Well, let's turn once again to
the letter of 1 John, to the latter portion of the letter
of 1 John. And we're going to look again
at the last few phrases. The spiritual nature of our culture
is, as we heard the hearing of the word in 1 Corinthians 2 before
service began, situation of spirituality is
grave. It's grave. We have and historically
always have had and always will have false Gospels. There will be more falsehoods
than there will ever be truth pervade in the world. And for
some of us it's easy to discern on some level and for some of
us it's harder to discern on other levels. The implications
of the gospel are eternal and forever and deep and reach deep
into the confines of our lives and they reach deep into our
souls and they reach deep into everything that we consider and
know and understand about life itself. The implications of the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ as the God of heaven and the savior
of his people in his flesh as a human being. And his redemptive
work and the atonement and justification and all of the satisfactory requirements
of God's righteousness and justice being met and understood and
fulfilled and effectual in the work of Christ. All of these
things are just deep, deep, deep, deep, deep and we can continue
to dive deeply into them. Complex ideas often require a
new set of chops, a new set of parameters, a new set of variables,
a new set of definitions. And in the first century, when
Jesus' ministry was launched, I don't even know another way
to say it, his ministry was launched. When he was launched into his
public ministry at his baptism. When this forerunner came, John
the baptizer, the crazy wild man that didn't comb his hair,
brush his teeth, and ate things he shouldn't eat, and dressed
in things he shouldn't dress, and things of that nature. When
he came on the scene, he would say things like, Behold, the
kingdom of God is at hand. And everybody that heard those
words, they would have an understanding in their own minds. Philosophers would think, hmm,
what is this kingdom? What is this God? What is this
hand? Is it now? Is it being held? What is held? What is? Is. What? Theologians would say, oh yeah,
I got this. They always have it right. Theologians always
have the answer, yeah, I got this. Theologians are the first
mansplainers, womansplainers, for those of you who understand
that joke. They had it, oh yes, this is
what he means. And in the book of the law, blah, blah, blah,
and in this, and the prophet Joel, blah, blah, blah. And they
were touching on the outskirts of the label, but they never
opened the box. And then sophists would come, and every iteration
of everybody would come, and everybody would have an answer.
We know what he means, and the Pharisees would inquire. Not
only does he say the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but this
man, John, born of Zechariah, which we thought was going to
be something magnificent, has become a disappointment to us
and our people. So everybody in the spiritual
sense of the world and the culture in which they live, they look
to the spiritual leaders. They looked to the Pharisees.
They looked to the Sadducees. They looked to the Sanhedrin,
to the ruling class of Israel, who not only were intelligent,
but wealthy, supposedly wise. They had the answers. What does
he mean the kingdom of God is at hand? Behold. You know what the word behold
means? We don't say that now. Behold
my keyboard. Behold my microphone. Hey, look
at this. That's what we say. Hey, look
at this. Let me show you something. Let me show you something John's
saying. The kingdom of God is here. He wasn't prophesying,
he was proclaiming. Here it is. Hey y'all, look at
here. That's what he would say if he
was born in Claxton. The kingdom of God right here. Y'all. And he'd get on his tractor and
drive on out and eat more locusts. There'd be mole crickets down
here probably. He didn't say behold anyway,
didn't speak English. Nobody spoke English. And all the people that heard
it had an answer. And even the common folks, when
I say common folks, I mean the majority. I don't mean common
as in peasants. I said that one time to somebody,
they got real upset with me. What in the world? How dare you
be so prejudiced against common folk? Common, I'm common like
you're common. Anyway, we buy all that gas at
Parker's. But the common folk then would
have a manifold apprehension of what John was trying to preach.
And they would go home and they would sit around their tables
and they would talk to their families and they would say,
hey, I heard so and so say this. I heard, and people would emphasize
the nature of the experts, what Nicodemus said. that John means
Messiah is on the way. See, that's where a lot of them
went. Oh, Messiah, are they right? Yes. But John didn't mean Messiah
was on the way. John meant Messiah was here.
When he said, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins
of the world. And two things happened when
Jews heard that phrase. One, they looked at Jesus and
went not even close. Cause everybody had a preconceived
idea of what Messiah would be. You ever read a good book series?
I'm not talking about like a short story, but even then, but you
ever read a good book series where you've spent weeks and weeks and weeks
or some of us years reading a story and there's a series and sequel,
you know, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 books and you have in
your mind's eye what these people look at and then they do the
mini series on ABC. You know, they didn't even get
it right. You have in your mind what these people look like,
what they do, what they say, how they speak, and how their
character, and it's usually tied to our experiences in it. You
know, when I dream, and if it's not some of you in my dreams
that we're doing nonsense stuff, like trying to fly or shoot our
way out of a grocery store, or Walmart parking lot, you know,
whatever it might be, those are my nightmares. I can't get out
of Walmart. So, it's usually people that I don't know. And
I try to wake up sometimes, having a dream, and I'm thinking, who
is that? Did I see that person in the gas pump? Did I see that
person at the checkout line? Is that the cashier from Wendy's?
What is this? Who's this person? It's just
made up faces in our brains. You ever thought about that before?
And what are these made up things? They're electronic impulses in
our brains that create a face based on all the faces that we're
familiar with. Beloved, you know what I'm talking
about. For those of you who hated reading
in high school, but you could watch the movie of Grapes of
Wrath or The Good Earth or Canterbury Tales or whatever it might be.
You found a way to get away from the experience of the imagination.
