Lord is indeed the people of
his pasture, are indeed the people of his pasture. We are not coming
today to be where God is. We are together as God is in
us and with us. And so it is always good to come
together as the church. We're going to move into John
chapter 16 today, and in this particular place where Jesus
has already been talking about God the Holy Spirit, we see some
further instruction. Now, as a way of warning, as
we get started, for those of you who understand higher criticism
and theological depth and academic Christianity, there are many,
many, many things that come from this text that are very debated,
that are very frustrating, that are somewhat, I believe, frivolous. But then again, nothing is frivolous
to be ignored if it is about the person of Jesus. And so what
I want to do over these few weeks is to make sure that I stay true
to the text of scripture and not infer that which is not obvious,
but take it as it is intended to be understood as John's original
hearers would have read it and grasped it, realizing the whole
that it is God, the Holy Spirit himself who teaches us this stuff. And so we don't see doctrine
here. Is doctrine there? Yes, learning and teaching is
definitely here because Jesus is teaching in a doctrinal sense. He's teaching his disciples,
but what he's doing there is so much different than how we
absorb and understand doctrine. Trey and I have had conversations
over the last week about narratives and how difficult it is to preach
a gospel. It's difficult to preach, you know, and then Jesus said
this and then John said this and then Paul said this and then
Peter said this. And, you know, you see the narratives
and you think, well, what is the point? What is what are we
supposed to learn from this? Are we supposed to emulate the
lives of these people sometimes? But it's not the reason it's
there. The reason it's there is that through it all, we can
see the ineffable glory of God, who is Jesus Christ, the son.
Who is the creator of all things, that through him, all things
were made and by Him all things were made and more importantly
for Him all things were made and that even in the creation
of the world all things exist for the sake of His glory that
He is glorified to the praise of His glorious grace so that
His people stand and worship Him. I like the songs that were selected
this morning as very fitting for the context of what we're
learning but this isn't the first time we've heard about the Holy
Spirit We see the Holy Spirit in John 1. We see the Holy Spirit
in John 2. We see the Holy Spirit in John
3. We see God the Holy Spirit in every aspect of this teaching,
especially as the Spirit is the undercurrent of the truth. And that without God the Spirit,
no man will see. Without God the Spirit, no man
will believe. No one would come to recognize
Jesus for who He really is. No one would have confident assurance,
which is faith in the fact that Christ alone is our hope. No
one would be able to exercise any type of command to say, I
know that I belong to the Lord without the Holy Spirit. Now,
can we fool ourselves? Can we pretend? Can we put on
a mask? Absolutely. But true assurance. True assurance. The way our flesh works against
our assurance is sometimes that we feel not saved. And that is
when we lie to ourselves. Because our assurance is not
on what we feel or what we experience or what we hope for that very
moment, but our assurance is in the faithfulness of Jesus
Christ and in His faithfulness we hope. Even if it is only the
most minute portion of our soul, it is faith. in the perfection
of Jesus, faith in the work of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the
one who brings to life his people, the elect of God, the chosen
of God, the beloved of God, the children of God before the foundation
of the world that he elected in his creative work, which is
inclusive of redemption because that's the point of creation.
Redemption. We see that Jesus tells Nicodemus
that the spirit blows where he wishes. And that only by the
Spirit blowing can a man see the kingdom. Only by the Spirit
waking him up and making him alive. One of the lyrics that
we just sang is paraphrasing, Spirit do something in my willing
heart. You remember that? And I think
to myself, how amazing is that, to the praise of His glorious
grace, that my heart desires the work of God in it. Unbelievers
cannot desire that. Unregenerate people cannot desire
the work of the Lord. Only the children of God can
desire God. And only the children of God
can see and recognize and believe the God of Scripture. For man
has forever, since the foundation of the world, orchestrated a
caricature of God that is not conducive with what the Bible
reveals. It is the very thing that we
have been seeing in the Gospel of John that the highest of religion,
those who have had the oracle of God for millennia, refuse
the revelation of God directly. They refuse to hear who Christ
is. They refuse to know the God that
reveals Himself through the Son. They have chosen in their own
hearts their God. They have accepted their Jesus
into their lives, into their hearts, into their world. And yet it is not even close
to the truth. The Holy Spirit, we've seen already
in chapter 15, And 14, the Holy Spirit is the helper. He is the
one that comes alongside. He is God. He is not a force.
He is a person. As we'll see today, Jesus calls
him he him. The Holy Spirit is God, one of
the three persons of God. And the Holy Spirit is the only
presence of God we have this day. This is God with us, this
is God in us, this is us in Him. And so, I want you to recognize
that as we go through this, you are going to hear things in just
the reading of John 16, that you're going to say, oh yeah,
I understand that, and this is what that means, and this is what that
means, and that is what that means, and you're going to have a history
of your theology of the Holy Spirit, and you're going to hold
and start to interpret this text based on that foundation. But I want to encourage you,
beloved, to listen to the word of the Lord in context. What Jesus is doing here is not
teaching something new that he hasn't already taught, but it's
reestablishing and affirming and recapitulating the reality
of God, the spirit as God. With several identifiers. Several
labels, several attributes that are identical to himself. Now, I know in some of this.
