Let's pray. Lord, may the teaching of your
word be good and true. And Lord, the exposition of your
promises rest in our heart in a matter of understanding your
eternal power, your eternal holiness. your eternal being, the greatness
of your self-sufficient joy. And that in all of that, in all
of who you are, you reach down into nothing and created something
that your glory may be revealed by a people whom you have called
for your purpose. That we would share in your glory,
Father, is a great gift. It is a great promise. And it
is a guarantee. For you have given us your spirit
that we might know and see and believe, even when it is inexpressible,
even when our joy in this life seems to wane, even when All
things around us are crumbling to the ground. Father, you remain
the same. And the Christ who has set us
free lives forever. And this is the joy of our soul.
So as we come to your word today, Lord, let us rejoice. Let us
be at peace. Help us to be satisfied in the
inner being. of our minds and our hearts and
our lives so that we would walk with each
other to the praise of your glory, to the praise of your glorious
grace that we share with each other in Christ. Amen. Let's go to First John. And let's
look at 1 John 5 again. And today I want to expand upon
an idea that John has dropped on us. We see as he continues in chapter
5, it is a continuation of what we see over in chapter 4, verse
7, all the way through chapter 5, moving down into verse And it's really just one argument.
Remember, John did not write these numbers and titles. That is for our ability to find
them. Chapter 5. Everyone who believes
that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone
who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this
we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey
His commandments. For this is our love of God,
that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not
burdensome. For everyone who's been born of God overcomes the
world. And this is the victory that
has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the
world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? I'm gonna stop there. Because
we know that what he's about to say is over in verse six is
that John is about to expressly demonstrate that the confession
of the true regenerate person is that which has been revealed
to them by the Holy Spirit alone. And that confession is not just
the ideology of sovereign grace or the doctrines of grace or,
you know, Protestantism or historical theology or what have you. That
expression is a restfulness. Faith is a satisfactory restfulness,
which is the knowledge of God, who is the God who rests. In Genesis, God rested. What does it mean? Hebrews 1,
Christ sat down. He's finished. He's done the
work. The promises of God are complete,
powerful, and finished. See, in our world,
It is, we are constantly inundated with promises, are we not? You
get in the car, you turn on the radio, come on down to so and
so Ford, we promise you a great deal. Liars. You just download this app, you'll
never be lost again, liar. I don't even remember where the
app is, or where the name of it is. There's a promise, every marketing line
has a promise. Every proposition, in some sense
in the context of our world, that has to do with selling a
product or service is a promise. There's an offer there. And you
have to tap into that offer. There's always something. Always
something. Relationships, promises, promises,
promises. Promises, promises, promises.
Oh yes, I'll take the trash out before I leave. Liar. It's not that you lied when you
said that, but you intended to take the trash out. However,
you just forgot. That's how good the promises
of men are. That's how good the sincerity of man is. You stand
at an altar, a makeshift altar, stand with an officiant, and
there's people watching. So as unto God I promise that
I wed you till death do us part, And on the way to the honeymoon,
you get in a fight. I mean, honor, respect, obey, submit, love,
cherish, defend, until you get the pickles wrong on my sandwich.
Then I got a problem. You see, promises are worthless
in the world today. So the promises of God are not
like the promises of men. There was a time in history,
and I love history. For those of you who know, I love everything
historical. I will read about the history of copper wire. I
really will. And I will spend weeks and weeks
and weeks. And then I will start looking at copper. And then I
will start into chemistry. And then I will enjoy it. That's
the rabbit hole of my insanity. But I read it. I don't listen
to stuff. I can't stand watching videos. They drive me insane. I don't want to see a video about
anything. I want to read it. I want to
read it. or hear it read. It's promises. There's always something. Even
in history, even in history, the word used to mean more. Well,
I swear by my children. I swear by my wife. I swear by
my mother. I swear by my name. My father
taught me since I was old enough to remember, son, you've got
your word and you've got your name. And if you mess up either
one of those, the other one doesn't matter. And it's my name, so don't mess
it up. See, the only way out of that is for me to die. I understood
that with my subtle father's threat, my father's subtle threat. I understood that. And so to
this day, I respect him in that context. And it goes a long way. But imagine someone coming in
the context of a monarchy and having the ability to stand in
the place of a king or a queen or a general and say, this is
the command and everybody obeyed it or died. You don't want to obey the king's
edict? Then we'll just write you a ticket. No, you died on
the spot. Same thing was true in the first
century. We see Paul dealing with this in a very subtle way
in the context of his writing to the Roman church. In Romans chapter 10 especially,
where those Soldiers and others would go across the countryside
and would say to the crowds that they saw, hey, who is Lord? Who
is Lord? And they were to respond, Caesar
is Lord. Caesar is Lord. Then you have
the Lord's blessings. Be well. Be among on your way. Oh, anyone who would dare say
Jesus is Lord would lose their heads. And I wanted to bet you
that throughout that era, there were many times where travelers
would come upon piles of heads, or whatever they did with them.
