Good morning church. Let's turn
together to the letter of 2 John. And as we get started this morning,
I want to just remind us that there are always, there's always
a need to be in prayer for one another. There's always a need to be in
prayer for one another. One of the quintessential realities
of pride in our own hearts and minds is when we feel ourselves
flustered and we fail to pray because we're
just too aggravated, or we're too upset with someone, as if
we haven't offended God, as if he hasn't given us by his own
mercy because of his love for us, his son, to take the place
of us in our sin, and then credited us the greatness of his righteousness
without any merit of our own. So when we get upset about people
that don't meet our expectations, we need to praise God that Christ
met his. The very last two verses of 2
John say this. Though I have much to write to
you, I would rather use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come
to you. I would rather not use paper
and ink. Instead, I'd rather come to you and talk face to
face so that our joy may be complete. The children of your elect sister
greet you. Okay. I could preach an entire
series on how we should talk more and not use text and social
media and everything else. That's not the point. The point
is John's greatest joy in the context of the assembly was to
be with the assembly. And he knew that even in writing
that it would never communicate fully the joy and the love he
had for them. It's sufficient unto their joy
when they're together, but he was missing in that blessing. He wanted to talk much more,
much more. And the most important thing
that we see in John's writing, basically John just exudes the
voice of Jesus. Have you ever known that? You
know how some of the apostles, Paul has his voice. John speaks
like Jesus spoke because he's good at quoting Christ. Now why
is that? Because John spent more time
with Jesus in the flesh than any human being. With their,
all the hours of the day, half of those, John and Jesus were
alone. Think about that for a second. Every time Jesus broke away,
he'd take three with him, and out of that three, he'd walk
off with John. And then he'd vanish and be by himself with
the Father. So John has something to say, not just because of the
divine work of God the Spirit giving him the words to say,
but also because of the divine experience with which he related
to the Christ in his incarnation. And all of that, and John yet
would not sign his gospel, because he was known to be the one whom
Christ loved. the beloved disciple. He would
not sign his gospel because he did not want people to run after
it as some relic. Some thing that spoke to his
fame. And John, if he were alive today,
would be easy to fall into having one of the best YouTube channels
on theological things in Christology that anybody would have ever,
could ever imagine. Why? Because this is the guy
that was with, you know, everybody thought Paul would. John was
with Jesus. Paul never was. Yet Paul is still
authoritative because the risen Christ taught him. You see, the
Spirit of God taught those throughout the centuries. Yet we see this
humbleness, we see this humility in the apostles that they are
not trying to say, listen to me, I'm important, look what
my thoughts are on this, listen to my commentary. No, they explicitly
say it doesn't matter. Paul in 1 Corinthians writes
the letter in such a way that when I was in my early twenties
it punched me in the face. Because subconsciously and indirectly,
I felt like the more I knew and the better I could teach it and
articulate something, the more authoritative that it would become.
And not only that, the more effectual that it might be. Because that's
how you're taught, correct? See, if you know how people think,
and I know how people think. I literally have classifications. I do. I have this Rolodex in
my head. You know what a Rolodex is? No, these young people don't
know what a Rolodex is. I have a Rolodex in my head and I see this thumbing
through when I think of a psychological profile or a makeup. And I go... You ever had a Rolodex get out
of turn? You ever had one fall off your desk? That's a nightmare. You know what a Rolodex is? It's
basically cardboard cards that fit inside this little thing
that rolled around a wheel like a Ferris wheel. And it had tabs,
and you alphabetized your contact information. And there was a
pop, you could write on the bottom and the back, and you could,
okay, this is John, and John here, and here's his address
and his phone number and his pager. You know, this is pager code
if he was on a, you know, a big system. And this is his address,
this is his, and there's no email address thing there, because
there's no emails during that time. And then on the back, you could write
little notes. You know, John, he likes decaf coffee, or whatever
it might be that you need. John's mother's death date was
here, or whatever. If you drop that thing on the
floor, it's just discombobulated. It took you three weeks to get
it back together. It was awful. Well, that's how
I think, and I look, and I know how people think, and I've always
had this ability to say, okay, all right, so this is who, this
person's thinking this way, this person's thinking this way, this
way. So I can, in this particular speech or presentation, I can
touch on these things so that I can answer all the questions
that are possible coming from my audience. Now, this is not
preaching, of course, but it can be utilized that way. If
I wasn't preaching contextually, exegetically, I could, I mean,
I think of myself, the end game is this, here's the path, here
are the people, here are the pieces, poo-poo, and the puzzle's
finished. It happens just that quickly.
You know, the expert name for someone who does that,
it's a salesperson. You're thinking, this guy's like
a genius. No, I'm a salesperson. That's
what sales is all about. It's a psychological thing. Relationships
are about psychological things. And we all come together and
we look at the Bible, and the Bible doesn't deal with these
things. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, he
comes to the table and says what? What does he say? He says, I
don't come with lofty wisdom and lofty words. I'm not coming
with eloquent speech. I heard a pastor say one time,
man, I waxed eloquent on that one, didn't I? And I'm going, it's terrible. If you came here
for high speech and lofty speech, oh my goodness, you better put
some air pods in and turn on something else, because you're
not going to hear it. And that's not a humble brag, it's just
the honesty. I could give it to you. I could
spend 75, 80 hours a week and come in here and sound like a
philosophy class. And you're going to get a little
philosophy today, that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. We're
going to talk about truth claims and all sorts of things. We're
going to talk about convictions and opposing positions. I'm going
to bring up some arguments that most of you may know from a man
by the name of Robert Allman, but it doesn't matter. It's not
important. It's not doctrine, but it's the way we think. Paul says that God will destroy
the wisdom of the wise. God will destroy And He has done
so. For the word of the cross is
foolish to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved,
it is the power of God. Where's the one who's wise, Paul
asks. Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since
in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.