Even then, you still had your own imagination about what it
would be. Beloved, Jesus Christ is an imaginary figure in the
minds of most people. Even the ones who say, well,
I believe Jesus is real. I believe He's true. I believe
in Jesus, but He's an imaginary figure. He's, according to the
way they understand Him, they have created in their own mind
who Jesus is. They've created in their own
heart what they love about Him and why they love Him and what
He accomplished and His work. They've written in their own
lives a history of Jesus that is not put anywhere. And they use, to their own damnation,
they use the Bible to twist to make their story and their picture
and their Jesus work. And the same thing was happening
before Christ came. In the Garden of Eden, Jesus
told the first couple, you have life and you have it abundantly. And they didn't recognize that
walking with the Lord in the cool of the day was abundant
life. And because of the frailty of
humanity, there's only one way to go when tempted with greater
revelation, greater experience, greater understanding, greater
knowledge. You see the New Testament Gnostics,
greater depth, greater implications, greater so what? I'm a wise person
now. See, that's what the enemy offered
the first couple. If you eat of the fruit that
has been prohibited by God, you will be like God. That is a true
thing. He promised them something and
he did not lie to them, but he lied to them through the impartiality
of not finishing the statement or explaining it. You shall be
like God, knowing good and evil. Well, beloved, the only way you
know evil is to be guilty of it. And God is just in his condemnation
of sin and sinners alike. And he created Adam and Eve and
decreed that they would fall. because the whole point that
this cosmos exists is so that he could be praised for his glorious
grace by his elect people. Period. That is his glory. That is the glory that God has
prescribed for himself. So there is no Plan that didn't
work out, there is no plan B, there is no second chance, there
is no oops, God really hoped they hadn't done that. No, God
purposed it all. He is the author and the original
cause of all things. Yet he is perfectly holy, righteous,
pure, good, and just. So when we come to the end of
John's letter, This is the first time you've heard these things
because we've been talking about this for 34 sermons. When we
come to the end of John's first letter, we need to be reminded
the occasion, and the occasion is because of what I just painted
for you, is that the human mind and the human heart are always
about revising truth. And some people purposefully
do it. They have their evil laboratories
and their evil lab coats and their evil theological caps and
goggles. I'm going to create evil theology. We're always looking for some
hero to come along and blow the lab up. It doesn't happen like
that. But there are some maniacal, wicked theologians who love to
twist scripture so that they can lead others to falsehood
as they get rich off of it, get glory off of it, get a kick out
of it, or just like to just cause problems. But the majority of
people are thinking they're right and really, really wanting everybody
else to understand their position. And pride is probably one of
the most frustrating realities of depravity. Because we're told
from childhood, I'm so proud of you, I'm so proud of you.
I'm so proud of those grades. You should be proud. Stand up,
son, be proud. You should be proud of yourself.
And then we get into the faith, we get into the world, we do
the job that we've been called to do, we get paid for it, and
we're looking for the atta boys. You're like, I paid you, get
out of my face. You know? Even in our marriages
sometimes. You know how, and when we're
dating, it's all great, Oh, I love the way you smack at lunch. I
love the way, you know. And then a year later, you're
getting a divorce over that stuff. We're lied to from the very beginning,
beloved. About everything. Intentionally and unintentionally.
We lie to ourselves, intentionally and unintentionally. How do we
lie to ourselves? We understand the unintentional lies where
we just believe things without testing them. Or we test them
by labels and by tests that aren't biblical, that aren't true, that
aren't sound. How do we lie to ourselves intentionally? By knowing
that there's the possibility that we need to seek further
truth, but we don't want to face the music of the truth of the
fact that we're deceived. That's pride. That's pride. John's audience
was in the midst of that. People were trying to revise
who Christ was, revise what he accomplished, revise the test
of intimacy, and revise the test, if you can. I don't even want
to use the word test because it's a labored word in this context
and it's erroneous. They began to revise the assurance
of salvation. And John's like, no, there's
two things you need to understand. Jesus Christ is the righteousness
of God for you. And I'm simplifying the gospel
a lot right now. And he's given you life through
himself because of his love for you. So love one another as Christ
has loved you. And Paul reiterates this in Romans
and Galatians and Hebrews and other places. Paul labors over
the fact that the gospel is a centerpiece of God's love for his elect,
and that the elect, the children, the saints, the believers, ought
to love one another in like mind. But even then, we can deceive
ourselves. We can try to make it work. Well,
love is, well, truth is, well, this person is, and we don't
get to do that. Either the scripture is truth
because the spirit is truth because Jesus Christ is the God of heaven
and the God man who is the truth or it's not. We can't say well
there's some truth there. Because when we come, it's amazing
that like a year ago I was having these same thoughts. I think
it's not yesterday or this morning. When we come to the reality that
We'd have this all truth and we start to invade this truth
with the mist or the air or the smell of false or lies or conjecture. We've made it a lie. We've made
it a lie. And in this text, look at this,
verse 20. No, verse 18, I can't skip this
over because it's important. And we know that everyone who
has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was
born of God protects him who has been born of God, and the
evil one does not touch him. Okay, we addressed that last
week. Verse 19, we know that we are from God and we know that
the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. We addressed
that last week. And verse 20, and we know that
the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that
we may know Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true
and His Son Jesus who is the Christ, Messiah. He, Jesus the
Christ, is the true God and He is the eternal life. Little children, keep yourself
in mind. I've been telling you for weeks that I'm just fighting
the temptation to do a topical sermon on idolatry. I got six
pages of cross-references about idol worship, mostly from Deuteronomy. in Genesis. But that's not what the text
is trying to help us see. The text is trying to help us
see there is a true gospel, a true Christ, a true effectual work
of God in redemption for his people and there are idols galore
that encroach upon that truth and twist it to make it a lie. If we believe that Jesus prayed
in truth in John 17, where he says, this is eternal life, verse
three. This is eternal life, that you
believe in the one true God and in the son whom he has sent,
then that is the reality of your eternal destiny. What is? what Christ has done, who He
is, and who God is. I have to watch myself. I haven't
had a whole lot of margin the last few weeks to really bog
down in my dumbness. But I love to bog down on my
dumbness, and I'm glad I haven't because it protects me from a
lot of pain. And when I say that, for those
of you who know me, you know what I'm talking about. I can think
about things in areas and in ways that I shouldn't think about
them. I can chase rabbits that turn into horses that turn into
dinosaurs that turn into, I mean, you know, Sasquatch. I can go off the rails and off
the trails very easily in my thinking to come right back around
to the simplicity of what the scripture is teaching. And one
of the things that I've been thinking about in the last months
is what is it to know God? John has declared to the believers,
and keep in mind the believers that he wrote to were not theologians.