Did they put them on pikes? I don't know. I don't really like that kind of stuff,
so I don't dig into how they disposed of heads. Decapitation's
not a hobby, nor the history. But there was a promise of Caesar
that if you were just faithful to me, I will let you live. There was a promise from God
that says, through the death of my son, I give you life. And my son is over death because
he brought himself back to life. and He's promised you life. So
whose promise carries more weight? The one who has never failed
or the one who chops off your head if you don't believe it? Promises. Promises. Beloved,
the gospel is all about the promises of God. The good news is that
God promised Christ. God promised the Messiah. God
promised this Savior, this Redeemer, Yahweh saves is His name. Joshua, the English of the Hebrew. Jesus, the English of the Greek.
This is the name, the earthly name, the human name given to
the Christ of which millions of people had been named before
Him. but only one Christ, which is
the English of the Greek. Christos, Messiah, is the English
of the Hebrew for Christ, Meshach. It's the same thing. The Holy, the Anointed One, One
of God. This is God in the flesh, come
to the earth to bring life to His people. This is the promise
of the Lord God Himself. What must I do to live under
the promises of God? It seems so silly. What must you be? What must you
know? You must be born again. That's the answer Jesus gives
Nicodemus. What must you do? Believe in what He has done. And ultimately when we begin
to see as people who have been shown the truth, we begin to
see that we are actually not doing much at all. If anything,
we have just been granted this great repentance, which is faith
in the finished promises of God. Everyone who believes, everyone
who rests, everyone who knows, everyone who understands, everyone
who is settled, everyone who has tasted, everyone who is drinking,
everyone who is receiving, everyone who is accepting, everyone who
is living in the reality and the truth of the promise of the
Christ, and that this Jesus revealed in scripture is indeed this Christ
has been born of God. Oh, the history in my head right
now. The quotes and the thoughts of other men concerning this
thing, which in some sense are so precious to me, but they're
not powerful because the word of God is enough. This is the
kind of stuff I like to hear. I'd like to hear what I'm thinking,
I'd like to hear what you're thinking, I'd like to hear what
other people have thought concerning this because I really relish
the absolute infallible truth of Christ and the promises of
God. You must be born again. You must
be given the mind that knows Christ, not just about Him, but
knows Him. And that takes away everything
that we could ever do. Beloved, we could teach our children
theological things from birth. We could teach them to quote
Paul. We could teach them to parse
Greek. We could teach them to take the
pages of Scripture and to draw on a whiteboard all the details
of grace and sovereignty and free. We could teach them all the ins
and outs of redemptive history. We could show them in the Old
Testament ways. We could walk them through the
argument of Hebrews and we could show that they, I mean, they
could then show others by the time they were five, they could
outline the ceremonial laws of sacrifice. And they could say,
see, Jesus fulfilled these. They can say those things, but
that does not make one born of God. It is nonsense to know the gospel,
the good news of the promises of God, and then to think that
that is manifested by one's own ability to comprehend, repeat,
and explain this promise. Nicodemus explained the promise.
Nicodemus understood election better than any of us ever will.
He understood redemption. He understood propitiation. The
man knew this stuff. He lived it. It was his life.
There was no other job. except for him to beat his head
upon the law of Moses and the word of God that he might expressly
pray it correctly, teach it correctly, and apply it correctly to the
lives of the people who he oversaw. And yet Jesus says, you can't
see nothing. And I know that that means he
can see, but this is the South. You see nothing. You cannot see
me. In all of your knowledge, we
know that you are the one come from God. He said you are Messiah,
you are Christ. You're dead, Nicodemus, until
you're born of God. You're dead. And see, thus lays the subtle
differences between culturally bound regeneration of knowledge
and spirit-given life. And I want to warn you, church, I want to warn you, beware, beware
the leaven of the Pharisees. The Pharisees will open up the
books to prove you wrong. The Pharisees will open up the
life that you live to prove you unconverted. The Pharisees will
parse into your heart that which has not been promised of God. And let us not be like them. and so that we know the promises
of God. The good news is that God has
promised his people eternal life through the work of Jesus Christ. Now let me tell you something,
and I'm gonna say something right here that may offset some of
you, and I love you, but I will not move from this position. God grants regeneration, repentance,
faith in Jesus Christ without the theological knowledge of
its systems. Say that again. God the Spirit
grants regeneration, repentance unto faith in Jesus Christ and
the work of Christ without the knowledge of the theological
systems. You cannot be born again reading
Calvinism. Saying, yep, I agree with that.
Check, check, check, check, check. Ta-da! How do I know? Because I know
hundreds, I know thousands of unconverted people in that field.
Thousands. How do you know they're unconverted?