You hear that? Through wisdom. The world did not know God It
pleased God through the foolishness of what we preach to save those
who believe. Jews demand signs, Greeks seek
wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, which is a stumbling
block to those Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. But to those
who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of
God. Christ is the wisdom of God,
for the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men,
wiser than the wisdom of men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than the strength of men. And then he says, don't think
that you're smart and you're all that and you're something
else. You know, just this morning at 9.40, I received an email
through the church website, someone wanting to come and to take this
pulpit so that he can convince you, through all of his years
of expertise and argument, that there is a God. Seriously, he's
an apologist, and he's like, you think you might want me to
come to your church? Here's a list of my things, here's some books,
you know, and I'm sure he probably sent out a thousand of those
today. I'm going, 1 Corinthians 1, dude, I swear I wanna respond
back. I'm like, 1 Corinthians 1. No thank you. You can't be
debated into believing. And just because you cognitively
assent to the fact that there's a higher being doesn't mean that
you've been born again. And so back to 2 John, you know,
John wants to meet with them. He wrote this letter. He wrote
this first letter so that the joy of the saints will be full.
And, beloved, there are a lot of things in this world that
destroy our joy. There's a lot of things that destroy our joy.
The problem is we've confused joy with happiness. Happiness being temporary, and
I know I may be splitting hairs, and it's my definition, semantic,
semantic, potato, potato, it doesn't matter. Here's the thing,
happiness can go. Joy can be fleeting, especially
if we focus our joy or we think that our joy comes from that
which is temporal. But when we understand the point of the purpose
of life and we understand the power and the promises of God,
we understand the person of Christ. because of the Holy Spirit, because
of God's work in us, we have a joy that is sometimes inexpressible. That's what Peter says in his
first letter, the joy that is inexpressible. You know what?
Inexpressible joy looks like tears sometimes, looks like despair.
Because it's a resolve in the midst of all sorts of things
to know that the only foundation on which we can stand is the
rock of Christ, the gospel of hope, the grace of God. And I believe a lot of times
the things that take away our joy are self-inflicted. And I
could talk about that, and we could have a long conversation,
and we could share and be therapeutic, and we could find some solace
in that until we drive home and realize that the furniture's
all in the same place. Same rugs are on the same floor, and the
same paint's on the same wall, and nothing's really changed.
We just pretended it wasn't. And sometimes I think we bring
it on ourselves theologically when we spend so much time ignoring
the truth and so much time investing in so many other things rather
than eating that which has promised us life. And this is a problem. Over the last two Sundays, we've
talked about the idea that there are other Christs in the world.
Jesus even said that in Matthew 24. We've seen that John says
there, everyone who goes beyond, verse 9 of this text, and does
not make himself at home in the teaching of Christ does not have
God. Whoever makes himself at home, and I'm using the word
abide in a simple definition, whoever rests and sits and stays
in the teaching of Christ has both the Father and the Son.
If anyone comes to you and does not bring this simple, true,
foundational, solid teaching, as Paul would say to the Galatians,
if someone comes to you with some other teaching that is not
the teaching that we brought to you, let them be cut away
from you. Let them be separate from you. Do not bring them into the church.
Do not give them a platform. Do not point to them and say,
oh, look at this friend of mine, this teacher, This person who
has knowledge. See how it's so easy? John's
like, I don't want to sit here. I don't want to inundate you
with a bunch of writing, though it's effectual by the spirit of God. I want
to see you face to face. People could have easily followed
the apostles and some of them tried to do so, but just like
those who tried to follow Jesus and Jesus would tell the truth
about himself and the people go, well, I'm done with this.
I'm done with this. Beloved, there are many other
false Christs and therefore there are many other false teachings
concerning Christ. And we need to get to the point
where we understand what truth is and how the scripture relates
this truth to us. We are not to receive false teaching
and or false teachers in any part of our spiritual journey.
We're not to receive what they say. We're not to agree with
what they say. We're not to be so ignorant and
so unwilling to invest just a little bit of time to peer back behind
the curtains or pull down the sheets just a bit or to look
under the rug and see what's been swept under. We should not
be so afraid to do that because if we do push this stuff aside
and not look, eventually our joy is going to wane. Because
we want to start being in odds and we're not dealing with the
elephant in the room. You know what that means? I mean, you
don't ignore an elephant in the room, right? I mean, even a calf
would be so intrusive he or she would knock over the first few
rows of chairs just turning around, not to count the plop that it
might drop and the odor that might ensue. No one ignores an elephant in
the room, but beloved, I think false doctrines, false Christ,
and false gospels are elephants in the room of evangelical Christianity
to the point where I have almost come to completely utilize the
term evangelical in a pejorative sense. That means every time
I say it, it's negative. Attached to the noun cult, as
I've been saying for years. And that has gone over the cliff
like a lead balloon. in the eyes of many people. Because
when we are not willing to engage in a very humble and peaceful
and loving manner to investigate what other people are saying
concerning our Christ, but just receive them in a general sense
because they said the name Jesus, we are taking part in their wicked
works by affirming the false gospel they teach. What does the word gospel mean?
It means good news. The word evangel is the Greek
translation, good news. Good news, gospel, God speak,
God speed, all these different things. Etymology is sort of
a side hobby of mine and I like to think about how words grow. I looked at the history of the
word wolf yesterday. Well, I don't know, I just stumbled
upon it. and spent 30 minutes looking at a thousand years of
the word wolf. That's my hobbies. While my wife
put out mulch. I felt terrible. But we have these words, we have
data, we have information, we have theological things, but
the question now, what is truth? What is truth? Well, truth is
the truth, no matter what you think the truth is. We can believe
whatever we want. We can call it fake, false, whatever.
We can say, no, that's not right, or that's your opinion, that's
your interpretation. It doesn't matter. We can all be wrong,
but we cannot all be right. And if we're partly wrong, then
we're wrong. If we're almost right, we're wrong. Years ago, I had on one of my
podcasts, I shared something that I'd written from like 15
years before about the theology of roaches. Because when I was
in the fourth grade, fifth grade, fifth grade, I had a biscuit
sitting on my plate in the cafeteria at the middle school. And I opened
the biscuit, and in the biscuit was a half of a cockroach. Not the whole one, a half. And so I pushed it off my plate.