And when I say theologian, I mean people who have academically
prepared themselves for theological thought. Some of us are theologians,
some of us are not. But we're theologians just the
same because we have an idea or an understanding of who God
is. The question is, have you been
taught by the Spirit of God or have you been taught by James,
Tippets? It's a huge difference. Is the teaching that comes from
this ministry, from this pulpit, effectual in and of itself? No. but that which the spirit
of God agrees with in his testimony according to the word by the
power as he wishes when he wishes will teach you and affirm that
truth as truth. I wish I'd understand that when
I was like 10 years old. Because beloved, if there's one
thing I've pursued above all things is knowledge. And I used
to be really good at it and God took my mind for a season to
show me. It's not about my mind. It's
about the mind of Christ. As we heard from 1 Corinthians
2 this morning, we see that the Spirit of God teaches those who
are spiritual. Those who are spiritual are those
who have been born of God. Those who have been born of God are
the elect of God. Those who are the elect of God are the ones
who God has known. That means loved forever. The ones God has
loved forever, he's given them and their record of sin to the
Christ and the Christ has died in their place. And the effectual
work of the sacrifice and the death of Jesus Christ satisfies
the justice of God forever for them, forever for them. And that
as the Lord wills, when he wills, as he wishes, when he wishes,
At the time that he is appointed eternally, no time before, no
time after, without any external power, wisdom, insight, will,
volition, or agreement, he will cause his people to understand
the knowledge of himself through the person of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4. For God who said,
let light shine on darkness, verse six, has shown in our hearts
to give us the knowledge, the light of the knowledge, the knowledge
of the light of Jesus Christ, of God, of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ, sorry. He's given us the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
He's given that to you. It is not something you have
found. You have sought after God in your lostness and you
will find the God of your own revision. You understand that?
When people seek after God in their unconverted state, they
find him, but it's not the God of the Bible. It may be close,
it may be the truths about God, it may be some facts about Jesus,
but until there is this supernatural work, and see, they go together,
don't they? I mean, you're not just walking
in Walmart, having never heard the gospel, and you're looking
at TVs, and you go, man, Walmart's got a really good price on those
54-inch 4K televisions. I just believe in Jesus. No, it's probably the opposite.
You're trying to carry that television to the self-checkout and it's
not working and you're not even talking nicely about Jesus. You're
using his name as an explicative. No, God regenerates with the
basic knowledge of himself. God does the work of redemption
through Christ and then he expressly proclaims We have seen the glory
of God, John says, in his gospel. In Christ Jesus, the Father. No one has ever seen God. But the God, one and only God,
who sits at God's side, exegetes Him. That's what it says, verse
18 of John 1. The God who sits at the side
of the God who has never been seen and cannot be seen makes
him seen. Makes him known. Exegesis. Expressly
proclaims and shows him. Reveals him. So the knowledge
of God is found in the Word but the apprehension and the resting
and the faith in that proclamation is a supernatural gift and it
goes together. The problem is, one of the idols
that we have in our lives is the hyper-knowledge and the hyper-mystery. And we use the word hyper all
the time. When I was a kid, hyper meant you need to calm down.
And honestly, that probably works now, but we need to calm down.
We need to center on the simplicity of grace. Grace is simple, but
it's not easy to grasp. We're going to go through some
things right now, specifically in John's Gospel since we're
still reading his writing. We're going to deal with the
divine nature of Jesus and the promises of Jesus exegeting the
Father in redemption. We're going to show just contextually,
I probably won't have a whole lot of commentary, I've just
got a lot of scripture to read this morning. We're going to show contextually
that Jesus Christ is the Savior of His people. and that his death
literally, perfectly, and forever satisfied God's wrath for all
who were given to him. The death of Jesus did not provide
a bank account of salvation for people to tap into or make deposits
or withdrawals. The death of Jesus did not provide
the opportunity for salvation for every living, breathing creature
in the world. The death of Jesus saved those
who belonged to him. The ministry of Jesus wasn't
a partial road trip. Well, I'm going to drive from
here to Miami, which is a terrible drive, by the way. And we're
going to stop off in Orlando and I get out of the car and
go, it is finished. This is far enough for Florida. That isn't what Jesus did. Jesus
didn't say it is finished because His ministry on earth was done.
Jesus didn't say it was finished because I'm done suffering, I'm
about to die and get off this cross. He didn't say it was finished
because the sun was going to go down. He didn't say it was
finished because the temple curtain was going to tear in two. He
said it was finished because the wrath of God was satisfied
so that God in His holiness can never condemn anyone that the
blood of Jesus paid for. And if God does condemn someone
for whom Christ died, God is a maniacal liar. You see? Jesus Himself is a liar. It,
what? Redemption, is finished. Beloved, that is the only way
you have hope. And I know that culturally speaking,
because we have so many ideologies, so many idols of false Christ
and false gospels, that we think that, well, you know, we can
make it work. Well, you can think about it
and try to make it work all you want to. But at the end of the
day, when the word of God comes clear to you, you will say, I'm
wrong. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy. And Jesus, If we don't know him,
we don't know him. And I can write down, I can print
out, I don't know how many pages of text. I probably got 14 pages
of just cross-references here. Literally, that's all that's
on this screen is cross-references and things that I want to read.