Some of this doctrinal thing, some of this theological arguments,
some of you are deeply invested. But I would encourage you to
divest. In that. To sell those stocks and to sell
those shares at a loss. And to truly see what the scripture
is teaching. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, would you open our hearts to your word? Would you open
our minds to your word? That your spirit in us would
guide us to all truth, would teach us truth. And Father, that
we would not, even when we are mocked for the simplistic gospel,
that we would hold fast because it is the truth. We don't care. what people think and say, help
us to set aside how men view us, but help us to be resting
in how you view us. For you have finished the work
to justify your picture of us because our sins are paid for
in Jesus. Your wrath is satisfied and your
spirit is ours. And we thank you and pray these
things in the name of Christ. Amen. Last week we talked at
the latter part of John 15. We saw that the world would hate
the church. The world will hate those who
believe in the free and sovereign grace gospel. The world here,
as we identified last week, were the religious leaders of Jesus'
day. were those who would be considered
today as prominent evangelicals, prominent Christians, prominent
teachers, prominent theologians. This is not a new epiphany. This
is not an epiphany for me, but it's something that I've held
to for many, many years. But I've always found it extremely
troubling that men who are called supposedly by the Lord go to
school, and the people who are teaching them in school have
never been called by the Lord to shepherd God's people. It would be akin to medical school
and not having one doctor on the faculty. Not having one surgeon. I got a book and I learned how
it works and just follow my instructions and cut that guy open. Let's
see how it pans out. When it comes to the faith, you
cannot become an expert academically. Because the more and the more
and the more and the more your mind grows as an expert, the
less your heart rejoices in the truth. And that is where the Pharisees
had become. They were the professors, the
doctors, The teachers, and they knew what they knew, and they
were telling the world how to get to God. They were looking for Messiah.
They were longing for the Christ. And when He appeared, they spat
upon Him. So therefore, they're guilty
of sin, of hating God. Verse 26 of chapter 15. That
was sort of review. But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from
the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father,
He will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness,
because you have been with me from the beginning. I have said
all these things to you to keep you from falling away They will
put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when
whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.
And they will do these things because they have not known the
Father, nor me. But I have said these things
to you that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told
them to you." Now, I'm going to probably get there in our
conversation this morning. I could go to 30 other places. I could open up several other
texts of scripture. I could show proof text after
proof text after proof text about the Holy Spirit. I could deal
with all of the doctrine of pneumatology. But that's not what Jesus is
doing here. And that's not what we should
do. For the sake of the gathering, the compulsory gathering of the
saints, what we would call the church, the point of this text
is for us to be encouraged to see, as James would say, don't
consider it odd when you face the fiery trials. What Peter
would say to his fellow Hebrews, and Peter both wrote to Jewish
Christians, You're going to suffer trials. You're going to die for
the faith. You're going to be persecuted.
You're going to be put out of the synagogue. Do you understand
the significance of that? This isn't, man, my boss didn't
give me a raise because I'm a believer. My neighbor throws trash in my
yard because I'm a believer. My best friend doesn't hang out
and play basketball with me anymore because I'm a believer. I'm not
making light of that suffering, but wah. Man, it's not really that bad. It hurts. Emotionally, it may be the hardest
thing we've ever dealt with. To have persecution from those
who we thought were our friends, who we thought were our brothers
and sisters in the faith. Family that no longer cares to
have us around because they don't want to engage in any type of
conversation that they instigate. It's always funny, isn't it?
It's not like we show up to a family gathering and James just walks
in and says, Hey everybody, I know you're all watching the ball
game. Can you shut this crap off so I can talk about Jesus and how
you're all wrong? How about I just pretend like
I like football for a few minutes, but they can't stand it. So James, I heard your sermon
last week. Care to give light on why you
believe that? I'm glad you asked. I was hoping
you wouldn't. Isn't that the truth? We're not
instigators, we're not protagonists, we're not coming in to just burn
everybody. They can't stand it. They can't stand it. They'd much
rather us be criminals than true Christians. And these 11 men who were now
true Christians were now because of that criminals. They were criminals because in
a society of laws, if someone's a criminal, we have justification
to say, see, I told you so. That's why when a believer fails
morally, publicly. It's almost like a parade. And
it's not the unbelievers of the world who throw it. It's the
religious people who throw it. See, I told you. These doctrinal
guys, man, look at all those people preaching the Bible. Like a meme that I was sent last
night. How are we going to reach these millennials? In this church group gathered
leadership meeting, one person says, well, let's do this or
such and such, and I can't remember exactly what they were. Well,
let's have this. Let's throw a party. Let's feed
them. Let's do this. Somebody says, how about we teach them
the Bible, and they throw them out the six-story window. That's
a cartoon. And that's exactly what it is
like in our culture. When we hold fast to the authority
and the sufficiency. And the efficacy of the Bible. Would you believe me if I told
you this day that I have a thorn in my flesh and I won't mention
his name? And that anytime I say something
like what I just said, he comes alongside and just sort of like
tries to put the fire out. You're a Bible worshiper. You
ever been accused of being a Bible worshiper? Oh, you believe a
book written by a man? And this is a believer. You gotta grow up. You gotta grow up. You got to
get away from the Bible. You got to learn that things
change. This old book, it's not worth spending so much time on.