Some of y'all don't know me, but that don't fly. That dog
don't hunt in my house. My head, my mind, nothing. I
didn't eat for days. I mean, I just could not shake
it. Still right now, I'm getting a little nauseated. And that was what,
40 years ago? I don't know. I just can't handle
it. One of my friends sitting over there, why aren't you eating
your biscuit? Why aren't you eating your biscuit? Why aren't you eating your biscuit?
I said, you want it? Yes. And she goes, oh! So she tells the teacher,
and the teacher tells me to take it up there. And I take it up
there to the lunch lady. She opens the biscuit up. And this half,
it was the abdomen portion of this roach. She picks it up,
throws it in the trash can, and brushes the biscuit off, puts
it back, and hands it to me. Like that dog don't hunt woman. And I'm looking at her like,
are you serious? Oh, you want another one? So she takes it,
puts it back on the rack, and gives me a new one. Hence, I
didn't eat there for a couple of days or weeks. Now, some people
that I know are like, what's the big deal? Flick it off. I
eat roaches for fun. I mean, you know, I've got some
friends who do that. Crickets, roaches, bugs, all sorts of things.
Ants, sprinkle a little cinnamon sugar. You know what? I don't
even eat pork chops because of the way they tear in my mouth.
All right, beyond that, back to the sublime. What's the point?
Theology of roaches. How much of a roach would you
accept inside your food? What if you went to the restaurant
and the roach wasn't in your food, it was just sitting on
the plate, looking there going, hmm, this is a nice looking meal.
And you chew it off and it runs on back in the kitchen. Would
you still eat it? Some people are like, yeah, don't bother
me. For me, I'm in a sterile environment. If I'm in an operating
room and someone says, roach, I'm leaving. If there's food
being served. I can't do it, all right? It's
too much. I don't want to see you in the
kitchen. I want to pretend like there's nothing back there. I
just want the food to come out clean and smelling like bleach.
That would be great. That would be great. And we're
that persnickety about our food and our eating experiences, but
why aren't we that persnickety about our doctrinal purity? How
much of the error are you willing to eat? How much of the not gospel
are you willing to invade your Christian circles? Now, beloved,
we do grow in this. I want you to understand that
we don't wake up one day and go, I'm pure all the way. No,
we grow. We know the truth. We grow in
grace and the knowledge of grace, as Peter says, by learning the
Bible. And we grow together as a church. But when things start
to invade, when things start to infect our food, now all of
you are going, oh, I'm so sick. When things start to infect the
purity of our feasts, we have to call it out. We have to say
this has to be addressed. And I want you to think of something
that you know right now, no big deal, but I want you to have
it in your mind, something that you know is absolutely true, absolutely
true, without a shadow of a doubt, okay? Now, how do you know that?
Do you know that because of absolute evidence, or do you know that
because you just believe so deeply? Is it evidentiary? Is it something
that is a conviction? You see? It's one or the other,
right? And sometimes it's a blend of
these things. Is it facts or is it faith? What's the difference?
What about this? How are you able to rest so confidently
in the gospel? The same way so many of the cults
of the world and non-believers and false believers rest so confidently
in theirs. Because sincerity of faith is
not the indicator of truth. Most people I know are sincerely
wrong, sincerely confused, and sincerely deceived. And they're
sincerely loving, and they're sincerely compassionate, and
they're sincerely worshipful. Most people I know, but they're
sincerely wrong when it comes to the gospel, when it comes
to righteousness, when it comes to justice. And if you're really confidently
resting in something, what if somebody comes up with a contradiction
who shared the same conviction? What then? That's when ad hominem
comes into effect, isn't it? That's when you start saying
your mama. You know, when you can't get in the argument, you
just, and that's a terrible thing to say on Mother's Day. What
you talking about my mama? I mean, we used to go to blows
in junior high school when somebody said your mama. They could have
just been, somebody could have asked a question, hey, who's
packed your lunch? And you hear your mama, and you just punch
them in the face. I mean, nobody talks about your
mama like that down here in the South. That's just, that's just rude. And that's what happens, difference
opinions. Then we come to this thing in
our world where we agree to disagree. You know what that is? That's
deception. For those of you who care about
Robert Allman, don't worry about it. He came up with an agreement
theorem. And that agreement theorem basically
says this, two people rationally considering in a sense, in a
very precise sense, with common knowledge of each other's beliefs
cannot agree to disagree. So if what you are saying and
you believe is completely different than what this person over here
is saying and believe, you two cannot agree to disagree. You can agree that you do disagree,
but you can't walk away because something, if you agree to disagree,
has been omitted. Something is being withheld.
And here's what I think's happening in the church today. I think
we're withholding the very gospel. Because we get to the point where
we get the name Jesus, we get somebody with a Bible, they say
the word church or they say the label Christian. We go, whew,
praise God, I'm off the hook. I don't have to go any further.
And then later on in those relationships, when somebody's saying something
absolutely nonsense about the revelation of God, as we talked
about last week in the Bible, they've created a whole different
Jesus. I want you to hear this. They've
created a whole different Jesus. They've created another gospel,
which the Bible explicitly condemns. And then we just go, I agree
to disagree. We're just good friends. You can be friends with lost
people, beloved, in a relational sense. But you are not their
brothers and sisters. until God has opened their eyes
to show them the truth. How does He do that? Through
the hearing of the Word. How do you know when the greatest opportunity
is for that to come out of your mouth? When someone contradicts
the very thing that the Bible says, you can inquire and invest. Invest! I love that word, invest,
for numerous reasons. But mostly in the context of
the body of Christ, if we're investing, we're not arguing.