Because they don't rest in Christ. They rest in Tulip. And you rest in tulip, then they
go on top of your grave. Pretty flowers. They rest in
history. They rest in their work. They
rest in their knowledge. Knowledge. Knowledge is so incredible in
our day, isn't it? What I could have done with my
life in the context of academics had the internet been such a
thing. and I'd had access to everything anybody'd ever written
about everything. Dude, I had to get in my car
and drive five hours sometimes to go read a book. Go find something. Had to call and pay to have it
mailed to me. Had to write a check and mail
the check, you know? It wasn't a debit card. You had
to mail a check. Or a money order. Or Western Union paid 30 bucks
to send 15. I mean, you know, that's how
you sent money. What could have been done? I
tell you what could have been done. I could have been ruined. It's hard enough thinking you
know a lot to realize that you're really just becoming more stupid. You can know a lot about a lot
of things and not be born of God. But when the Holy Spirit
opens your eyes to know that the sufficiency of the work of
Christ is His promise to His people. You know, that's the
prophecy, right? That's the prophecy. And where
was Nicodemus wrong on that? He wasn't wrong on that. The
elect of God, the Messiah was coming to save His elect. What
are you going to do? The problem was He'd not been
born of God, so He had established in His own heart what salvation
really was. Not that Jesus would die for
them, but that Jesus would liberate them. Because they felt, and I say
they, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, they felt that their worship
and their knowledge of the promises of God was sufficient in the
context that they actually were God's chosen people, ethnically. And they had read the word so
myopically, nationalistically, listen to that word very carefully,
beloved, for so many millennia that they had forgotten the promise. And it boils down to the idea
that the difference maker between the regenerate and the unregenerate
is that the regenerate know and always know and rest in the sufficiency
of Christ alone and know that nothing that they are and nothing
that they've done and nothing that they could ever accomplish
or do will satisfy God in any iota whatsoever, period. The yebbuts that come after that
statement are the most damning consequences of debate. It bothers my soul at the number
of hours that I have spent debating that. Yeah, but what about this? With people who did not want
to know the truth but rather wanted to just push their own
truth upon others. Jesus himself I came to seek
and to save the lost. I came to find as the shepherd
my sheep. The problem is people in their
high horses, in their high theologies, in their high regenerative ideals,
they don't want to be a sheep. They want to be a shepherd. And I've always been baffled
at this. For 26 years now I've been baffled at this reality.
My wife and I, as of next week, will have been together 26 years.
And then in May, we'll have been married 25 years. So there's
the timeline. Our first date was on February
8 of 1995. So we married May 11, 1996. And we were engaged by March
of the 95. So it was a quick thing. The
point is, I don't even know what I was saying at the point. Oh,
forget it. The point is, I've been around
a long time in this relationship. Now my whole brain just died.
You ever had that happen? It's right there. I need cue
cards in the back. Say this. Say it. You have no
idea what we're going to say next. Anyway, the promises of
God. the promises of God. This gospel, as we understand it, is the work
of God. That's the point I'm getting
to. And there is nothing that anyone
can can rest in except the finished work of Christ. There is nothing
that we do I mean, literally, nothing. And the full work of
this gospel, of these promises, is something that this world
wants to negate. So let's talk about that for
a second. How is it that the world offers a promise? I mean, we know the promise.
2 John, I mean, 1 John 2.15, do not love the world or the
things of the world, these things. Do not love them for they are
not from God. Okay, let's move there. The promises that the
world has, what are they? Those are obvious. Power, money,
influence, relationships, et cetera. Oh, I know what baffles
me. Now I'll come back to it. I said relationships, that's
it. So the world offers all of these
things. The world offers these relationships. So 26 years with
my wife, all right, And I've been baffled by this. Thank you. Is that I am a husband, but also
a bride. And then for 22 years, including
this context, is that I'm a shepherd, but I'm really a sheep. So I'm
a husband, but I'm really a bride and I'm a shepherd, but I'm really
a sheep. See, nobody wants to be a sheep. Everybody wants to
be a shepherd. But even the under shepherds
of the Lord's sheep are a sheep themselves. Are sheeps themselves. I can't get that right. And even husbands are types of
husbands but they're not real husbands. The word andros which
means Ed. We're not the head of our lives in any real way. We're the picture of the true
head who is Jesus Christ so that at death marriage has done its
purpose to shadow Christ in the church. Nobody wants to be the subservient one. Especially people in high positions.
Especially people with big ministries. Especially people with powerful
pulpits. With many books. Especially people who feel confident
in their righteousness and then say it's all of grace. These
are the things that that the world promises. The ministry. I don't want to go to the sinful
things of the world, to the debauchery of the world, to the worldviews
of the world, to the politics of the world. I mean, these are
just all of the world and they're passing away. Beloved, let me
just go ahead and part this out there for you. The United States
of America was created by God through all the necessary means
that He established historically so that at the end of it all,
He could show that it was all a big game. It was all a big
joke. It was all a big fat waste of
time because the only thing that's going to be left is him and his
bride. Poof. Nothing left. So live as a citizen
with that mindset. But Jesus came to seek and save
the lost. Jesus came to be the physician for the sick. I saw
the Andy Griffith episode this past week. Just happened to be
playing when I went to visit my mother. And it was the time
when the doctor, the doctor actually came. Instead of having to go
to Mount Pilate to the doctor, one came and opened up shop there
in Mayberry. And nobody came to him because
they didn't trust him, young guy. And it was sort of a thing
going on where people, they weren't sick, but after they figured
out he was trustworthy, they started feeling some ailments.
