from the darkness.
God will separate the sheep from the goats. God will separate
blindness and give sight. God will snatch us out of the
domain of darkness into the light of the kingdom of his son. This
is good news, beloved. Moses wrote about Jesus in every
letter, in every sentence, in every story, in every narrative.
Jesus is the point. And you don't have to stretch
it. You don't have to look and say, well, how does this work?
You just read it in light of the gospel, looking through the
lens of grace upon grace upon grace, and you see exactly what's
going on. Because these people that are written about in the
book of Genesis are not doing well. Things are not going well. They're
not making good choices. Adam did not make good choices.
And it's never changed. But God decreed before there
ever was that Adam and Eve would be saved by being clothed in
the righteousness of the Son of God. And He knew that they
would always try to clothe themselves with their own righteousness
to cover up their guilt. But the only way that guilt can
be covered is that it is paid for. And the only way that it
can be paid for is that Christ is propitiation. How do we see that? By the mercies
and the grace of God. Moses gave the law. Now put yourself back in Sinai.
Go in your mind to Sinai and then go in to Hebrews and look
at the comparisons there. In Hebrews chapter 12. And we see that Paul says, we've
not come to that which can be touched. We've not come to the
tempest, to the flailing of lightning, and to the fire, and to the voice
of God, whose hearers beg not to ever hear it again. We've
not come to where Moses came down the mountain, who wasn't
allowed to even look at the direction of where God was, but he made
Moses. Moses says, I want to see you
for all that you are. I want to look upon your face.
I want to know you. God said no one can see me and
live and he hid Moses behind a rock and he says I'm gonna
walk by and the wind of the robe of my shadow when I walk by you
can peek around and look and you won't die but he walked down
the mountain and his face was glowing and his face was glowing
because of the presence of the fullness of all that God is and
the people said please cover your face we can't bear to look
upon your face because you are exuding glory And he's holding the tablets
of stone which are shoved into the face of God's people and
says, do this or die! You see? That's what the law
did, right? Do this or die! I mean, let's
put it where it is. Where you seatbelt or pay the
fine? Pay your taxes or lose your house? Do this or die. What does that
show? The righteousness of God. How
do we understand the law? Through the apostles. Guess what? Moses died disobediently. He still received grace upon
grace. And guess what happened to the law when Moses died? It
stood forever. Didn't need Moses to get it down
the mountain, God could have sent it down Himself. But God
in all of His glory established this difference. The law was given and demands
justice. No man from conception has ever
been guiltless. No man from even conception has
ever been guiltless. No man. What about Adam? He was created out of the dust.
Adult. No man. No woman. All humanity has been subject
to death because that's what the law does. It judges rightly. It judges justly. It judges righteously. And the law is in direct opposition,
listen to me, the law is in direct opposition to grace. The opposite of grace is justice. Those are the terms. You receive
justice or you receive grace. I even said that I think last
week or the week before. And the crazy thing is that some
people say, well I choose grace. It's not your choice. God's grace is sovereign. God's grace is free. Or better,
God sovereignly and freely governs His own grace. He gives it to
whom He wishes. The law was given through Moses.
And we are all convicted by it. Romans chapter 3, we see that
there. The law is a shadow of the one to come. Because as we
see what the law requires, and we see that there is no possible
way, even before we were born, that we would be not subject
to its justice. The only hope we have is either
being snatched out of blindness to see the glory of God in the
face of Christ, grace upon grace, or to come up with our own way
of establishing ourselves righteous before the Father. And that's
what most people do when they say they believe in Jesus Christ.
Their belief in and of itself is the effectual agent of their
redemption, rather than the object to which God has pointed them. It was 2002 when I said for the
first time, you cannot have faith in your faith. Because faith in and of itself
is not a thing for you to hold. You don't get it and go, oh,
look at there, I got faith. No, faith is something that's exercised.
Faith is something that's rested upon. Or faith in and of itself
is resting. It has to have an object. What
does faith look at? What does faith look to? The
gospel of free and sovereign grace. Grace upon grace. Look
at the contrast though. The law was given through Moses.
The law came and it was given and it was pounded upon our heads
and it was consequential. And it was death. The righteousness
of God has been manifested apart from the law. Though the law
and the prophets bear witness to the righteousness of God,
the righteousness of God is manifested through the what? the giving
of the Son, Jesus Christ the righteous, to be received by
faith. Believing He is the fulfillment of all the righteousness of God.