People need something different. No, they don't. The world that
hates the gospel, they don't want to hear it. But yet there's
something in them that think, well, you know, culturally speaking,
if I'm a Christian, I can hold to this Bible loosely. And the
funny thing about it is those loose holding Bible guys will
say, I believe the Bible and everything in it. That's what
the Jews said. That's what the Israelites thought
of their leaders. That's what the Pharisees were.
They were the Bible thumpers. They were the heady, holy examples
of God's elect. Yet Jesus calls them time and
time again. We see in the synoptics and even in John's gospel, we
see them called dogs and snakes, vipers, whitewashed tombs, the
sons of Satan, the worshipers of the devil. The sons of iniquity. Vessels of destruction. Now,
what must that be like for the culture at large to be completely
somewhat, let's just use the word, religious in a Christian
type way, because they were looking for the Christ, were they not?
And then all of a sudden, everybody who was anybody in the leadership
of that particular forum began to call the very ones who were
following the Christ a cult, criminalizing them. What happens when that takes
place? Well, the world and everybody in it, and the religious of the
world, and they all take note. They go, okay, well, these are
the leaders of the church, and they're saying that these people
are wrong, so there must be wrong. Even when someone sets a fire,
people will stop to watch it burn. So if we proclaim the gospel
even on the pyre of death, people will hear it if they're the elect,
and they will know. These disciples were scared to
death in their flesh. They were horrified of what would
happen to them. They had given up everything. They had lost
everything. I often imagine what it would
have been like for them to, like if I were Jesus, just give them
about three months to fish. How profitable would their business
have been? I don't think people would have purchased from them.
Because once you're out of the synagogue, you're through. Jesus is saying you can be my
friend and you're my friend if you listen to what I say and
follow these instructions. And I want you to love one another
as I've loved you. I want you to be humble as I'm
showing you humility. I want you to do, have in your
heart, the things that emulate what I've done for you because
of what I've done for you. And you're not going to be able
to perform these. You're not going to be able to
stand to the measure of my expectation. You can never do these things.
But the helper will keep you in the faith and the spirit of
God that comes because I am going to the father is going to supply
all your needs. Now I wish the Holy Spirit operated
this way. I wish God would do this in my
life this way. I wish that I would never doubt,
never be frustrated, never have anger, never have ill feelings
toward anyone, that the Holy Spirit would just continually
infuse me like a fire hydrant IV of holy love. I'd be the most annoying person
on two legs, I can promise you. I wish that's the way it was.
But he doesn't because he's infinitely wise and he does as he pleases
when he pleases, not just in salvation or regeneration, but
in all the parts of living out our lives together. Some of you
are struggling with sins that you will struggle with until
you're 90 years old or older. And some of you have been liberated
from incredible wickedness. And the Lord's will. Rest in
the sovereignty of the righteousness of Christ. These disciples had problems. And Jesus says the helper is
coming, the partner is coming, the spirit is coming, the one
that comes alongside, the replacement is coming. I'm leaving and the
spirit is coming. As if we're not careful in our
Trinitarian doctrine or our Trinitarian view, we'll start to separate
God and dissect Him as three little gods working together
for one big God. Triune means three in one. There
is only one God. God meaning the highest of all
things. That's what the word God means.