If we're investing, we're not fighting. If we're investing,
we're not debating. If I'm asking you questions and
you're giving me answers, we are mutually helping one another
because I'm learning your position and then I'm going to share the
position of scripture and vice versa. The sense in which one views
or discusses a particular subject will determine the rightness
or the truthfulness of that claim or information. In other words,
there are people that can be rationally and sincerely wrong,
but absolutely right in the way they are seeing and perceiving
things. Because sometimes it's the way people are perceiving
things. And we have to get to that point. For example, in philosophy,
we all are philosophical. That means that we hear things,
then we think about them, and we come to conclusions. That's
philosophy. That's third grade philosophy. But we all do it. Opinions, thoughts concerning
information, or viewpoints. And to say, in a sense, X can
be true, is true. But it does not negate the absolute
dogma of Y being true at all times. You didn't know you were
going to have algebra this morning, did you? So what makes the claims
of Christ according to the gospel absolutely true? Because the
claims themselves say so. The Bible says this is the Christ,
this is the gospel, this is salvation, this is God's glory, this is
the glory of God, seeing God for who He actually is. This
is what the Bible says concerning all things through the revelation
of God about Himself and His people and the salvation of His
people. So to have an opposite view or an alternating view is
a wrong view. And I think sometimes words need
defining because new words can illustrate truths better. And
sometimes I think words just need to be put away. But ultimately,
words are not heresy until we find out what people mean by
them. God the Spirit reveals simple
grace, the simple grace of his own essence. Listen to this for
a second. In redemption to his people as he wills without words
of wisdom, without great argument. Because what did we just read
in 1 Corinthians 1? Because if we go to the argument and to
the wisdom, the cross loses its power. A is not a. This is a microphone. This is a pencil. How can this be a microphone?
if this is not a microphone. A and not A do not stand together. The gospel and not the gospel
do not stand together. That's as deep as I want to get
into that. Truth can be understood and agreed upon by arguments
of logic. Yes, that is valid, rational,
reasonable, and true. God-given faith, listen to this,
yields such ability, yields such agreement. So when God regenerates
us, we do agree on the rational, reasonable, logical truths. But agreement of those truths
is not regeneration, as we'll see in a minute. Resting faith or saving faith
rests in the nature of these truths as they are effectual,
sufficient, powerful, promising, hopeful, absolute without change
or movement. In this line of thinking, I want
to talk about some things that are not the gospel. And then
I want to close the entire message out with a clear reality on where
saving faith should, a clear teaching on the reality of where
saving faiths must look. And that is the gift of God. Differentiating ideas about Christ.
Talked about this last week and the week before. His person,
his work, the efficacy of his work are not the gospel if they
differ from what we've learned in scripture. So teaching things
that differentiate from what the scripture teaches concerning
Christ cannot yield regeneration by God the Spirit. And let me
explain what I'm gonna say, because I'm gonna say that phrase probably
eight or nine times in the remainder of this teaching. To go to someone
and say, Jesus is a cheeseburger and he likes mustard on the top
and you're the pickle. It's not the gospel. And so if
I say that to you and you go, you know what, I believe that.
Give me two cheeseburgers. And you eat them. You have not
been born again. All right? This is some high-brow
thinking here, folks. You know that, did you? This
is high intellectual cheeseburger theology. Got roach theology,
now we're onto cheeseburgers. Soon we'll be onto pizza, then
desserts. And then someone says, okay,
I want these cheeseburgers. They take and they invite themselves
to believe and to receive and to eat and all this kind of stuff.
And then we say, oh, look at that, you're my brother. Well,
no, no, no, no, Jesus is not a cheeseburger. That's a differentiating
view that the Bible doesn't teach. So someone who says, man, I know
that I believe in Jesus. Well, who is Jesus? He's a cheeseburger. Well, you don't have saving faith.
Can I say it any simpler? Who is Jesus? Oh, he's the first
created being of all creation, says some people. No, the Bible
says differently. You don't have faith in the right
Jesus. You're not believing. You've not been shown of God.
Oh, well, well, well, Jesus this, Jesus that. And we've gone through some of
those. I mean, I've taught for the last few weeks, few years, but even
over the last few weeks about some distinctions that have to
be made concerning the person, the work of Jesus Christ. He
is God in the flesh. He is the second person of the
persons of God, the Trinity as we call it. These are revealed
in scripture and cannot be refuted. We can philosophize against them,
we can debate them, we can argue, but we cannot negate them. Someone who refuses to see what
the scripture says concerning the nature of Christ and his
divine person and his human person has not been taught of God. In
the simple sense of saying, this is what the Bible says, do you
see it? Well, I see it, but I'm just not gonna believe that now.
Yeah, you ever heard somebody say that? Yeah, I see it, I'm
just not gonna believe that now. If I had a dollar for everybody
told me I wouldn't worship a God like that, I'd have a lot of
money in the bank. Well, that's not the God I know.
You said it. And then I've even had people
say, well, who do you think you are to be so right? That's the
cool thing. I'm a nobody and a nothing, and I have nothing
else to say except what's written in the Bible. So when we get
to the business of actually reading the entire letters of the scripture
in whole, in one sitting, and learning that it's actually one
communication, not a whole bunch of little fortune cookies stuck
together by glue, then we begin to be revealed things by the
Holy Spirit. Here's another thing, making
decisions to do something related to one's eternal salvation is
not gospel. Therefore, teaching these things do not yield regeneration
by the Holy Spirit. What you gonna do with the gospel?
What you gonna do with it? You ever heard that? That's antichrist. Jesus died, now you gotta do
something. And I know we can split hairs
on what we really mean, but you know what I really mean by that.
You better give your life to Jesus. You better devote your
life to Jesus. You better serve Jesus. You better join the church.
You better be baptized. You better come down the aisle.
You better say this prayer. You better really, really mean
it. I always found that odd with the childhood evangelist that
I saw in this community. Anybody don't want to go to hell,
stand up. I mean, everybody stands up except the one stubborn guy,
you know. He ain't going to get me out of the seat. That's a
challenge for an evangelist. Don't stay seated. He'll get
you up. Someone says stand up. Everybody's up. I mean, think
about this for a second. Now, if you want to know that
you know, that you know, that you know, that you know that you
have eternal life, all you got to do is step right out, step right
out, come down this aisle. It's like Bob Barker. You're the next
contestant on The Price is Right. The Christ is right, but it's
wrong. It's wrong. And you ask that person then,
you ask that person a week from then, you ask that person a year
from then, or ten years, how do you know that you have eternal
life? Because I came down the aisle and I accepted Jesus for
that preacher guy that sweated all over me. He spit all over
my mama too, he was praying over us, he spit all over us. I still
got his salvia in the back of my Bible, Revelation chapter
3, where he scared me to death, I didn't want to go to hell,
so I came out. I walked the aisle, and now I'm free. Free of what? Sanity? You're not free, that's
bondage. You are agreeing, you are testifying
that you saved yourself through some choice or some volition.