They just, nobody goes to the doctor until they need it. When
we don't think we need the mercy of God, we don't get it. But for the elect of God, by
the Spirit of God, He shows us that not only do we need the
grace of God, but it is only by grace that the promises of
God are applied to His people. It is only by grace that the
promises of God are effectual for His people. It is by God's
will, after the counsel of His own will, after the work of His
own desires, that He established His redemptive plan before the
foundations of the world, that when He said, let there be light,
it was so that He could create a people for Himself to be redeemed
by the Lord Jesus Christ and to satisfy all these things that
God in His wisdom understands concerning Himself and His righteousness,
which is His justice. to know from the first second
of new life. But we do know, don't we? We do know, even in a subtle
way, sometimes inarticulately, we do know that there is only
mercy at the cross. And that there is no man or woman
or child who could come to the cross of Christ and plead the
blood of Christ on their account if Christ's blood was not shed
for them to begin with. And we also know that the scripture
teaches very clearly that those who would come after Christ,
it is because Christ has sought after them and found them already. You want to know what evangelism
should look like? Evangelism should look like the gospel of
John. That's what it should look like.
In our culture, the gospel of John should be our evangelism.
Because you have to work real hard to evangelize through the
epistles. You have to work really hard. Because you've got to be
careful not to apply to someone who may or may not be Christ's
sheep when you're teaching it. You don't want to teach Romans
to someone who may or may not be elect and say, that's for
you. That's why you teach it to the church. But Gospel of
John, we teach the Gospel of John. We teach who Christ is.
We teach what Christ accomplished. We teach the object of Christ's
work. Who was it for? God the Father
and for the elect. That's the promise of Isaiah.
He will send this man into the world to save his people from
their sins. The problem with the Jews is
that they believe that they alone were God's people. They did not understand that
their existence from nothing was a shadow of God's elect for
all nations. God's elect for all tongues. That's why we see the imagery
of Paul writing in a Jewish way. In the Semitic purposes, talking
about grafting in, grafting in. So we see the original root,
just like we aren't temple worshipers anymore, but we are the pillars
of the temple, you see. We stand in the presence of the
true mercy seat, who is Jesus Christ, and the law has been
absorbed into the belly of the mercy seat, because he is the
fulfillment of the law in illustration, in application, in justice, in
righteousness, and all that in between. Christ is the point. So salvation comes evangelistically
to the elect alone when at the time that God the Spirit desires
it, He helps them. See how subtle that word is? That word is false. He causes
them. He helps them see. No, He makes
them see. There's a subtle difference in
heresy and truth. And if you get it wrong, that's
all right. You'll get your language. If
there's one thing that I've learned the hard way many times over
is to be careful. As you change your language,
you need to clean it up. God causes us to be born again. What? To a living hope. through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What is the hope?
The promise is life. The promise is life. The promise
is what? Life. So the promises of God
is eternal life. That is the good news. Well,
how can I have eternal life? If God has promised eternal life
to His people, how does it come to us? Through the person of
Jesus Christ. What? God coming into the world
as a human being, creating Mary and her womb and the body in
which he would be born. His own body. How? Don't know, don't care,
don't wanna think about it. I have, don't wanna go there
again. That's not a healthy exercise. The employment of that type of
brain power into something that absurdly impossible is just about
like metaphysical. It's not worth it. So Christ,
what he has done on earth as a human boy, as a teenager, as
a young man in his ministry of nearly four years, all the while,
everything else he's ever said and done was just hidden from
the world. And in that brief few years of teaching, he accomplished
the work of the Father. for the sake of proclaiming the
promises of God through Himself, where it was a shadow before.
Okay, we know that God has promised, and now we can hear it better.
We know that God has promised, now we can see it better. We
know that God has promised, but now we can hear it better. Because
Christ has given ears and eyes to hear and see. and hearts to
believe through the Spirit of God, through the proclamation.
Evangelism in our day needs to be about the proclamation of
what God has done through Christ to save His people and fulfill
His promise to them of eternal life. And we can work out all
the theological terms later. But we must present the gospel
in a pure way that includes who Christ is and what Christ did
and for whom it was done. Without those three things, it
is not the gospel. Because it is an incomplete story.
The good news of God is a promise that is revealed through the
story of the life and the person and the work of Jesus. And the
story, if we cut pieces out of it, is incomplete. And that's
why there are so many people in the world today who are converted,
sort of, to a certain degree of understanding, sort of, but
they've not been born again. See, I converted in 2008 from
PC to Mac. I was born again that same year,
too, from PC to Mac. I'll never go back. I mean, it
was great. This thing works every time I turn it on. I don't have
to shut it down. Wow. No virus protection? Awesome. Moving right
along. Conversion isn't always about
regeneration. Conversion sometimes is about
the way we think, or what we think we know, or what we believe.
Some of you have probably wrongly been converted to not be coffee
drinkers. I'm sorry, I'll pray for you. Don't let any well-meaning
Pharisee tell you it's a sin to drink coffee. It's not, it's
a sin not to drink coffee. Hebrews is in the Bible. It's my joke for the year. But no, regeneration, conversion,
true conversion is to see. And beloved, that's not up to
us. It's not up to us to debate these things. You know what I
used to learn, and I got my apologetics chops in middle school. And answering questions about
the Bible, answering questions about the Lord, answering questions
not just with my friends, but with my family and with others.