I better get started. But I could print all this out,
and I could make an outline out of it, and I could give it to
you, and you could print it out in huge print, and frame it, and
put it over your bed, and put it over your sofa, and hang it
from your rear view mirror. It'd be in the way. And you could
memorize all of it. It doesn't mean you know Christ. Because the supernatural work
of God regenerating his people allows us to stop laboring for
righteousness in the sense of appeasing God. It allows us and
permits us and causes us to understand that Christ and his work satisfies
not just the requirements of holiness and righteousness and
law keeping, but the justice behind it all. To be justified is to have no
longer, that guilt no longer is there. So if you are no longer
guilty before the Lord as a sinner, then who was guilty in your place?
Jesus. And even some of the Jews, like
Nicodemus, would believe it. In John 3, we know that you are
the one come from God for no one can do what you do except
God be with him. He was declaring out of his own
theological understanding that Jesus was Messiah. In John 4, Jesus is meeting with
the woman at Sychar who was playing Judaism on Mount Gerizim, a Samaritan
misfit. Doing the exact same stuff in
the exact same way. Worshipping in the same ideals as her father
Jacob had left instruction. With this well and promises through
him and all this other kind of stuff. And Jesus says something
incredibly amazing to her. A lot of things, but one thing
that fits with our understanding this morning. He says, woman,
salvation is of the Jews. She knew that. That's why she
was so frustrated that she couldn't worship in Jerusalem. She was
unclean in many ways. The irony behind the fact she's
at a well, right? With which she could bathe with
the water. with which she could quench her
thirst in her body and quench her thirst spiritually. Here
is the living water sitting there who says to her, if you knew
who was speaking to you and asking you for a drink, you would ask
him and he would give you living water. Salvation is of the Jews. This
woman understood election. Nicodemus understood election. Because the whole from Adam to
Zechariah, to John the Baptist. Israel had been taught. God's
people had been taught forever. I, God, through the seed of the
woman, am going to crush the head of the serpent. I'm going
to undo and destroy the work of death through the temptation
of the first people for my people. And that's why In John 3, when
Nicodemus is talking and he is confessing that Jesus is the
Messiah in all theological senses, Jesus says to him, Armen, Armen. He says that twice with two specific
statements. You cannot see the kingdom and
you cannot enter into the kingdom. See, Nicodemus was not fit to
enter into the righteousness of God. He could not see the
righteousness of God because he was looking at Messiah through
the lens of ethnocentrism. There's a good
way of looking at it. What's that mean? Me and my ethnic
people have got a savior and we about to be saved. And Jesus
blows his mind. When he goes to Moses, goes to
Deuteronomy and says, hey, as Moses lifted up the serpent in
the wilderness, so the son of man will be lifted up and all
those believing ones will live. That's a paraphrase. For this is the judgment. The
light himself has come into the cosmos, the world, but the world
loves darkness. You, Nicodemus, love darkness. You have created Messiah in your
own image. You have created an idol, Nicodemus,
and the only way that you are going to enter into the kingdom
of righteousness and see the kingdom of righteousness for
who he is, the son of man, is that when you see me lifted up
by the spirit of God himself, you will know me as salvation,
not just for the Israelites, but for all of God's children
of every nation, tribe, and tongue. And that was offensive to a Jew
in the first century. And everywhere we see, even in
the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke's gospel, we see Jesus
going into the areas that he went into, going into the areas
there and preaching and doing ministry and healing. And the
Jews going, oh, this is great. And then he says, it's not for
you. And they try to kill him. Oh, this is awesome. By what
authority? And then he says, I am. And then they try to kill him
because he made himself God. And he goes in all these things and
all this stuff happens and then he gets run away from Jerusalem
and run away from Jewish cities and he goes into Gentile cities
and brings life. You see the election there? You
see the reality? You see how hard it is now or
how easy it is now to just create a false Christ? And beloved,
none of us are wise enough because we don't have a divine eye to
look into the hearts and the knowledge of men and actually
know what they're thinking when they don't know what they're
thinking. Do you know what? I don't know what I'm thinking half the time. Do
you? Try to explain it to a three-year-old. If you can't explain what you're
thinking to a three-year-old, you don't know what you're thinking. You're regurgitating
language that you don't understand. That is the human problem. That's
a problem we have as humans. If the only time we can explain
something is when everybody's on the same page with the same
set of rules and the same syllabus and the same vocabulary and the
same thesaurus, we don't know nothing. And I know that means
we know everything, but here it means we're dumb. And we are
dumb, guys. But that's the world in which
we live. And the kingdom of heaven is not of this world. It's about
knowing Christ. We know that the Son of God has
come and He has given us understanding when He says, behold, behold,
I am the living water. I am the bread of life. I am. I can preach John 6 this
morning, the whole thing. I am. Before Abraham was, I am. Keep ourselves from idols, beloved.
Yes, there are plenty of idols for us to deal with when we get
into Timothy and when we get into 1 Corinthians and we get
into all sorts. There are many idols. I saw a
little social media joke session. Some of you guys are so funny.
But I mean, you think about it. How many idols could we point
out today? If I said everybody, take out
a piece of paper right now and write down three idols that you
know exist in your life and the lives of the people sitting around
you, we'd have a full book. It's never ending. So if the
purpose of John's writing is for us to list out all the idols
and throw them in the bonfire and sing Kumbaya in an afterglow,
then we're never going to leave the campfire. And then ultimately we'll have
to burn the fire itself because the fire and everything we're throwing
into it will become an idol of our own making. We'll begin to
feel righteous because we're getting rid of all the idols
and then they themselves will be an idol. Then we'll have to
throw ourselves in the fire. Because we realize that we just
idolize our own understanding, our own knowledge, our own righteousness.