This is not the work of God the Holy Spirit. When people teach
that man has the freedom to apprehend spiritual things apart from the
Spirit of God, it's a false teaching. It's an anti-Christ teaching.
When people say that somebody's choosing or walking or praying
or baptism or will or desire can have an effect on their eternal
security, this is a false gospel. God does not use these processes
in regeneration. Through bold proclamation of
the truth, God, who said, let there be light and darkness,
has shown in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Regeneration means made alive,
born again. John 3 is one of the primary
texts in which we find the teaching there from Jesus, and then we
see the apostles reiterating this teaching over and over again.
Regeneration is not this spontaneous event that happens in a vacuum
outside of the influence of the written word, heard, or read. Being born again is not something
you can just, you know what, I'm just gonna get on this roller
coaster. And, oh Lord, help me! And you're born again. I mean,
you know, this is not how it works. You're not in the midst
of watching, you know, football and all of a sudden you just
get this urge and understanding of the gospel. No, the gospel
has to be taught. God uses natural means through
which supernatural realities come. God regenerates as He sees
fit, when He sees fit, at the occasion He sees fit. So if you
hear the gospel today and then a week or two from now, it comes
to your mind and God shows you the truth and causes you to rest
in that truth, who is Jesus Christ. You have been made alive. But
you can't be taught something that's not true, trust in it,
and then say you're born again. Because what you're born into
is just another way of humanizing redemption and spirituality.
It's not true. You have to be made new concerning
spiritual things. And you have to be given understanding.
And you have to be given a heart to rest in Christ. Righteousness is the central
matter of redemption. You know that, right? You know it all
boils down to righteousness. That's the whole point. Righteousness
is the creme de la creme of the point of God's essence. He is
always in right standing with himself. He is the source from
which all right things flow. Goodness and holiness and rightness
all come from God. They tell of God. They demonstrate
God. They are God in that sense. God is righteousness. Let's put
it the other way around so I don't get all weirded out here. So if man is not righteous and
God is righteous, how can God make man righteous? And here's the answer. Destroy
him. So you didn't think I was going
to say that, did you? For the wages of sin is death. This is
the righteousness of God and justice. God can make all of
us righteous by eternally destroying us. forever and ever. Done. That is a right and good
act. And the world in which we live,
especially since the middle of the 19th century, wants to say
righteousness is something that we can either do of our own accord
or with God's help or that we can accept. It's like a bag of
something. It's a bag of goodness. Are you
gonna dig into the good bag or the bad bag? And there are a
lot of different historical iterations of this and there's all sorts
of different levels of heresies concerning these things. But
beloved, this central matter of righteousness, Jesus Christ
is the righteousness of God. And He became sin in the place
of the elect alone. And in His death, He satisfied
the righteousness of God in justice and wrath. And in His resurrection,
He proved that He truly was God and that even in His humanity,
He truly was righteous. And the promise of imputation
goes both ways. The elect's guilt had been put
on Christ. who was not a sinner and who
had no sin. He died as a substitute for them
to satisfy God's righteousness. Then he was raised to life and
the righteousness of Christ and his perfect obedience, all of
that is credited to the lives of the elect by which God is
righteous, granting faith to his people whose sins are already
paid for. This is good news, beloved. I
promise you. There is no other good news out there. Because
if there's any news related to redemption that has anything
to do with me or you and what we can do to affect it, keep
it, or be sincere about it, we're gonna go a real short thing.
It's like a firecracker. I love to blow stuff up. I got
a little bit of redneck in me, even though I don't like bugs.
I don't want bugs in my food, I like bugs. I like to blow stuff
up. The only problem with explosions
is they're quick. They're just fast, and you can't
put enough of them together safely without tilting the earth in
this part of the world, or blowing out your neighbor's windows,
even though they live two miles away. You gotta be careful. You
gotta watch out. B-A-T-F. Don't want them knocking
on your door. How much Tannerite did you use,
Mr. Tippins? I needed a pond, so we have a pond. But isn't
that the way it is? Boom, it's gone, it's over. Firecrackers,
they're too tiny. I can clap my hands louder than
a firecracker now. That's what I did. As a boy,
I wanted to be a firecracker clapper. Don't ask me why. And that's sort of how some people's
spirituality is. Well, I found Jesus. Pop. Oh, I believe the Bible. Look
at that. I'm going to preach to everybody. Pop. What are they
doing now? Nothing. It's not that they fall into
some kind of wicked debauchery. They just don't care anymore.
They just go away. This flash-in-the-pan Christianity
is because so many people are converted falsely under false
teaching, under false pretenses and human decisions and human
actions. They have not been declared righteous
by God through Jesus Christ. Well, they may have. But until
they believe, they're not counted in that number. Universal teachings about blanket
salvation is an Antichrist gospel. Well, Jesus died for the whole
wide world and everybody in it. That's how I heard it. I've heard
that. I've only heard that in that accent in my life. Jesus died for the whole wide
world and everybody in it. Guess what that means? Everybody
is going to have eternal life. Nope, you gotta accept it. Lie.
Bible doesn't say that. You gotta believe it. Believe
that Jesus died for the whole wide world? Everybody in it?
How can I believe that when the Bible hasn't said that? Well
John 3. I've told it a thousand times.