And over and over again, constantly, and once people learn that you'll
talk to them about the Bible, they'll come to you. And you begin to see just what
people believe. And you begin to understand that
not everybody believes the same thing. But you can't put your
finger on what. You really don't know how. And the biggest thing
that baffled me throughout my entire life is that how could
people say they believed in what the Bible said concerning Christ,
but they didn't trust the Bible? Because you can show, well, what
about this? And you show them in the scripture,
and they go, yeah, well, I see what it's saying. I just don't
know. They'll never say, I just don't
believe it. They'll say, I just don't know. How is it that we teach the scripture
through the scripture? We teach the scripture. I can't
tell you. I mean, I've referred to Romans
and Galatians and Ephesians. I've quoted out of 1st and 2nd
Peter already this morning. I've quoted out of Colossians
today and Hebrews chapter 1 and chapter 6. I mean there's a lot of things
that I've said with my mouth today that come from the whole
of Scripture considering the New Testament. I just didn't
reference it because honestly my brain can't remember where
all these things are. But the gospel stands on the
promises of God and it is all of grace, which means that it
is applied to us, it is given to us, we are understanding it,
we are apprehending it, and we rest in it because of the work
of God. So evangelism is not our labor. except that we proclaim
what God has already said, revealed in his word, and then God does
the saving. I don't even like that word.
For those of you who follow my theology on call, you know I
don't like that. When were you saved? It's a whole other conversation. Saving faith, okay. We know what
it means, maybe, but most of us are all confused. But when
we were born again, when we came to the knowledge of the truth,
this is all a work of God. And it is not because we debated. It is not because we argued. You know where the debates come
from? You know where the debate should be? Amongst brothers and
sisters in the faith who are secure in the grace of God. And
they should never take precedence over our service to one another.
We don't have time to sit around and chit chat about doctrine
and theology. We need to be learning the word
of God by doing the word of God. You hear me? Where do you get
that? Every single letter in the New
Testament every time. Here's some things you've messed
up, learn this, now go do this. You see, what is the do this?
Love one another and serve one another and teach one another.
So as we're teaching and doing, but that's not what it looks
like in our culture is it? We want to argue outside the
camp. We want to debate. How about
we encourage and learn and glean as we are together in the faith. The problem is people like to
not take their cues from the scripture. They don't want to
hear everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been
born of God And the very next thing, and everyone who has been
born of Him loves those who have been born of Him. And everyone
who loves those who have been born of Him is because we know
that we're loving those who have been born of Him because we love
God by obeying His commandments. What commandments? Oh, Lord,
help us, please. Don't just leave us like that.
The love the Lord your God and each other. Those commandments. Those are the only two commandments
John's talking about in here. The only two. That's the only
two. And then he gives us something
we should do. How should we apply this teaching? When does this
stuff come up? Every single day. How? When we're
talking about the Bible and discussion theology, or having a Bible study,
or having a class, or having lunch, or going outside working,
or whatever it may be. And in the context of our lives,
we come to the place where these conversations take place. And when we want to say we're
loving God, we keep his commandments, and the commandments are not
burdensome. That was last week's sermon. It's not burdensome. It's not
a heavy weight to carry. It's not a heavy weight to carry
to trust in the sovereignty of God and his promises for his
people. It's not a heavy weight to carry to trust in the promises
of God by grace alone, that if we love him, we'll love his people.
It's not a heavy weight to carry. to just be concerned about the
context of the local assembly of saints. And to love our enemies. I'm gonna get on to myself and
others. We need to stop finding it funny when people are mocked
in the world. I'm just gonna say that. It's
not funny for people to be mocked. It's not funny ever for unbelief
to be mocked. It is not funny when someone
is reprobate. It is not funny when someone
is mocked. And that's one of the reasons
that the world outside looks at the church as just so hypocritical. Let's quit. If it is not encouragement
to the saints, don't say it. Don't share it. It's not loving. His commandments
are not burdensome. What is burdensome is the flesh.
What is burdensome is to try to establish God's promises for
ourselves. What is burdensome is to listen
to what the world says. So now we're back to the world's
promises. That's really where I wanted to go. The world's promises,
we know what God's promise is. Now the world's promises are
what? Everything. Everything. When Jesus was baptized
and went into the wilderness, remember? What was one of the ways in which
the enemy tempted Jesus? He took him out over a cliff
and he could look out above all the land. And the deceiver said to the
Christ, you see all that? I give everything out there.
Everything can be yours if you just bow down and worship me. And Jesus, being God, could have
just gone and blown him into annihilation. And that would
have been the end of the movie. Yay, the heroes win. No sequel. But he didn't. The Word of God
says. See this? You're hungry. Take
this stone, turn it to bread, eat it, and be on your way. The
Word of God says. So Jesus, in His humanity, subjected
Himself to the promises and to the power of the Word of God.
and was not overcome by the promises of the world which are not from
God. So if the promises are not from
God, where are they from? They're from the deceiver. And
if they're from the deceiver and all he does is lie, then
they're lies. Now we know what that looks like
in the worldly context, but what about the spiritual context?
See, this is where the church needs to pay close attention.
In Ephesians chapter six, if Paul was smarter, he'd have put
Ephesians six at the front. That's a joke. It's inspired
because we're supposed to read the letter in one sitting and
then go, oh my goodness, I can never ever. Here's the gospel
of free and sovereign grace. Here's the power of God unto
salvation, his electing grace, his eternal grace. Here's his
love. Here's what he's done. Here's how it looks. Here's how
it does in comparison of the Jews and the Gentiles. We're
all one body. The hostility has been crushed
in the body of Christ. Therefore, I'm gonna tell you right now,
I'm praying and you'll understand the depth and the height and
the width and the breadth of the love of God and with all
the saints you'll rejoice and the power of God is able to do
far more than we could ever think or understand or even ask for
and therefore now I want you to think about these things.
