This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Chapter 12, we're going to finish
up chapter 12 today and segue into chapter 13 where things really slow down
in John's gospel, time-wise. I love that hymn. Nobody knows
who wrote it. How firm a foundation. It's very
fitting to be the truth that we worship to this morning because
every turn that you see there, as if the Lord is speaking through
that song, through the truths are found in his word. Now it's
an interesting phenomenon in our culture because there are
many opportunities When I say opportunities, that's not a positive
attribute, positive option. But there are many opportunities
through which someone can grasp some spiritual things. I mean,
you can go to the World Wide Web and you can search through
any means of search engine that you want, and the archives of
linked articles and data, tags, titles, can easily be discovered. And I'm willing to bet that if
you wanted to see an article written about Jesus the clown
juggler, you probably could find it. Now, don't go to your phones
now and look. But you probably could find something somewhere,
someone in some crazy land has probably been talking about that
Jesus. And like last week, we understood in the introduction
to our sermon that there are many people who believe in certain
Christ that aren't found in scripture. But here's something we need
to recognize when we have these opportunities. We have these
options. Friends, we can get information
from any source, but it doesn't make that information correct.
It doesn't make that information authoritative. The source itself
is what makes authority. When we decide that we want to
know what it is that caused the American Revolution and what
it is that the men And women of that day had in their thinking,
we need to not go to the history book that was published last
fall and read the commentary of a historian's thoughts on
what history happened, or what history had, or what history
was. But we need to, if we really
want to understand it, go as close to the source as possible. The world has no shortage of
pundits and commentators in any topic. I mean, there are a lot
of things that I've enjoyed doing through the years, a lot of hobbies
and interests from martial arts to martial law to martial mellows. And it doesn't matter. You can
always find an expert who knows nothing. You ever seen those
people? And their expert is the fact that they're prolific. In
their words, they're verbose. They have a lot to say about
a lot of nothing. Yet because they have a platform,
they must be right. I mean, that's how I grew up. If it was on the television,
it was authoritative. If Dan Rather said it, it was
true. I mean, after all, look how he
spoke. A man like that doesn't lie. I mean, he's just, he knows
what he's talking about. It's authoritative. Those pre-movie
reels that you see during the 40s and the early days or the
latter days of World War II, these American nationalistic,
welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the War of Wars. And America,
you know, you know that voice, right? That was the preferred
voice for radio and television during that time. And you read
those things and it's just authoritative. I remember the early science
videos of, you know, second, third grade. And you see the
one guy that's narrating all of it. Same guy that's narrating
Toy Story, I think. But because these people said
things authoritatively, because they fit within the norm of what
we call authoritative in its function, in its form, How it
sounds, we fall prey to thinking that it's authoritative. We had
three channels as a child, you know, with the black and white
television that was about this big. And the antenna had long
been broken off probably in the early 70s or the late 60s. And so we had the clothes hanger,
remember? And we got real good sometimes
with the aluminum foil to hold that thing and you could just
sort of twist. There you go. So we had three channels. And
I remember when public television came out, it was four channels,
but it didn't matter because no matter what you were watching,
no matter how religious you were to sit there and see whatever
it was, it was on television. When there was something that
the president wanted to say, it was over. Channel one, channel
two, channel three, channel four, and it wasn't necessarily the
numbers, but president, president, president, president. And the
president said what he had to say, but the whole world came
to an end because this man was authoritative, and it was important. It was important. And the earliest
president, in my recollection, interrupting my precious television
was Jimmy Carter. And then Ronald Reagan. and then
everybody in here knows the rest of them, right? And it seems
like every season, less and less authoritative, less and less
important, we can just flip over to the cable, and we don't have
to listen to this. Or if we miss it, we can just
go to the innumerable channels that have 24-hour commentary
on the commentary of the president's talk, as if we care. And then it's people blogging
about the commentary of the commentary of the president's talk and then
one thing leads to another and after a while then there's memes.