It's not a name. It means the highest of all things
in any language. So if there's anything above
the being that takes the title God, then that's God. Because there's no equal playing
when it comes to God. But as the one true highest of
all things, He is three persons. Eternally God the Son. Eternally
God the Father. Eternally God the Holy Spirit. And Jesus is saying that the
helper will come in the midst of your hatred or being hated
by the religious of your day. When you think you would find
camaraderie, you will not find camaraderie. You will find hatred. And I don't know about you, beloved,
but it is probably the one constant in my life when it comes to the
world. It's the one constant. I got a very encouraging message
last week, and I think I'm going to print it out 50 times and
just pin it all over the house. Why? Because if I get one of
those, I get 50 bad ones. And I've told you all before
how I keep that stuff. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
I keep the letters. I keep the cards. I love when
someone spends $5 on a Hallmark card to rebuke me inside. It's
just perfect. I'm thinking, what an investment. May the joy of
the Lord be yours always, your beloved sister, some psalm that's
about rejoicing. You stink, you're wrong, I'm
praying against you. Like, you bought this for your
mom, but were so angry you gave it to me. I appreciate that,
yeah? But you save those things. Why? Because if we're all honest,
none of us want to suffer. I mean, if you want to suffer
right now, you just go, I cannot wait. I got up yesterday and I just
was so upset because I didn't suffer. We need to talk. Because I've got some referrals
to give you. Need to talk to somebody. That's
just not our joy. But when we recognize the promise,
in the last, what, seven, eight sermons, we've seen Jesus talking
to these disciples at the Last Supper. And one thing that has
been centered, and I'm a terrible what do you want to call it?
Homiletics is not my thing. I don't care about proper communication,
and I don't care about three points and an illustration. It
doesn't matter. The Bible should not be taught
that way from the pulpit. Classroom? Maybe, maybe. I don't think so. But One of
the center things, as I look back, is intimacy with Christ.
Everything that we've learned in chapter 14, 15, and now 16
is about our intimacy with Christ. We are intimate with Christ because
of His everlasting work of salvation. He gave His body and His blood
for our redemption. This is a plan before the foundation
of the world that God the Father has decreed and a covenant that
He has made with Himself, with His Son, with the Spirit. and
met all the conditions so that we are his righteousness. This is the reality of the good
news of Jesus Christ. And because of that, we have
intimacy with God, which is intimacy with Jesus. And we have intimacy
with Jesus because of his death. We have intimacy with Jesus because
of his promise. We have intimacy with Jesus because
he is the light of the life of man. We have intimacy with Jesus
because we can pray, and in prayer, in the word, in the scriptures,
through the apostles, with each other as the assembly. We have
intimacy with Jesus in many ways because we have his love, we
have his peace, we have his mind. And last week we saw we have
intimacy with Jesus and that as He suffered, we also shall
suffer. If we are His and He is hated, those that hate Him
will hate us. And the ones who hate Him the most are the ones
who love themselves the most and the ones who love their religion
the most. I found it more favorable in my lifetime, and albeit I
had a little over five years to experience this, But I found
it more favorable to sit down with a Muslim and talk about
the New Testament than I did an evangelical. Because by their
own tenets of Islam, they must learn the New Testament. So they would show up to our
church services on Sunday nights. Because I had open Q&A with the
Bible. It was more favorable. Because the religious of the
world. Who hate the gospel, they seem to love the Bible, but they
seem to love some tenant of Jesus, they seem to love some caricature
of Jesus, they seem to some love some form of what God is, but
they don't love the form of God that is revealed in scripture. They utilize it, so they have,
here's the way it is, they have this imaginative God, imaginative
Jesus, imaginative spirit, and it's out there in the world of
their mind's eye. Here it is out there, and then
they find little tiny pretexts. little tiny pretext of scripture
that use the name Jesus, that use the word Lord, that use the
word Savior, that use the word Father and Spirit and God and
Lord and they take those little tiny sections that fit with their
ideal and then they apply them to that imaginative God. There's no context there. What
about you? Who is the Christ that you know?
I know I haven't gotten into this yet, but there's a point
to all this. Do you know the Christ that we
preach here from this pulpit? Do you know the Christ from John's
Gospel? Every jot and tittle. You don't get to choose. Well,
that's the Jesus I know, but this not. Do you know Christ
as He has declared of Himself? Or do you know the Christ of
your childhood? The Christ of your culture, the Christ of your
community, the Christ of your church, the Christ of your pastor,
the Christ of your parents or your grandparents, the Christ
of your summer camp experience, the Christ of your vacation Bible
school. Chances are, if you were to explain that to us and we
looked in the Bible, the Christ of those things are most likely
not the Christ of Scripture. And if it's not the Christ of
Scripture, then the God that you think you know is not the
God of Scripture. And there's only one other God, little G, that
we see in Scripture, and that is the devil, who, by everything
that he is, is endowed by God to be everything that he is.
And only when God is done with him will he be defeated. Well,
will he be destroyed? Will he stand in everlasting
judgment? Whatever word you want to use there. The helper comes. Verse 26, whom
I will send to you, listen, from the Father. What's important
with this statement? He calls him the Spirit of Truth,
and we've already talked about that. The Spirit of God teaches
truth. We'll see that over in John 17.
We'll see it really clearly. Y'all, there's a lot. There's
a lot that's about to come undone here. This is the last weekend
of Jesus' life. This is it. In less than 24 hours, he's dead. It'll take us a year to get through
it, won't it? The Spirit is coming. I've told
you this. I've promised him. He is coming. You will not be
orphaned. Remember that? Six weeks ago?