Don't say like this, don't talk like this, don't act like this,
don't look like this, don't live like this because you're supposed
to be growing up each other in mutual affection and unity into
the head and the maturity of Jesus Christ. We're supposed
to put away these things because the unbelievers live like this.
Why would we? And so on and so forth. And the
relationships with the church are the most important relationships
that you'll ever have. So husbands love your wives,
wives subject yourself to the husband, church submit to each
other, and then children, and then slaves, and then so on and
so forth. And then we're sitting there with our mouth agape and
our heartbeat going, and we're wondering how in the world are
we ever gonna live up to all this? And he says, remember, beloved,
you don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against every
power and principality in the heavenly places. That's why he says it. That's why I said it should have
been first. Let him get off the hook, man, before you give it
to him. But it's supposed to be read in one time. And that's the point. The spiritual
promises of the enemy look pretty good. It looks pretty good. I mean, you look at the history.
Look at the history of Protestantism. Look at the history of Evangelicalism.
Look at the history of missions. The history of church planning.
You know what the promises of the devil are? This model. This opportunity. This missions
project. He just saws right into the promises
of God and he sticks it right in there. Sticks it right in
there and makes it look like it's something that God has promised.
God has not promised these things. Everybody wants to be this grand,
grandiose, awesome, open air preacher or evangelist or missionary
or pastor or theologian or author. Nobody wants to be the plain
old mundane, nobody's heard of you, guy down in the middle of
nowhere, loving his family and loving his church and living
according to the promises of God. The lie and the promise of the
devil is if you do this, I will fill the church up and we call
it the Lord's work. Butts in the seats are not blessings. if they've not assembled together
in unity under the function and the power of God's purposes for
His church. I want you to hear that, beloved.
Remember, this pulpit exists to prepare you to do the work
of the ministry, to correct and instruct and rebuke and train
in righteousness and to establish intimacy that is ridiculous to
the world's eyes. And the Tower of Babel was built
by well-meaning people to say, okay, God isn't that far away. I can see the cloud. See that
ridiculous view of where heaven is? Heaven ain't that far out
of touch. And I'm not saying the Wright
brothers thought this, but I mean, you know, you could hear them
saying something like that. We'll fly out there and see how Jesus is doing. I won't bore you with the invention
of the rocket and aerospace and NASA and all that kind of awesome
stuff for some of us. But I mean, imagine, I guarantee
you, there were some people who stood there and felt almost as
if they were about to touch the face of God. There's a lot of promises. What's
that got to do with spiritual things? Because that's what that
is. That's what that is. That's the spiritual idea of
I can approach God in my own way. I can be God in my own way. I can be like God in my own way.
I don't even believe in God anymore because look at what I can do.
Beloved, that is the pulse of most congregations. Look what I can do. Look what
we have done. Look at the number of baptisms.
So what? God baptizes everybody at one
time when it rains. Whoop-de-doo. Whoop-de-doo. It's not about
the numbers. It's not about the programs.
It's not about the things. And I don't want to get on that
stuff. I'm just giving you an example. I'm over here in John 17. How
did I get there? I'm giving you an example of the promises of
the enemy, of the deceiver. There are lies. Friends, we can't
fall for these things. We must understand the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ. His work and His commandments
to us are not burdensome. I was told sometime in the early
2000s that if I was not having fun in ministry, I should probably
quit it. I was offended at the same time
there was an incredible truth in that because I hated what
we were doing. Because it usurped the very thing
that we were called to do. You ever been there? You ever been as a parent and
you had so much stuff you had to do that you couldn't do what
you should do? As a spouse, that's the way of the world. It's the way of the world, you
gotta go do this, you gotta go do it now. Where in the word
of God have we been called to do all these things? And so the only way that the
church of the world, that the secular church has known to answer
that question is to create things that satisfies to a certain degree
the ingenuity of the American dream in the context of spiritual
spheres. And we call it good when the
Lord would call it evil. And that's just spiritual things.
What about physical things? I mean, how many times have we seen deceit
in the context of the world promising spiritually physical things? I remember a man told me back
in 1995 that if I were ever going to be productive for the work
of the Lord, I had to have passive income. And I signed up in this
network marketing scam. And then I went bankrupt. And
I had a whole house full of water filters. You want one? I believe that lie. I believed
it. You know what? That's a good
idea. If I had freedom from having to work so hard, I could probably,
wow, that'd be great. 30 days later. Where's he at again? What am
I going to do with all these water filters? I mean, you know how
it goes. Oh, or worse. Hey, you know what? If you had
enough faith, if you give money to the Lord, He'll triple it
and give it back to you. Like a magic bag. Like the guy
at my eighth birthday party. Put a quarter in, makes a dollar.
Woo! Can you hold that bag for a second? I got a piggy bank.