And then we thank God for it. Thank you God that I'm not like
other men. That I don't believe like other men. That I don't
live and act and speak and talk and dress and think and love
like other men. And Jesus says, that man there is condemned.
But the one who understands Christ is the one who cries, propitiate
for me, God. Satisfy your justice on my account.
You know, that's the full understanding of the gospel in a nutshell,
right? For you are not destined to wrath,
but to live through Christ, beloved, elect child. And there's so much more. He
who is true, we know him, and we are in him, and he gives us
eternal life, and he keeps us from the evil one, and he keeps
us from sin. So who is this Christ? Well,
let's talk about the I am statement. In Exodus chapter three, we hear
the I am statement for the first time. When Moses
is talking to this bush, where God is talking to Moses through
this bush. And this bush is burning, but
not being consumed. And Moses, I mean, what would
you do? And we'd run, you know, our well-prepared Redneck Boy
Scouts would pull out the fire extinguisher we keep in the back
of the truck. I mean, you know, great day going to burn down
the desert, son. Burn down the range or whatever it might be.
You know, we're going to, we're going to do something. But Moses,
he was fearful and the voice from the flames said, take off
your shoes. because the ground on which you
are standing is set apart for God. That's what it means to
be holy, right? It means set apart for God. That's
all it means. So when God himself is holy,
he's set apart as God. So when he defines himself, Moses
is like, who are you? He says, I am. That's it. Self-existent one, the one, the
I am. And we all in our human knowledge,
I am what? I am, that I am. That phrase was understood by
Jews historically from that moment forward as the self-identification
of God himself. So that when Jesus comes and
says I am, for Jesus to say I am God would make him an Israelite. Because the Israelites were called
gods in the Old Testament. But to say I am, to say before
Abraham was I am, is to say I am Jehovah. I am the God of heaven. To say I am the Son of God. I am the bread of life. I am
the living water. I am the resurrection. I am the
life. I am the truth. I am the way. All of these things teach us
who Christ is. And they teach us clearly what
the apostles then expose and exegete further in their instruction
and the writing both theologically and practically for the local
assembly. See that's one of the problems by not having exposition. Going through the scriptures
verse by verse by verse is to say that my wisdom, if I didn't
preach this way, it would be saying that my wisdom and my
understanding would be greater than God Himself. No, the church
needs to know a little bit about tithing. No, you don't. You need to understand about
the gospel, you need to understand what it means to love, and you need to
understand that you're not bound to the law in that context. Give as God's called you to give.
Not just to the ministry of the body and to the ministry of the
saints and the ministry of the elders, but to one another, to
your neighbor, to Caesar. Pay him what he's due. His face
is on the coin. We can go to Mark's gospel. We
can see the I am statements there. In Mark 14, 62, we see Jesus
said, I am. And you will see the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of
heaven. In John 6, John 8, John 10, John 14, we see these I am
statements as well. In John 6, you can turn there,
verse 35, we'll start there. I'll read all the way through,
verse 51. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life, and whoever
comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall
never thirst. But I say to you that you have
seen me, and yet you do not believe. And this is why, verse 37, all
that the Father gives me will come to me. And I know we know
this, but we have we spent probably a year in John six, didn't we?
I know you know this. But we need to be reminded of
this gospel. We need to be reminded of these imperatives. We need
to be reminded of all of these important truths about who Christ
is because we know him. We need to remember who he is
so that we're not inundated and deceived and cast into the ditches
by all the cultural revisions of Christ. Because it's easy
to hear something that sounds decent and you go, it's not really
that big a deal they believe like that, is it? And as you continue to press
into the truth of the gospel, you come to the conclusion, by
God's mercy, yes, it is a big deal. Now what? Now some things change for us,
doesn't it? Our prayers change, our relationships
change, our status in our own hearts among certain cultures
change. Because we are changed. All that
the Father gives me will come to me and all that come to me
I will never cast out, never ever cast out. Four, let me explain
it to you, Jesus says, I have come down from heaven not to
do my own will, but the will of God the Father, Him who sent
me. And this is the will of God the
Father, who is Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of
all those He has given me, but all those that He has given me
that I shall not lose, I will give eternal life. What is that
phrase? I will raise up on the last day.
Why would he do that? Verse 40 of John 6, For this
is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son
and is believing in Him has eternal life, and I will raise Him up
on the last day. So the Jews grumble. Now keep
all this in mind. What all has he said here? And
for most people, they'd be aggravated. What do you mean? Only those
that are given to the Son. What do you mean? I pity the
fool. You know, I sound like Mr. T
there just a minute. I haven't watched the A-team in a long
time. It just sort of came to my mind. So I'm telling you,
time change is dangerous. It causes mental health problems
for me. What are you talking about? That's
what I'm saying. What was I talking about? They weren't concerned about
the fact that they weren't included in the ones who would have eternal
life. Their eternal destiny was so secure in their own misunderstanding
of Messiah and the gospel and the promises of God for eternal
life that they could care less about what Jesus was saying.
That's all they heard. But they heard, I am the bread
that comes down from heaven. Oh no. Oh no. We're the elect of God. We're
God's salvation. We are the ones who are coming
and Messiah is coming to serve us, to bring us back to the place
where God will allow us to worship because it is all that worship
that has placed us in this high status before Him to begin with.
You see? Has anything changed, beloved? No. Nothing's changed. It's verse 40. Excuse me. Yeah, verse 41. So the Jews grumbled
because he said, I'm the bread that came down from heaven. They
said, is this not Jesus? That's his common name. That's
an English name. The Hebrew name would be Yeshua. The English translation of Yeshua
is Joshua, which means Yahweh saves, God saves. Jesus means
God saves. It was a common name. Everybody
had the name Jesus. But he's not just any Jesus on
the street. Is Jesus the son of Joseph? Whose father and mother we know? See, they knew what he was saying. They knew what he was saying.