The law is a picture of Jesus. He is the fulfillment of our
righteousness. This is Paul in Romans 3, by the way. It's what
I just quoted. But John does the same thing.
The law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. Remember when we talked in the
beginning and a little philosophically and a little bit, you know, trying
to get you to think a little bit outside of our own boxes
that we think in. We were so restricted in how
we listen. That's just what we do as people.
We just need to... Sometimes I say things that intentionally
want to skirt the edge of sense. And then other times I'm just
dumb as a bag of rocks. But we think in such a way that,
you know, the gospel is this truth and that truth and that
truth. Okay. Touche. But it is Christ. He is the gospel. He is the righteousness of God.
He is our justification. He is our propitiation. He is
a person. He came. He is God Almighty,
the creator of the world. And he took on a body and became
a man. As God. And so in this language
here in verse 17, we see the difference there. Not just that
the law is a shadow and it's gone and it's condemning, but
that grace and truth became. Jesus became grace and truth. He came. He purchased his people. And there is no getting away
from that. There's nothing we can do to hide from His mercy. There is nothing that can stop
Him from causing us to know this if we belong to Him. If Christ
purchased you, you will know Him. Christ did not put the world
on layaway and waiting for us to redeem the ticket to go, oh,
finally, in my possession. Christ purchased a people. Their
sins are atoned for. God the Father cannot punish
them. So they will believe. They will see. They will know. Jesus Christ came. He didn't
give the rules of grace. He didn't give the teaching of
grace. He gave Himself as grace. He
gave Himself as life. The law is the bringer of death.
Jesus Christ is the bringer of grace. He is grace. It's a big
difference. Some people think they can see
God through that which they can do, and they can see God through
holy lives, and they can see God in all sorts of ways, but
verse 18 tells us very clearly no one has ever seen Him. The only God who is at the Father's
side. He who is with God, the word that became flesh has made
him known and beloved we have seen his glory and that glory
and seeing that glory is the foundation of our life together. Why are you reiterating the gospel
for so long? Because I think we need to be
reminded of it. Because when we're reminded of it, beloved,
then we get the get-to's right. Then we understand how we're
to handle diatrophies. Graciously, patiently. We are not soldiers guarding
the base of heaven. We are sheep grazing in the grass
of glory. And we have a great shepherd,
the Word of God, who protects us at the gate. Grace and truth. And that is why we're here. that
we may interact with one another through that lens, through that
truth, through Christ, that we may love one another in Christ. We don't get to put conditions
on how we love or if we love, because as God's children, we
are commanded to even love our enemies, those who hurt us, on
equal standing as we love our other brother and sister in Christ. But we don't make God human in
that sense. We don't put the grace of God
on a scale of fairness. We just receive it as it is taught
to us by His Word. Beloved, I don't know how else
to say it, but if we're not going to love according to the Gospel
and judge according to the Gospel, there's no purpose in life. No purpose at all. But because
Christ has come, because that God who said, let light shine
out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give us the light. He's shown in there. And now
we look and we see the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's 2 Corinthians 4, 6. This is the theme of grace upon
grace upon grace. So let us live and love accordingly. Don't take that lightly. Let's pray. Father, help us. We're too easily offended. But yet when we hear the gospel,
we find unity. We find hope, we find comfort,
we find peace. And Lord, you will discipline
your children who step out of line and who act the fool and
who do knuckleheaded things. And we thank you for that, Lord,
because we earnestly desire to please you. But Father, you've
not given us the spirit of fear in our hearts. You've not given us the call
to recompense or justice. But you have given us Jesus Christ
who is our life. And you've given us grace upon
grace. You've given us truth. You've
given us the call that is great and high. And by faith alone
do we stand pleasing to you. Because we believe in our faith
that Christ is our righteousness. We believe in our faith that
even on our worst days, we are acceptable to you because Christ's
death paid the penalty of our sin. Therefore, Lord, we are able
to live. We are able to love. We're able to walk this earth
together as a people and giving you the glory for keeping us
in unity. But Father, your will be done.
I have so many things that I pray for all the time, Lord. I'm obsessed
with so many burdens. Father, help me to rest. To know
that you alone have the outcome secure. But Father, also give
us the wisdom to know our part. Give us the wisdom to pray and
to wait. Give us the wisdom to know that we cannot ask anything
of you. If we do not do the basics of what you've told us. And we
don't do the basics of what you've shown us. But even then, Father,
we're not going to be lost. We'll just be tossed around by
the waves until such time as you grant us the grace to stand
up on Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.