Oh, no, no, no. It only works once a day. Well,
you're an idiot to put a quarter in there. Put a hundred in there,
man. What's wrong with you? That's the world. That's the
promise. Oh, you know what? Let's pick
and choose verses that make us look like we're going to get
rich. Physical. How about health? Physical health. The day you were born, the very
next second, you got closer to your death. Now, I know philosophically that
doesn't feel too good. Well, genetically, you know,
we're not in a decline. Don't give me that mess. You're closer
to death the day you were born. And every day you live, death
is not equated by an age, state, condition, location. Death is
equated by the day that God has numbered you and your life. And somewhere there's this magic
formula that the enemy has said, if you had enough faith, if you
do enough things, that there'll be a blessing for you. And there's
hundreds of different labels and hundreds of different denominations
and everywhere you look and it just feeds into things and it
deceives the very elect of God for a season. And we move away. We see the same thing in the
context of other aspects, like church and ministry. I remember being told one time,
if you have these particular skills, if you work on these
skills, James, you'll go far. Work on these skills. So I dumped
my entire tool books out and just worked on those to my demise,
you see. I wanted to go far in the work
of the Lord. Is that not a good and honorable
desire? Yes, but the promises of God
for His work are simple. The promises of God for His work
are, you be faithful to read my word. I'll be faithful to
show you through it. You be faithful to listen to
what I teach you as I show you, and I'll be faithful to bring
the reward and the fruit. And the reward and the fruit
that you get from your lemon tree may be two lemons a year,
and the reward and the fruit that somebody else that I work
through might be an orchard. But it's my fruit. It's my yield,
the Lord says. That's what his word says. He
wasn't talking to me like this. That's another problem. the promise of knowledge, the
promise of wisdom, the promise of power. Look what you could do if you
had this place of authority. Look at what you could do. That's
why it's so appealing to so many people when we get this glimpse
of a successful millionaire or an actor, actress, or what are
those other people called, musicians or whatever, or politician, famous
person. and they supposedly come to faith
and then everybody's excited. I know what we're gonna do, we're
gonna start an evangelistic movie company. Please don't. We've
got enough of those that stink to high heaven. Bad acting, bad
movies, bad writing, bad plot, bad cinematography. The best
thing about those movies are the credits. Because it's over. Oh no, we're going to do something
great for the Lord. You know what? Why don't you do a great
movie without putting the Lord in it? Oh, that was a good movie.
Look at the Hallmark Channel and get your motivation. If you
want to get depressed, look at the Lifetime Channel and get
your motivation. I mean, we don't need this stuff,
but the enemy promises it, y'all. The enemy promises all sorts
of things, but the Lord's promises are yes. The Lord's promises
are so it is. It shall be. Amen. And so when we see this phrase
about overcoming the world, we need to have these things in
mind. That's the point of me doing this this morning. We need
to have these things in mind so that we understand that it's
not just about the temptation to sin, to do sinful things,
to engage in sinful thoughts. It includes, and I believe for
the body of Christ moreover, the idea that there is something
else that we must be doing and should be doing or could be doing
for the sake of the Lord and His Word. We need to rest as we have learned
and been taught and given the faith to rest in the finished
work of Christ. We need to also rest in our growth
and understanding of the continued work of Christ's people. And
this is completely counterintuitive. It's like my friends who fly
who tell me stories about when they're training pilots And they
put the thing into a nosedive and it's spinning out of control
that the way you get out of that is to push down into the ground
as if you want to crash the plane. Counterintuitive. I'd be like
pulling up, break the stick off. Let's go up, up, up. No, push
it. You're the pilot. That's why
I don't fly with them. I don't think that's funny. Counterintuitive to breathe underwater
when you're studying for your scuba. It's counterintuitive. You ever put a scuba tank on?
I did, and it didn't go well. So I started out with snorkeling,
and I never graduated. When I'm underwater, I hold my
breath. That's the common sense thing
to do. Not breathing. I just can't not do it psychologically.
No. At 30 feet, I'm not sucking my
lungs into. Just can't do it. So, no scuba
for me. It's counterintuitive for us
to think we need to rest and serve and be gentle and be patient
and to love each other. It's counterintuitive to trust
the promises of God. It's counterintuitive. That is
why the body as we assemble should encourage one another to these
things, to encourage one another not to forsake the gathering
together as some are in the accustomed of doing. Why? Because in the
gathering is when we truly begin to have opportunity to serve.
And that's why it's been so difficult over the last eight to ten months.
One of the most difficult seasons of ministry, despite the fact
I've had death threats and all sorts of things, those are easy
to handle. They're worldly issues. But the spiritual issues, the
promises of God, the way we do what we do, is just counterintuitive
to the world. But beloved, the world cannot
overcome us. In the very beginning of John's
Gospel, we see this incredible thing. that is promised to us,
establishing Jesus Christ as a living word that created the
entire world, who is God, and who is with God the Father, who
became flesh as God the Son became flesh. Let me say that better. The Word, who is God, who is
all God, who is with God the Father, who is also eternally
God the Son, who became flesh. He didn't become God the Son
when He became flesh. He is eternally God the Son. He became flesh
and He dwelt among us. And it says there, in Him was
life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines
in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome. The world and everything in it,
everything that we are supposed to understand about it is passing
away. What remains of Grace Truth Church
at the end of days? What remains? We do. The glory of God does. The crown
of righteousness does. The Word And the life that we
live together for that purpose remains. Everything else is just
washed. Everything else is burned away.