I've come down from heaven. I'm the bread. We know where he came
from. We know what happened. We know
she was pregnant long before the wedding came along. We know,
because they all accuse him of sin, right? And then how does he say, then,
I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered them, verse 43,
don't grumble amongst yourselves. Don't worry about it. Don't worry
about who I am or where I come from. Don't worry about it. Don't grumble. Verse 44, no one,
I'm going to reiterate that, no one, No one, who? No one can do what? Can come to me unless
the Father who sent me drags them to me by force, unwilling. And I know people hate when I
make that emphasis, but go back and listen to the sermons. We
spent a lot of time dealing with the idea of drawing under pressure
with great weight, like you would draw well. Have you ever picked
up a five-gallon bucket full of mud on a rope? If you want
to, see me after service. We have that opportunity for
you. It's heavy. It's not something
a child can do. It's not something a person with
weak elbows or joints or knees or back or headache could do.
It's not something that you want to do. I just can't wait to tote
water up a ladder. Years ago, when I was a little
boy at 20, I worked construction one summer with my uncle, and
we were building a high school. And I loved that, because he
was the foreman, and I didn't have to do all sorts of awful
stuff. But the grout pump broke one
day. What is a grout pump? It's a hose that pumps cement
26 feet in the air inside the walls, so the walls are full. It broke. And I'm like, well,
we're going to have to order a new pump. No, we ain't. There's
40 buckets over there. Go get two. So we're climbing
scaffold with two buckets full of concrete. I'm like, can we not go buy some
ropes and pull it up? I'll tie it down here and they
can pull it up. No. We've got 12 trucks full of concrete
here. We're going to pour it in bucket
by bucket. So when you tell me, when we're
drawing up those buckets that are heavy, And you tell me, you're just
wooing those buckets to the top of the wall. You've misinterpreted what Jesus
said. Jesus is saying, no one can come to me unless the Father
hauls his butt right here, like an arrest. That is sovereign
salvation, beloved. And if God does not arrest you
and snatch you out of darkness and show you the truth of light,
you don't belong to him. But when you see, you know you're
His. Pride keeps many a man from seeing
the truth. Because that is what the God
of this world has done. Blinded the eyes of unbelievers. No one can come to me unless
the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up. The ones who the Father draws
will come. And the ones who come, they will
live forever. As it is written in the prophets,
and they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and
learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the
Father except he who is from God. He has seen the Father.
Truly, truly, I say to you, Whoever believes in me has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the man in the
wilderness and they died. The provision of temporary, the
shadow of me does not save anyone. I save all that the Father has
given to me and they will not die. I am the living bread that came
down from heaven. All who eat of this bread will
live forever and the bread that I give for the life of the world
is my flesh. Later on in John 8 Jesus says,
truly, truly I say to you because they were rejoicing in Abraham
They were talking about Moses. They had their foot in their
pillars. Oh, we are the righteousness of God. We are the people of
God. We follow Moses and Abraham is our father. And Jesus says
to them, if Abraham was your father, you'd be doing the works
that Abraham did. They're like, well, what did Abraham do? Well,
he believed the promises of God by the divine work of God. And
then we see that they continue to argue about Abraham. We probably
don't have the whole conversation, but we've got what God has revealed
to us through the writing of his word. He said, well, Abraham
longed for my day and rejoiced in it. And here's Jesus at 33, 34 years
old. And they say, how are you saying that Abraham rejoiced in your
day. He's long been dead, man. You're
not even 50 yet. You're going to sit here talking
about Abraham rejoiced. He said, before Abraham was,
I am. And they immediately scurried
to the ground to pick up stones. And I'm not talking about rocks
from the driveway, folks. I'm talking about stones that
would kill you with one strike. To kill him because he called
himself God, the one and only, I am. We've already heard in John 14,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to me,
to the Father, except through me. In John 10, I am the good
shepherd, and the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And in Revelation 22, 16, Jesus
says, I, Jesus, have sent my messenger to testify to you about
these things for the gathered ones. I am the root and the descendant
of David, the bright and morning star. So there are a lot more of these
emphatic I am's. I am. Then you will know that
I am, John 8. I told you that you would die
on your sins, for you will die on your sins unless you believe
that I am. And when you have lifted up the Son of Man, you
will know that I am, and that I do nothing of my own authority
but speak as the Father has taught me. Jesus says in 8.58, truly,
truly, I say to you, before Abraham was I am. At the Last Supper,
I tell you this now before it takes place, that when it does
takes place, you may believe that I am. And so on and so forth,
we see throughout all of the scripture that these emphatic
I am statements of Jesus, especially in the Yohannan literature, the
writings of John, the gospel of John and John's apocalypse,
that Jesus is clear, that knowledge of him is knowing him as the
mediator of his people. as the Lamb of God who satisfies
the wrath of God for you. See, the alternative is this,
beloved, is that we're going to have to keep working hard
to gain the knowledge necessary to be saved. Or we're going to
have to keep working hard to gain the purity of life to be
saved. Or we're going to have to keep
working hard to to do something to take on or put off in order
to satisfy God's wrath and the good news is that Jesus alone
and only satisfied God's wrath and he did it perfectly and it
is done trust in him and I can tell you to trust and
without regeneration your trusting will look like a whole lot of
works and there have been a lot of good theologians and through
the years who have commentated on certain aspects of writings,
for example, out of James, where he talks to these people. We're
going to be reading through James in the next few months on midweek
after we're done with Hebrews. Well, you know, the reason that
you know that you know that you know that you have eternal life
is because you live that you live that you live for Christ. That's
wrong. It's a lie. The reason that you
know that you know that you know that you have eternal life is
because God's word has told you that you do through the finished
work of Christ. and that you accept and receive
and rest in the reality that God has saved His elect alone
through the life and the death of Jesus and He is satisfied
in His justice. Because if there's anything on
you that is required, if there's any motive, if there's any desire,
if there's any action on your part other than the God-granting
faith to believe in the actions of Christ for you. If there's
anything else that you're trying to accomplish your salvation
through, or even your assurance through, you are fighting against
the promises of God Himself. Jesus even says, I am the one
bearing witness in John 8, 818. I am bearing witness of myself. I am the door. I am the good
shepherd. What do these things mean? What
does it mean to be the bread of life? Well, I don't want to
go through all of it again, but it means that the sustenance of
life. If you didn't eat in the wilderness, you died. You perished
because your body starved to death. Now, I've been hungry
before, but I've never been starving. I've said that I was starving.