It's not the gospel. It's not good news. Blanket salvation
or blanket affection. toward all humanity does not
coincide with the teaching of the good news in scripture. Telling
someone that God desires them to be in heaven, if they would
just do something, make a choice, or choose a specific way, is
untold in the scripture. God cannot use this type of teaching
to bring about new life. You might think, well what in
the world? Well, faith, regeneration, is brought about by the work
of God through the teaching of the true gospel. expression,
the exposition, the exegeting of who he is in the Son. And
faith rests in what it looks at, not like. And mostly, faith knows what
righteousness is. You know how you are counted
righteous before God because Christ's righteousness is yours. How can he do that and I'm a
sinner? Because Christ took your sin guilt and satisfied it. This is called the atonement.
The atonement is at the center of the gospel also. We can also
understand it as the redeeming sacrifice, substitutionary satisfaction,
appeasement of wrath, propitiation, Justification. All these things
go hand-in-hand. The payment of penalties. Christ's
death accomplished the payment of penalties for a people. So if Christ died for every person
in the world, then all the persons of the world's sins are paid
for. But he did not. The scripture says that he died
for his people. The very beginning days in the
very beginning times of creation. When the scripture shows us the
gospel, it is that Christ would come, the Christ would come into
the world, and the Christ would save his people from their sins. If what Jesus accomplished was
nothing but an opportunity, then he's not God and you cannot be
saved. Let's talk about a few examples
of that, and then let's get to the gospel. Universalism. We've already talked about that.
Jesus paid for the sins of all humanity. No one will perish.
Nonsense. There's this idealistic idea
that's kin to that. Jesus paid for the sins of all
humanity, but each man has to make a choice as to whether or
not he's going to dip his hands in the bag and get the payment. Well,
what payment are you getting? How in the world, if something's
paid, does it not apply? I talked about that last week.
Every payment is reconciled, and it's reconciled by the one
who owns the accounts and reconciles the accounts. There's two specific
isms that have come out of historical theology, and one of them is
Pelagianism, which is predominantly the focus and the thinking of
our current culture. And Pelagius had this idea that
all humanity was good, everybody was born innocent and righteous,
and until they made a willful act of sin against the known
command of God, they were not guilty of sin, and thus they
did have eternal life until the point they sinned. Where's that
found? The Bible had no idea, for all sin and falsehood are
the glory of God. And that's just a real quick proof text. So if man would just change from
his sinful ways, see that Jesus gave the example, accept the
sacrifice that Jesus provides and make it effectual for his
life and stay in it, then he'll have eternal life. He'll be righteous.
That's not true. The Bible doesn't teach that. You can't choose to stop sinning
and you can't choose to accept Christ's offering. He either
gave himself for you or he did not. He either paid for your
sins or he did not. He either satisfied the wrath
of God or he did not. That's what the Bible teaches.
Another ism that's very prominent amongst us today is what we would
call Arminianism, based from the man, well the man's, it's
not his real name, but Arminius, which says that man is unable
to come to spiritual things, to understand God's sovereign
work and righteousness, but God makes all men able. He spreads
a little grace, they call it Provenient, the grace that goes
before. Spreads a little grace and everybody sort of woke up
spiritually. And then they make the right choice. What are we
choosing? Where in the Gospel Proclamation has there ever been
a choice? Choose this day whom you shall serve. That's Joshua
telling the Jews to get with the program. Are you gonna keep
walking out here like dummies? We've been out here for 40 years.
That's what Joshua was saying. Moses died for the love of all
things. Because y'all drove him nuts
and he beat a rock and God killed him. Screamed at a rock. Stop! Are you gonna serve the
Lord? I'm serving the Lord and everybody
in my house is serving the Lord and all the people following
me are serving the Lord. Where you gonna go? You can stay out here if you
want to. I'm going to the promised land cuz. That's Joshua. That's the context of
that. Has nothing to do with eternal salvation. Has nothing
to do with the gospel of free and sovereign grace. Man is not
able to come to the knowledge of the truth. It's not about
accepting the truth. It's about knowing the truth.
Coming to the knowledge of the truth. It's unbiblical. Some of the things that come
out of that are decisionism. Have you chosen to accept Christ?
Have you accepted Christ into your heart? Have you invited
Christ into your heart? Have you given your life to Him? Not only do
these phrases find no merit in the context of Holy Writ, the
idea of them find no merit there. And honestly, they're very contemporary.
mid-19th century, seriously, mid-19th century with which a
new religion was born under the man Charles Finney, up today
Moody, Graham, and so on and so forth to the evangelical cult
that we see today and it is so prominent that it has invaded
almost nearly every mainline denomination in the world. Decisionism. Works, faith, works
assurance, works resting, that's another one. Well, you saved
by grace, but you stay by works, you know? No, you can't. If that which saved you cannot
preserve you, it didn't save you. I mean, sticking your finger
in the hole in the Titanic while the whole front thing is flooding
with water is not salvation. It's a joke. Well, this side of the boat won't
sink. I got it. Baloney! You've got to get off that thing.
You've got to get off of works. You've got to get off of self-sufficiency.
Because what is self-sufficiency? What is works? What is decisionism? Nothing but self-righteousness.
It's just self-righteousness. It's just another way in which
our human nature tells us that we can do something for God. And beloved, and I hate to say
this, but this has given birth to almost all evangelical style
evangelism that I know of. I read a dear friend's blog yesterday
and his gospel is terrible. free and sovereign grace, and
then what one must do. What one must do in order to know that
they're born again. They must have a life that epitomizes
a certain type of righteousness that's not defined. They must
know, you can know that you have eternal life because you don't
like sin. Well let me ask you a question.
Is there a sin in your life that you do like? You like talking
trash about people when they drive like idiots? If you didn't
like it, you wouldn't do it. Now, you may feel guilty later.
I'm so sorry. Later, guilt is not disdain. I'm just being honest. See, this
is where I get in a lot of trouble. You're just a preacher of licentiousness. People can just live like they
want to live. Okay, go ahead, do it. What's that got to do
with your eternal life? Nothing, but it's going to mess
your relationships up here. It's going to defame the name
of Christ who saved you from your sins. Why would we want
to go back into sin? Of course we have a manner of
life that's worthy of the calling of the gospel. But I'll be honest
with you, in the evangelical South, it's a real easy fix,
isn't it? Hide your drinking, your smoking,
your music, your movies, your pictures, and your fast cars.