It doesn't matter. What about my life? What about
my family? What about my job? As unto the Lord, for the sake
of His name, for the sake of the service of His people. You see that? Praise God we're not going to
have to work to make a living in eternity. Praise God there's
not going to be hundreds of poor people working for a few rich
people making them richer while they can't eat. Praise God we're
not going to have famine and sorrow and suffering and death.
Praise God we're not going to have to worry about maintenance.
That is my nightmare, maintenance. It's all I think about. Maintenance,
maintenance, maintenance. Every time I stop for just a
moment and think about what I have to do, there's always something
to fix, to clean, to overcome, to destroy, to build. It's constant
and it's compounding over the last six to eight weeks for me.
No more of that. So that even when these small
seasons, we can go to the Word of God and we can believe what
the promise of God is here, is that our faith in Jesus Christ,
why? He has overcome the world so
that those who are the believing ones have overcome the world. And when we take this scripture
out of context, We can make it apply to certain aspects of our
lives. We can make it apply to our health
or to our minds or to our finances. Beloved, we are promised suffering.
Might as well get that into our thick skulls. And when we suffer, we ought
to rejoice saying, wow, we are walking in the footsteps of Christ
in the context of our suffering. Praise be to God. Overcoming the world. is when
we look at the world, because this is the way we look, and
I was going to leave it right here for today. We look at the world,
and we look at the religious of the world, and we look at
the church of the world, and we look at the unbelievers of the world,
and we look at the promises of the world, we look at the elite
of the world, we look at the problems of the world, and we all want
to have a hand in it somewhere, but there's one thing, there's
one root that really flows through our hearts, and that is covetousness. We covet the idea that we wish
we could do more to help ease the suffering of the world, when
really God may only let us do that for about two or three people
in our lifetime. We covet the fact that many people
have done well, or do better than we are, or have better health
than we do, or have better relationships than we do, or don't have to
suffer the way, but friends, for the unbelievers of the world,
this is it. For us, we know that there's a better and an abiding
possession, the promises of God, and a better and abiding possession. And we think that death is the
hardest thing to deal with, but death is one of the most normative
things that life has to offer. Death comes for all of us. And I've gotten to the point
lately where it doesn't even, I have lost so many friends in
the last 10 months, more than in the totality of my life. People that I know who have died
in the last 10 months over the entirety of my life almost. It's unbelievable how normative death can be. But for me, beloved, don't weep for me. Because death is what I'm living
for. I want you to think about it
for a second. Now this is philosophical. Oh, what is he talking about?
To live is Christ. To die is far better. That's what Paul says. They changed
the word to gain. But he says far better. To die
is far better. Why? Because we receive everything
that's promised to us. We get to get away from all of
this and to sit peacefully at the feet of our Savior forever
awaiting You poor souls who are still in the rat race unto the
glory of Christ. And I have great patience for
that because in this life, it is not my life to live, it is
not your life to live, but we might live this life so that
we might serve the body. That we might live according
to the promises of God. So Christ has overcome the world. Everything in the world is passing
away. He has defeated it. He is the conqueror of it. He
is the God over it. He is the Lord that commands
it. And He is bringing us to Himself. And we believe He has already
established us in Himself. We are in Christ. So it's not
I who live but Christ who lives within me. So resting is not in overcoming
the world by faith. It's not resting knowing it's
all going to get better. It's resting knowing this is
nothing. This is nothing. Did you hear that? This life
is nothing in comparison to what I've got coming. Nothing. And that's the hope. Who is this conqueror? You are. Christ is the conqueror and you
are the conqueror because you are in Christ and you believe
in Christ and you believe He has conquered the world. So nothing,
you ever heard that out of context? No weapon formed against me shall
stand. I bet there are many of zealots
that say that right before the sword took their head. And the
people out there mocked Well, that one didn't. That one worked.
Or the firing squad. Or the torch. No weapon formed
against me shall stand. Oh, yeah? And everybody's like,
ha! Stupid fool. He wasn't a stupid
fool. These aren't stupid fools. They
know it doesn't mean that you're not going to be killed by the
sword, or hurt by the disease, or destroyed by the economy,
or ruined by the nation. These aren't weapons. These are
toys in the hands of a sovereign God. For the sake of His name,
He uses all these toys for the purpose of good for us who know
Him and love Him and are called according to His purpose to the
praise of His glorious grace because of the One who came to
set us free. Rest in Him, beloved. Father, thank you for allowing
your word to show us. Culmination of encouragement
and exposition, Lord, that we might grow to see and to understand. Father, thank you for the frailty
of our hearts and minds. Because only in the frailty and
only in our weakness are you our strength. So, Lord, please
don't establish us as strong Don't let us put faith in our
faith, but forever as meek and lowly, scared, timid sheep, help
us to be bold before the throne of grace as we stand firm and
upright to look you in your eyes and know that we are your children
and that there is nothing this world can do that does not deliver
us straight into your hands. So Father, drive us to the truth
of Christ and to the word and to his people. Drive us to one
another in the gospel and let us be patient. Let us put aside
all the things of this world, the idols that are so easily
distracting us. Help us to just joyfully rest
in Jesus Christ alone who is our Savior as the Lamb of God
and who is our King as Almighty God. Amen.