Because I might have skipped lunch or had a light dinner and
woke up hungry the next morning at daylight. But I've never been
starving. I've never been kept from food,
even in the poorest of days. It's enough in the ashtray to
get ramen noodles in the 90s. And we've done that. A loaf of bread and some bologna
go a long ways when you're pinching it. But I've never been starving.
Imagine dying from starvation. From what I've read, it's a very
painful death. The only way to live is to eat
bread. The only way to live spiritually is to eat the true bread of life.
How do you eat the true bread of life? It has to be given to
you. It has to be forced into you. It has to be fed to you.
How is it fed to you? Jesus got on the cross and said,
it is finished. He fed you. He satisfied the wrath of God.
He fed the justice and the vengeance of God, peace, through the death
of His flesh. And then by the Spirit, you have
been fed the truth of the bread of life, who is Jesus Christ,
who in His flesh has satisfied the wrath of God for you. This
is good news, beloved. I'm the light of the world. Oh,
I don't have time to talk about that. But if we go back to John
1, we see that. The light shines in the darkness
and the darkness has not overcome it. Jesus Christ is the light
of the world. He is the one who shows the Father
to us. He is the one who reveals Himself
to us. He is the righteousness of God imputed to our account. We'll talk about that in a minute.
He is the Good Shepherd. He leads His people to the pasture
of mercy. He leads His people to the understanding
of the cross. He leads us and He has laid His
life down for us that we may go in and out of the sheep gate,
who is Him, and eat of green pastures, which is the gospel,
which is the word of God, which is the promises of salvation,
which is the resting of our souls, which is saving faith. I am the
resurrection of the life that needs no introduction. We know
that we have life eternal, that if we're not in Christ, who is
the first to be raised to life, that we ourselves are not going
to be raised unto life, but we will be raised unto everlasting
destruction. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the vine
and the vineyard. We are the branches. If we're
attached to Christ, we are justified. If we are not attached to Christ
when He died, we cannot be justified. Think about it this way in that
respect. And we have a power source here that we're about
to turn on and what it's going to do is it's going to charge
millions and millions of dead power cells with one hit. Poof! And we're going to turn it on
for one second. Poof! And it's going to give
eternal power to everything that's plugged into it. That one second.
Poof! Anything that's not plugged into
that when it comes on and goes immediately off will never live. Jesus Christ did not turn himself
on as a power source for salvation ready for folks to plug into
him. The elect were plugged into him before the foundation of
the world and when he said it is finished, poof, it's done. It's done. No other power to
be given but Christ and His finished work on the cross. The Hebrews,
the letter to the Hebrews talks about that, doesn't it? If we
continue to reject the grace of God through the salvation
that is given through the death of Jesus, there is no longer
a sacrifice for sin. There's nothing else to come
to. You have nothing. You will not live. There is no
resurrection for you if Christ did not save you when he died. And beloved, because He did save
us, we have an unaccusable, I don't even know if that's a word, we
have an unaccusable life. No matter what it looks like,
and it ought to look good, it ought to look Christ-honoring.
And by the mercies and the graciousness and the kindness of the local
assembly, we can help each other when we're struggling, and we
can help restore one another to the joy of Christ when we
help each other as we walk in sin sometimes. but ultimately there is no condemnation
now for those who are in Christ Jesus. Paul would say, for by
the works of the law, no human being would be justified in his
sight. since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But
now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from
the law, though the law and the prophets bear witness to it,
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, the Messiah,
for all who are believing. For there is no distinction for
all of sin and fall short of the glory of God and are justified
by His grace as a gift. How? Through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation
by His blood to be received by faith alone, to believe in His
Word. Why? This was to show God's righteousness
because in His divine forbearance God had passed over former sins.
It was to show God's righteousness presently so that He might be
the just, He might be just, He might be the justifier of all
who have faith in Christ Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting?
Remember I talked about in the early parts of the sermon about
pride being one of the hardest things? That's what pride does. Pride boasts in salvation. Pride boasts in knowledge. Pride
boasts always. Even if it's a humble brag, it
still boasts. What becomes of our boasting?
It is excluded. By what kind of law can we exclude
our boasting? By the law of works? No, by the
law of faith. I can't stand before God and
go, look what I did, Lord. Look what I believed, Lord. Look what
I came to the knowledge of, Lord. Look what I accomplished, Lord.