Don't let them know you got it! And you're as good a Christian
as you're going to get. What is that? That's a false gospel. Well, if you was really a Christian,
you wouldn't... Wouldn't what? If you were really a Christian,
you wouldn't tell somebody to do some nonsense that could affect
their own salvation. Instead, you would proclaim a
finished salvation that God has not offered, but has applied
to His people. And beloved, we've already talked
about election last week, electing grace, electing... This is the
heart of God's righteousness. The only way that the true righteousness
of God can be given is by His hand. by His contract, by His
covenant that He fulfills. And then He promises the outcome
of this finished covenant is that He will grant us faith.
Now, everybody in here, turn to Hebrews 10. We don't have
a lot of time. And we think about faith, I taught
many, many weeks on faith out of Hebrews 11, but the true epitome
of faith and the centrality of faith, what it believes in is
found in Hebrews 1 through 10, and I wanna talk about it very
quickly in the next few minutes. But if you start in chapter 10,
you start to see that there's a shadow that Paul's talking
about of good things to come instead of the true form of these
realities. He's saying that the religious works and the sacrifices
of antiquity have no effect on God's righteousness, on God's
justice. They're just a picture. So in
this now, we would see that when we worship, If we were called
to worship and then we lay a sacrifice on the altar, but we know we
have sinned, when the sacrifice is laid down, we're reminded
of God's mercy, we're reminded of the cost of sin, we're reminded
of God's grace to accept that sacrifice as a reminder of what
he has promised, to send Jesus Christ as the ultimate and only
sacrifice. Not the final, but the only true.
All the others were just pictures of it. Then we can worship with
a pure heart. But then what happens? We go
home, we get in traffic, we get upset with the kids, we're just
frustrated, we don't want to go to work tomorrow, we complain,
we have an ill spirit, we get a little selfish, we binge something
on television instead of doing this, we waste time, we do all
sorts of things, and then we feel guilty again. And then we've
got to do more sacrifices in order to appease our conscience.
Well, that is over. Sacrifice and offerings you have
not desired, verse 5. of chapter 10 of Hebrews, but
a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin
offerings you take no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I've come
to do your will, O God, as it is written in me of the scroll
of the book. And so all this leads up, talks about the priesthood,
and talks about how they serve daily, washing, bowing, praying,
bathing, washing, pouring, killing, burning. Constantly sacrifice
sacrifice sacrifice over and over again and none of them were
effectual But what was effectual look at verse 14 of chapter 10
of Hebrews for by one single offering He Jesus Christ has
perfected for all times Those who are being set apart for him.
That's what the word sanctified means those who are holy Once
and for all for all time and the Holy Spirit bears witness
to us and This is the covenant that I will make with them after
those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws on their hearts
and write them on their minds. And then he adds, I will remember
their sins and their lawless deeds no more. That is what it means
to write the righteousness of God on the minds and the hearts
of his people, is that their sins are forgiven. And that's
Jeremiah 31, by the way. And where there is forgiveness
of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. So Christ
atonement, Wipe the slate clean forever. It's over. His death
washed it away. No matter what you do with it,
His death washed away the sins of all of His people. Just like
that. And verse 19 is where faith really
starts to take picture. Therefore, brothers, sisters,
since we have confidence to enter the holy places, by the blood
of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through
the curtain, that is, through his flesh. And since we have
a great high priest over the house of God, here's the command,
let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance. Full
assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an
evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Verse
23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,
for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir
one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet
together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and
all the more as the day of Christ draws near. Now we're going to
worry about 26 through 31 or to the end. We're going to unpack
that very quickly. And the question is, what does
it mean to have confidence? And this is the difference between
the man-made false Christ and false gospel and the God-proclaimed,
revealed gospel that is found in the Christ that is found in
the Scripture. The Christ that is found in the Scripture has
effectually done the work of redemption. Salvation is done.
Jesus said it is finished. He wasn't talking about the fact
that he was done with the crucifixion. He was done with the will of
God and the price for sin. And the Bible proclaims to the
nations, Christ has saved His people from their sins. This
is how it was. This is the promise. This is
what it did. Here it is. Believe in Him. Rest in Him. That's it. And until the Holy Spirit opens
the hearts of His people and His minds, which means He's gifted
them faith, He's changed the disposition of our minds to see
and rest. We'll always be coming up with
little trinkets to hang on the trim of the tree. We'll always
be trying to find a way to fertilize the roots. And we won't have confidence.
What do we have confidence for in chapter 10 there? To enter
the holy places by the blood of Jesus. I've said this a thousand
times over. I don't even need to preach this.
I've preached this recently on Midweek, so if you want to hear
some longer discussion on this, you can go to the church website
and listen to the Hebrews 10 messages. But ultimately, to
have confidence means that you have guarantee, you have assurance.
He uses that term, we have assurance, let us hold fast to the confession
of our hope. We have hope, we have knowledge,
we have understanding, we have peace, we have assurance. We
have confidence. If you're confident of something,
do you second guess it? No, you don't second guess it.
You just rest in it. Sometimes we're overly confident.
Sometimes we're overly confident of what we can do. I used to
be overly confident of what I could do with my body, what I could
do with my hands. Ain't nobody gonna whip my behind until they
did. You know? Nobody's gonna beat me up until
I pick myself off the ground. Then I had to gain more confidence
to get back in there. Have a wreck in your car, you're
just sort of a little loose driving, you don't have confidence. Otherwise,
you're like driving with your knee, going 80 miles an hour
in a cheeseburger, not Jesus, in a milkshake. Terrible combination. Die and have high cholesterol. You have confidence, it's ridiculous.