Five weeks ago? I will not leave you as orphans.
But when the helper comes, though you are hated, I will send to
you from the Father the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the
Father. He will bear witness about me. Now, did the disciples need an
extra dose of believing in Jesus? No. They didn't need more doctrine,
they didn't need more theology for them to make their quote
decision to believe that Jesus is who He says He was. It was
revealed to them by the Spirit that He is who He says He was. We're not looking for more apologetic
power. We're not looking for more evidence. You can't get saved by looking
at the evidence and making a decision. It's impossible. It's not possible to come and
hear someone say, OK, let me give you a logical explanation.
Let me give you a theological explanation. Let me give you
a little bit of evidence in this explanation. And now you see,
oh, you know what? That makes good sense. I do believe. Faith is what God gives us. concerning his testimony about
his son. And oh beloved, until that day
we're glorified, it's going to be a war. And the harder life is, deeper the battle goes. Whether
it be mental problems, emotional problems, physical problems,
financial problems, relational problems, parenting problems,
marital problems, whatever it might be, It's going to be a
war. You know, the easiest thing to
do in the midst of that war, the easiest thing for our flesh
to do is to back up and to retreat from the assembly. To say, well,
I'm too tired of my body, I'm too tired of my heart, too tired
of my flesh to come and be instructed and when we're done to have fellowship
around the truth. I'm too exhausted, the Lord understands,
but the Lord has promised you grace in the midst of those times
through the means of assembling with the saints and hearing the
scripture. And outside of that, you are not going to get one
promise of God. Not one to make it through. You
will not ever see God work in your circumstances if you forsake
His people and His Word. He will not do it, beloved, but
He will not lose you. We're not going to escape the
hatred of the world. We're not going to escape the
suffering of the world. We're not going to escape it
in the sense of it's never going to happen to us, but we will
never escape the love of God in Christ either. We will never
be left. We will never be abandoned. And
the Holy Spirit, whom the Son is sending, who proceeds from
the Father, will bear witness about me. Now, this is beautiful
right here. What's the hardest thing to do
in the midst of an all-out time bomb, explosive problem? Rejoice. And when I'm not joyful,
Maybe you're different. Maybe you should share with me
how you deal with things. But when I'm not joyful, I don't
care about much. I want to be grumpy. I want to
be focused on my problems. I want to self-pity. I want to
whine and moan and groan and complain inside. And I want everybody
around me to see my snarl and have pity on me. Then I'm going
to be mad at them for trying to patronize me. Sound familiar? Either it sounds
familiar because you're looking over my shoulder all the time
or it's because you feel the same way. The last thing I want to do is
undergird my faith. The last thing that my flesh
is thinking about is, you know what, James, you just need to
resolve and make a choice today to follow Jesus. As for me and my household, we
will serve the Lord. How does that work? You know,
I got that scripture on the mantle in my living room. What good
does it do? Nothing without God the Spirit.
Nothing. And the first and foremost thing
that God the Spirit does in the midst of all of this horror is
He testifies to us concerning the Son. It's that small voice
and sometimes that shouting trumpet. Remember whose you are. Remember what I've done. Remember
the things concerning my son. Remember, the spirit is yours. Isn't that
the way it comes? And how does that come? When
do we get that? When we vent to someone who has
it. When we show up in the midst of just complete disaster. And
we hear it. When we pick up the Bible, maybe
to move it away from the magazine to see what we're going to watch
on TV just to swallow our problems in a binge of Netflix ridiculousness. They got some crazy shows on
there. Or solitaire. We move the Bible out of the
way and we go, you know, I remember this now. I remember this now. This is
what it's all about for me to come and And remember, the Spirit
of God gives us the grace to remember. See, it's not a switch. We don't have our emergency glass
break. It's in the Lord's time, in the
Lord's will, through the means that He has promised, God will show
us Jesus. And if we do not know the true
Christ, then the Jesus that we look to is worthless. If we don't know God through
the trueness of the Son, as He has been revealed to us, then
everything that we strive for, even when we find the discipline
to go, can we get my Bible? And I'm gonna pray, and I'm gonna
call a brother or sister, and I'm gonna go to church, and I'm
not gonna let my guilt overwhelm me, I'm gonna stand firm in the
boldness of God's grace, I'm gonna be bold. But you don't
know the Christ, He's a worthless Christ. He'll massage your shoulders
until the next disaster. He'll keep you focused on unbelief. But that's not you, beloved.
But that's a majority of professing believers in the entire world. When the Spirit bears witness
about me, you will be revived. You will remember these things.
You will see me anew every moment. My mercy will be new for you.
And you will remember me because you know me. And because you
know me, you will proclaim me. And it will not be you and your
flesh and your discipline and your power. You're nothing special
when it comes to having the ability to do what I've called you to.