I chose you, Lord. No, you didn't. Depart from me,
you worker of iniquity. It is only believing in the finished
work of Christ that we have life. For we hold that one is justified
by faith apart from the works of the law. And God has justified both Jews
and Gentiles. because God has one people and
he will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised
through faith. Romans 5 talks about the same thing, Romans
8. Galatians, we could go there,
we could go to Titus, we could go all sorts of places, I've
already talked about James. So we've been justified, so our
sins are forgiven, but how is it that we stand righteous before
God? How is it that we know the true God in eternal life? We
have to stand righteous before God. This is sort of my evangelistic
stick. How can a person stand righteous
before God? That's what I ask, I love to
ask that question. And I got a whole bunch of answers. Bunch of answers. And then I
inquire on the answers. What do you mean by that? Because
sometimes people use language that just, if I take it at face
value, it's absolute heresy. But if I ask what they mean,
sometimes I like to change their vocabulary. But for the most
part, everybody gives the answer like, you know, you know, Jesus
died and I accepted. Accepted what? The question is,
did he accept you on the cross? Did Christ accept you on the
cross? Did He accept you from the Father when He died? There's
nothing wrong with the word accept or receive. I mean, John uses
those words. Paul uses those words. Receive
the testimony. But what is the testimony? Not
you do this. The testimony is Christ accomplished
this. Let me see. And those who receive that testimony
have not been born by their will, or their desire, or their volition,
or their blood, but they've been born by God, John 1. How is it
that a man stands righteous before the Lord? In Psalm 32, verse
3 verses, it says, Blessed is the one whose transgressions
are forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom
the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through
my groaning all day long. We've already heard Isaiah 53
in part by hearing Romans chapter 3. But we've all gone astray
like sheep. We've turned astray. There's
no one who seeks after God. But the Lord has put the iniquity
of us all on the Son. And I read that last week. In
Romans 4 it says that that is why this faith was, quote, counted
to Him as righteousness. But the words it was counted
to him were not written for his sake, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who
believe in him, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who
was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Because if we think about it, how are we going to present ourselves
to God? We must be perfectly righteous,
having never sinned. What are you going to take? What
do you own right now that you're going to give to God? What do
you have in your person? What have you done for Him that
you're going to take and boast about? Nothing. So what is it
that you take? You take that which He gave you.
What did He give you? The righteousness of His Son.
He put it on your account. He took the guilt and the debt
on our account and He put it on Christ. He killed Him. It's
paid. Then He took the righteousness
and the purity and the holiness and the awesomeness and the obedience
and all of these words, whichever one you want to use, that are
Christ's and He gave them to our account. That's why it's
called good news. God has reconciled us to Himself. We can only go with the righteousness
of Christ. Well, how do we plead that? God's
given us faith. We don't have to plead it. Christ
is our advocate. But let's just say we did for the sake of argument.
Pun intended. What do you bring? I bring the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus on my account. And what he did for
me. And what he accomplished for
his people. For your people, Father. Well done, my good and
faithful servant. Imputation. This is like Paul
when he wrote to Philemon about Onesimus, who had stolen from
him and cost him greatly. And he said, let me tell you
something, Philemon, when Onesimus comes back, I want you to treat
him as if it's me. a brother, because he is. And
anything that he owes you, charge it to me. He imputed the debts
of Onesimus to himself, Paul. All right, that's a legal transaction
in the world. It's a spiritual hope with God. Christ's imputation of his righteousness
to his people. You know, that's what the cross
is. It's an exchange. The glory and the holiness of
God taking on the sins of his people. of his elect, dying in
their place as a substitute to satisfy, to propitiate for them,
to atone for them, to bring them close to God, to justify them,
to take away their guilt. All these things, and these elements
of these theological things are deep. Remember, we talked about
it. But we don't, it's not that we don't want to learn them,
but we don't want to harp on the depth as much as we rest
in the simplicity of it. And then we learn and we grow,
but the growth doesn't make us stronger, the growth makes us
worship greater. A more deep intimacy, see. Doesn't
make us more secure, it just causes us to thank God more.
And isn't that the whole point? Doesn't Paul say that several
times over and over and over? That thanksgiving and praise is the
result of the gospel. It's what God requires, it's
what is due him. And there's no greater picture
as the church, not just that we hear this stuff and pray and
sing songs under the praise of His glorious grace, but beloved,
the Lord's table, and we have this, we have these self-contained
packages today, it's gonna be very odd for some of us, but
The Lord's Table, the reason we have always desired for the
time before COVID to do it weekly is because it is a means through
which we can physically taste and touch something together,
reminding us of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ as
he reminded the apostles that night before his arrest that
his body would be broken, his blood would be shed, and that
sufficient work is the bread of life, is the living water,
is the resurrection and the life. And that He would lay down His
life for His people and all of His people would be saved when
He said it was finished. And that when the Spirit of God
desires, He would bring the gospel proclamation to the ears of His
elect people and He would cause them to believe and to trust
and to know Christ intimately. know Christ in truth. He would
know the doctrine, the teaching of Jesus Christ in his gospel.
And so that's why the Lord's table is a continued command
and a blessing to the church. So prepare your hearts as we
partake in that together in just a moment. And know the grace
of God for you through Christ. Let's pray. We thank you Father
so But we could never thank you enough. We can never praise you
enough, Lord. And the sin that runs through
my brain, Lord, and the feelings that I have and all the... If
these things were to come to full power, Lord, I would just
die. So I thank you for your mercy. I thank you for helping us. I
thank you for sending your son to be tempted as we are tempted,
but yet he sins not. And I thank you, Lord, that his
sacrifice was sufficient and was pleasing to you. I thank
you, Lord, that you put him on the cross because you are the
just God of heaven. And you had decreed and purposed
to save your people. And Father, you are the justifier
of your elect. Those you have given to your
Son. Those whose sins have been taken upon His body and that
body has died and was crushed and His blood was shed and righteousness
and justice has come. Father, it is all about Your
mercy and grace. Though we have many ways in which
we use these terms, Father, let us as the saints hold fast to
their true and central meanings. That we understand that your
love is for your elect and your grace is toward us in Christ
Jesus alone and that in all of these things you are our Redeemer. So as we continue to worship
As we continue to sing, as we continue to pray, as we continue
to remember the Lord and His death and resurrection, let us
rejoice. Let us not look at this world,
but to rest in the sufficiency of the cross of Christ. And we
thank you, Father, that you can teach through feeble efforts.
And then you can bring us into the experience of knowledge and the mystery
of intimacy with Christ. all at the same time by your
will. In Christ's name we pray.