No, I'll be all right, says the man that falls off the house. What do we have confidence to
do? Walk into the presence of God Almighty Himself. The symbolic
reality of what Paul is teaching here is that we have the ability
and we have been brought into the presence of God as pure righteous
people because Christ's sacrifice has set us in that place. So
we get to walk into the holy courts of heaven and say, hey
pops. And I'm not trying to be sacrilegious,
I'm trying to be overly intimate in my expression of this. I don't
call my dad, yo, what's up, old man? I mean, I'm respectful to
my own earthly father, I'd be respectful to my heavenly father,
but I'm saying we have that same intimacy. Our children come into our presence
as parents, we put them first. Their needs come before the needs
of others, don't they? We don't have to worry do we have a ticket
to get in behind stage to see our celebrity dad. We just walk
in. We've got the ticket. We've got
access. We are able by the blood of Jesus
to walk into the presence of God without fear, without trembling,
without hesitation, because we have been made righteous through
the imputation of righteousness from Jesus Christ Himself. How
could God do that? Because God imputed our guilt
to Him and killed Him for it. That's what faith is. Confidence. Confidence to know that Christ
has finished the work of salvation for His people. And it's not
the dead animals. It's not the animals that are
burned up. It's not the blood of these animals
who now no longer live. But it is a new and living way
that he opened for us through the curtain. In his life he gave
life. In his death he gave life. In
his life he promised his life. And so we have a great high priest
who now has finished the work in chapter 1. After making purification
for sins, he sat down at the right hand of majesty on high.
He sat down. He's finished. He's not going
to stand up again. He's not going to sacrifice himself again. He's
not going to pour his blood again. It's over. There is no more sacrifice
for sin, Paul would say later in this very text. Because there's
some warnings here that scare the bejesus out of people. What does that mean? No, not
if you're resting in the sufficiency of Christ. Not if you have confidence
to know that Christ satisfied the wrath of God. Not if you
know that your righteousness by the Spirit of God, that you
know your righteousness is not yours, but it's His. So we draw near. With a true
heart, we run into the presence of God with a true heart. We
come into the presence of God with full assurance of faith.
Our hearts are sprinkled clean. We're not worried about our sin.
We're not scared. Oh, God's gonna know what I've
been doing. Oh, what I've been thinking, what I've been saying. Listen, He knows already.
He satisfies His wrath. He satisfied His wrath on everything
that you will ever do wrong on the day of atonement, at the
death of Jesus. We have been washed, we've been
cleaned, so let us hold the confession of our hope, Jesus Christ the
righteous, without wavering. How can we stand on such conviction? For he who promised is faithful. Who's faithful? Christ is faithful.
Is James Tippens faithful? Not at all. I'm a faithful person, but there's
some things I'm not even able to do that I should be able to
do. There's some things that I can't accomplish. Christ is
faithful. God has faithfully redeemed his
people. And our joy, our joy is complete
in Christ when we together hold to the doctrine taught us by
Christ that we have gone through and gone over over the last few
weeks. Now, the final thing to think
about is this. Where does that leave the majority
of professing Christians in our world? It leaves them hopeless. Not mistaken, not wrong, not
confused, hopeless. Except they hear the truth. So teach them the truth. That's one of the reasons we're
here. I've got over 30 questions stacked
up, but I'm not going to do theology and call for the next few weeks.
Not going to have midweek for the next few weeks. Taking a
little time to deal with some stuff. We've got a wedding. We've
got some graduations to deal with and some other stuff. So
just going to take a little break for midweek and our Sunday nights.
But I've got a lot of questions and I look at all these questions
every week and I see that so many of them center on the fear
of doing what is right, and there's nothing wrong with being concerned
about doing what is right, seeking wisdom, but I think a lot of
them are motivated by the fact that the gospel is not present
in the hearts of these people. They want to prove to themselves
in their own conscience that they're okay with God, so they
want to make sure that they're doing everything possible the
correct way. Whereas if they just could hear
the gospel and God would grant them the salvation and the repentance
and the knowledge of the truth of what God, of what He has accomplished
in Christ, then their questions, though maybe the same, would
be from a different point of view. Their perspective would
be, I want to serve the Lord in righteousness rather than
sustain it or earn it or labor over it. Nothing that you do can separate
you from the love of God and Christ Jesus except believe a
false Christ or a false gospel. You know what's really stressful
about it? Is that I know that a majority of everybody that
I know who says they're in the faith, they're not in the faith. So we have a lot of work, beloved,
to do in prayer. We have a lot of work to do in
preparation. We need to be learning and helping
each other grow to be able to give a defense for the gospel.
Because the true good news is that Christ has satisfied God's
wrath. That the gospel is good news
because there is nothing that we can do to affect it, to earn
it, or to command God concerning it. We, in the timing that the
Lord has seen, have been given faith to believe in this proclamation,
to trust and to know him, to know that our eternal life is
secure and we can't mess it up. Isn't that good? How many things
have I messed up this week? I can't count. I stopped counting. I can't mess up my salvation.
It is secure in the one who is faithful. Let us pray and prepare
our hearts for the table as we remember that great salvation. Father, we thank you for this
opportunity to, Lord, to ramble a little bit and to talk about
things that are necessary and to expressly discuss false gospels. But most importantly,
Lord, we thank you that you've given us the truth that we can
rejoice in it. Lord, that we do not have to
work and worry and labor, but that we can truly rest in your
promises and in your power. Because Jesus Christ, your son,
has done all that he has promised to do. He has satisfied our sin
debt. Lord, help us to be gentle and
kind and patient with so many who Do not know the truth. Help us to be instruments of
mercy and help us to be prophetically minded as we teach and talk and
have conversations about these things. Not to become, you know,
nonchalant father or angry or heady or prideful, but Lord,
just patient. For in time you will draw all
of your sheep to the voice of your Son, whom you have given
all the elect." And Father, we come because you have brought
us here. And we worship the Christ who
has given His life and who has been raised to life. And as we
take the table today, Father, help us to be mindful of this
great sacrifice of this mercy, of this great love that you've
given to your people. Father, help us to be mindful
of our responsibilities to one another and to the world, to
live the gospel and grow in our knowledge of the grace that you've
given us through your word. In Christ's name we pray, amen.