But oh, my children, I will see it through. Verse 27, and you
will bear witness. How? Because you've been with
me from the beginning. From the beginning of what? Henarche,
as we see in John's, from the beginning of time. Were the disciples
there in creation? No. Context. Context. Context.
From the beginning of his earthly ministry. Jesus was baptized. He called his disciples. They've
been with him for three and a half years. They've seen everything that
he's done. They've heard everything that he's said. They've doubted. They've
believed. They've doubted. They've believed. And one of
them through the whole time was the devil. Hated Jesus. Loved working for him. It had
a lot of benefits. But you will bear witness about
me. You've seen me. You know me. You've heard me.
And the helper will come and bear witness continually to you
about me. And then you will bear witness
again and you will be able to say, I have seen the Christ. I mean, Peter really establishes
that, doesn't he? We see Peter say, we're not coming
to you with cleverly devised myths. We're not coming to you with
a story that sort of works out through history. We didn't get
together in an upper room and figure all this out and, you
know, through all of these centuries, say, okay, here it is. No, but
the prophetic word, the prophetic word, the prophets, Isaiah, like
you heard this morning, the root of Jesse, We read Moses. You'd be well to pay attention,
Paul says to the Hebrews, to these things. Peter, the same
thing. We have the prophets. We have the truth of the scripture.
We see the promises of God. We know all the things concerning
the truth of righteousness in Jesus Christ. We know these things,
my beloved Jewish Christian friends, what Peter would say. But not only that, And I know
I'm doing reverse order. We've seen him. We've heard him. We have seen
God's glory, God has walked upon the earth. We have seen him in his fullness.
We know him. John, in his first epistle, sort
of elaborates on this, that which we have seen and heard, seen
with our eyes and heard the ears, touched with our hands, the eternal
life. So we have thousands of years
of prophets. Eleven plus one, Paul, who've
seen Christ. of the apostles and in 500 of
the brothers who saw him ascend. We saw him go to where he came
from. We saw him say what we understood what he meant when
he said to the Pharisees, what are you going to say of me when you see me
going back to where I came from? What do you do? I'll tell you
what you do if you are his and the Spirit of God has shown you,
you will see and you will behold and you will be like, wow, he
told the truth and I know. But if the Spirit of God has
not come to you and not woke you up and not called you to
life, you will look and say, well, he was telling the truth.
I don't care. Knowing that Jesus is God and
is creator and is the truth and is the way and is the life in
your mind is as much use as knowing Aramaic in South Georgia. They might even arrest you if
you talk like that around here. What do you say, boy? Come over here. These disciples have been with
Jesus from the beginning of His ministry, and they have been
bearing witness concerning Him. And even in their trials, the
Spirit of God will bear witness to them. And more importantly,
when we proclaim Christ from them, it is the Spirit that bears
witness to the souls of the elect. That is the power of salvation
to God's people. God the Holy Spirit will teach. truth through you. And that is
why we understand the promise. God's Word will not return to
him empty, void, but it will do that which it was intended
to do. Hebrews 4 teaches us that the Word of God is living and
breathing and sharper than any two-edged sword which cuts bone,
marrow, flesh. The Word of God cuts to the soul.
So when people don't believe as religious or as Christian
as they may confess to be, it is because they do not belong
to the Son. Did we honestly think that unbelievers
would be pagans? Atheists? Agnostics? Panentheists? Buddhists? No. Majority of unbelievers
think they're believers. The majority of our enemies are
those who confess to be our friends. And I've said these things to
you to keep you from falling away, Jesus says. Interesting. Why would they fall away? What
would cause you to fall away from the living God? Many things,
right? Especially if you think you're
answering the call of God. Especially if you think that,
you know, okay, here I am, God has saved me. You have the gospel
in your heart and in your mouth and you confess it and you profess
it and you proclaim it. And you're thinking, this is
the greatest thing that I've ever come to know as truth. And
you just go out there like a child with a new toy. Like a pauper with a million
dollar bill. Go try to open a bank account.
I don't know if y'all saw that news story or not. And you just want it. Who would
not like that story? Who would not want to hear about
life eternal? Who would not want to hear about
the absolute glory of God walking the earth and saving His people?
And so we begin to share it. We begin to expose it. We begin
to walk in a way of going, this is so exciting. Like, you know,
church planting. Everybody's going to be excited
about exposition. Everybody's going to be excited
about loving one another. Everybody's going to be excited
about forgiving one another because Christ has forgiven us. Everybody's
going to want to be a part of this. And what do they do? The people
who've never heard it, who don't confess it, man, they want to
hear what you've got to say. You know what? I didn't grow up in
church. I don't know anything about this. This sounds pretty
good. Let me let me hear more. The ones who are settled in their
state before the Lord falsely That ain't what we believe. Get
away from me. That would make you fall away. That would make you fall away
to think, what did I say wrong? What did I do wrong? Why didn't
I have the right answer? I've done something wrong. Now
they've rejected the truth. What is wrong with me? You ever
thought that way? You ever thought, you know, well
I messed up that conversation, I didn't share the Bible like
I should, I didn't share the gospel like I should, I didn't share
Christ like I should. You can't mess it up, beloved, as long
as you teach it rightly, as long as you speak true statements,
as long as you trust in the fact that God alone is going to cause
them to hear. If my oratory and my presentation
is what's necessary for you to learn, I should quit. I say all these things to you
to keep you from falling away. You're going to have it hard, beloved,
Jesus is saying, but you're not going to fall away. But I want
you to know, because I don't want you to run, I don't want
you to forsake the calling. What's the falling away? From
the call, not from Christ. I want you to be my friends.
I don't want you not to live as a friend. I don't want you
not to live as loving one another. I want you to show the world
that you love me. I want you to love each other
in the midst of the greatest persecution. I want you to stand
united under my banner, and I'm going to give you the Spirit
of God, and He will walk with you, and you will be hated even
more. You ever heard a sermon on being
hated? What does it say, typically?
Well, everybody's going to have a problem with you, you're going
to be hated, but you just got to forgive them. Let it go, pretend
like it, let water off your back like a duck, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda, moving right along. Now, we're
passing the offering plate. I mean, that's sort of typically
how it works. But Jesus makes a promise that
they will be hated, and that's the end of it. And then he couples,
well he doesn't couple, but he's already made a promise that he
reiterates that he'll never leave them. So as the world hates us,
we have to resist the idea that we are doing something wrong
or that we need to change our message or that we need to change
our focus or that we need to do something differently because
the mass numbers aren't seeing it. The reason you and I sit here
today born again, beloved, is because these 11 men, through
the power of God the Spirit, took the gospel to the world
by the will of God. And all of them but one were
killed because of it. And John died in exile. So what does this persecution
look like? Let's look and then let's try to think of what it
would seem in our day. They will put you out of the
synagogues. I've referred to this already,
but what does it mean to be put out of the synagogue? You remember
in John chapter 4, 5. You remember where Jesus healed
this man from blindness. Remember? And what happens there? Actually, no, I'm totally off. When Jesus heals this man from
blindness, they don't believe he was blind. So they call his parents in,
and his parents do what? He's old enough to speak for
himself, because they did not want to be thrown out of the
synagogue. So they threw this man out of the synagogue. The man
who walked in who was a paralytic, who was healed by Jesus and then
Jesus vanished because he wasn't there to heal, he was there to
show us the glory of the Father and to illustrate the gospel
of free and sovereign grace. Who told you to pick up your
mat? Not, wow, you're walking. Who told you to take your bath
towel and bring it up in here? He's kicked out of the synagogue.
So we see that everywhere and every turn, when Jesus puts his
hand on somebody and heals them, they go and they tell the very
people who should be ecstatic about it, who have been teaching
them forever about the coming of this Messiah, this Christ,
and they go into the synagogues of their spiritual leaders and
they say, look, I can walk. And they go, you're disobeying
God. Look, I can see. How can you
see? I don't know. Some man named
Jesus healed me, spit in my eyes and told me to go wash off and
I washed off and I could see. You're a liar and a blasphemer.
We kick you out. Now what does it mean to be kicked
out of the synagogue? Now I'm not a historical expert and quite
honestly don't really care to be. I only have so much capacity
up here and it's overfilled as it is, the part that's working.
And so the less I put in there, the better I understand what
I read. But I imagine that being kicked
out of the synagogue was a death sentence. You couldn't buy. You couldn't trade. You couldn't
sell. You could have no position of
leadership. You couldn't participate in any of the community events.
You couldn't be seen on the streets. You couldn't walk into the areas
of the temple. You could not even come into the outer courts
where the Gentiles were allowed. Because you were anathema. You
were cut off. You were done. You were considered
once God's elect. Now you were reprobate. Now you
were apostate. You were garbage. You were worse
than an unbeliever. You were worse than a Samaritan. You were worse. Because you used
to be somebody, now you're nothing. It would have been better for
someone to have gotten leprosy than it would for someone to
have been kicked out of the synagogue. It was over. And not only that,
but anybody who stood in your defense, they were over. Anybody
in your household that said, no, no, no, no, no. We're going
to support him. They were over your parents. Do you stand with
him or do you stand with the Lord? They were over. What do
you do? You live in the desert and the
dispersion. You live in the wilderness. You live in a tent. You go somewhere
where there's oncoming people that see you and they go, okay,
now you're Jewish and you've thumbed your nose at us for thousands
of years. We'll show you come into our town. You're nobody,
nowhere. This is horrifying, isn't it? You won't be allowed into the
Jewish life. You will not be seen as a child of God. You will
not be seen as a believer. Does that sound familiar? How
gracious we have been to try to give the benefit of the doubt
through the years of people who make a wreck of the gospel. But
because they're akin to our platforms, or the way we operate, or the
way we think, or maybe our confession, or whatever, we give them the
benefit of the doubt, and we wait, and we see, and we ask,
and we inquire, and we fellowship, and we see until they give us
clarity, and then we separate. But oh, beloved, from the very
beginning, those people would call us unbelievers. Those people would call us heretics.
Those people would call us reprobates. False gospel, false Christ, false
hope, twisting scripture. That's not the God I know. That's
not the Savior I know. If that's the truth about who
God is, I want nothing to do with Him. I've heard a Baptist
leader say that to my face in response to John 6, 36-38. which you read Wednesday night. They will kick you out of the
synagogues. Indeed the hour is coming when
whoever kills you will think he's offering service to God.
Now this is really where it starts to get raw. This isn't just people
who hate God. These are people who say they
love God and that they hate you in the name of God. And it's easy to identify When
we see that type of groups of people, those types of groups
of people saying stuff about unbelieving people in the world.
Look at all these sinners and look at how wicked they are and
look at what they do. God hates you. We hate you. Hallelujah.
But really God hates them. You understand God hates reprobates. He's never loved them and he
never will love them because the love of God is seen only
where? Only, only in the giving of his
son for his people. So they will kill you and they
will think they are offering service to God, but they are
not offering service to God. Are they doing that which God
has decreed? Yes. But they're not offering service
to God. And I get ahead of myself when
I say these things. The text is in my mind, so it just comes
out of my mouth, but I'm ahead of myself. I've already preached
the whole thing, but for the sake of continuity, let me give
you the verses. They will do these things because
they have not known the Father, nor have they known me. Because
Jesus has already said over there just some paragraphs ago that
I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to
the Father except through me. If they had known me, they would
know the Father. He's told these eleven, you do
know me. Why? Because I love you. You stand. And you stand in hope. And you stand with a resolve
that cannot be shaken, not because of the power of your discipline,
but it's because of the power of your savior, Jesus Christ,
who satisfied the wrath of God for you. expect problems. That is why the koinonia, and
that's an English way to say that, but that is what the word
fellowship comes from. It means all things together.
That is why the first century church had to take care of one
another because when people came to profess the Christ they lost
their livelihood. And those who had wealth They
couldn't keep their mansions because if they did, then the
brothers and sisters who couldn't keep a job because of their faith
starved to death. Is that what it takes sometimes
for us to see? There's a purity in that. You
can't manufacture. God will bring it when it's time.
But until that time, recognize that we are hated. but not in
here, not when we gather together as the body. And beloved, the
Lord will permit people to come into your lives and they will
say to you, you don't need to listen to this gospel, you don't
need to listen to these gospel preachers, you don't need to
listen to this church, you don't need to listen to this type of
message, you don't need to deal with this, you are looked at
like somebody that's weird in the community, you're going to
lose business, you're going to lose clients, you're going to lose credibility, but you will not fall away. because
the Spirit of God's been given to you. Those who fall away,
listen to this, and I'm going to be very short, were never
in Christ. Those who give up the truth of
the gospel and gospel assembly for the sake of social picture
are lost as a goat in the pond. Why? Because God's not going
to let his people reject the gospel. You can't believe a false
gospel and be a true gospel child. Jesus bought you. And he saved
you. And he keeps you. I say these things so that when
that comes, you remember that I told you it was coming. This
is like Jesus, the only time and the place in the scripture
where Jesus says, I told you so. I want to tell you now I
told you so. Get ready. Get ready. Narrows the gate. And for all who Christ died for
to squeeze in it. Let's pray. Father, narratives can be somewhat ambiguous in
application. And Lord, it feels to me in my
spirit as pastor, shepherd, teacher, that that truth that's contained
there could easily be done very quickly and we can move on to
other things. But Father, the reason that your son's words
are pasted there in that redundancy is so that we would take time
to hear it again and again. So your word is true. We surrender
to its sufficiency. Therefore, we learn it as it
is written. Help us to embrace suffering for the sake of the
gospel, knowing that we are not alone, for Christ has suffered
for us and we are identified in Him in that suffering because
they hate Him and they hate you. Why wouldn't they hate us? Protect
us from the temptation of placating and patronizing the worldly false
converts, but that we passionately, humbly and mournfully and prayerfully
evangelize them with the truth, knowing that if you do not open
their hearts and save them, bring them to the faith, they will
not live. And Father, help us to cling
to one another desperately as we cling to Jesus. For in this
life, there are many trials. But Father, we have a promised
hope of glory in Christ alone. And it's in his name we pray.
Amen.