And the memes tell the story, right? Satire really is the truth. And then the discussion, then
the argument, then the barbershop debates. I don't think you have
those anymore. You can't even go to a barbershop
anymore. and get your hair cut like a man. You have to get in
there and have somebody put your fingers in the thing and rub
your hands and spray it with stuff and feed you. I'm like,
give me a barber that knows the one cut to please with his straight
razor. You never talk back to the barber
because he could kill you. But whatever the point, the point
I'm making, whatever, is that we tend to formulate the data
we have in our own lives, not because of the authority of the
source, but because of the condition of the culture. And we can come
and we can say, we believe this. And when someone presses you,
why do you believe it? The best most people do is because,
well, my pastor said it. I'm not the source. I am not
the authority of teaching you the truth. I'm the authority
of overseeing the teaching of the truth with other brothers
in this fellowship. But Christ, Christ alone, he is authoritative. And then Christ here in this
latter part of John 12, he actually subjects himself to the authority
of another. Friends, the closest we get to
the source document, the better it is. And so when we come to
this text today, look at John 12, verse 48, 47. 47, if anyone hears my words and
does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the
world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does
not receive my words has a judge. The word that I have spoken will
judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own
authority, But the Father who sent me has Himself given me
a commandment. What to say and what to speak. And I know that this commandment
is eternal life. What I say therefore, I say as
the Father has told me. Now see what Jesus has done.
Jesus has taken away any opportunity for anyone anywhere to say Well,
we're just believing in this new prophet. We're holding fast
by the authority of this other guy who has come. Because who
was being pit against Jesus throughout his entire earthly ministry?
Moses. Moses was the man of Judaism. Moses was God's prophet, and
when Jesus spoke, it sounded different than Moses because
Moses wrote of Him, as we see in John 5. Moses wrote of Jesus,
but Jesus wrote through Moses. And so God the Son, writing through
Moses, of himself, did not write by himself of himself, but by
the Father of himself." You confused? And why is this important? Because
of the opportunities. See, I haven't even told you
what the opportunities are, right? I've mentioned it several times, but
I don't have enough caffeine to stay focused. The opportunities,
what are they? The opportunities to learn Christ,
the opportunities to experience God, the opportunities to grow
in theology, the opportunities to gather together people who
agree with your doctrine, the opportunities to fight and argue
and debate and know that you are right, the opportunities
to find someone who agrees with you about whatever position it
is that you seem to hold from your theological philosophies. And if you need some feeders,
just get with me after service, I'll give you a thousand. I've
got a lot of pet things that I'd love to debate and argue
and prove I'm right about. That's not the point. It's not
the argument. It's not the logic. It's not
the philosophy. It's not that at all that authoritates the
truth of Christ. And in our day, beloved, in our
day, as in the day of Jesus, the unregenerate man, no matter
how wise or spiritual, has always had an answer about who God is
and how one stands righteous before him. And I'll say this
again, and I don't know how many times I've said this on a Sunday
morning recently, but the only way that you can escape the wrath
of God is to offer to God complete perfection, having never sinned.
It's the only way. No person in this world ever
except the God-man can stand before God unless he is absolutely
sinless. Speaking with someone this week
and making the reference of his own life, I want to get right
with God. That was what he said. You ever
heard that? You ever said that of yourself?
How can a man be right with God? Man cannot be right with God
in and of himself. Because the only thing you can
bring to God the Father to escape His justice is to not be guilty
from the beginning. And beloved, whether you believe
what's coming out of my mouth right now or not, it doesn't
matter because the Scripture attests to this truth that there
are none righteous, no not one. All have sinned and fallen short
of the glory of God. All earned the wage of sin which
is eternal death. And the only way that you can
escape that is that you present yourself before God the Father
and you say, I am not guilty of any sin in thought, mind,
deed, and here's the fourth one that I've added recently, ontology.
In my very existence, I'm not guilty of any sin. Now, who can
do that? Unconverted, unregenerate people do that. Unregenerate
people of the nation of Israel at the time of Jesus claimed
to have been sinless. To have been in such a strict
covenant with God through the law of Moses that there was no
way that someone could bring a charge against them, yet they
would bring a charge against Jesus. He would even say that
for his omniscience. He'd say, you say that I'm a
sinner. You think that I have a demon. You want to kill me.
For he did make himself to be God. Before Abraham was, I am. He tells the Pharisees, unless
you believe that I am, you will perish in your sins. How dare
you speak these things, they would say. Who do you think you
are? Is this not the son of Joseph whom we know who was born in
utter sin? And we know that. What is he
talking about? Joseph and Mary were not married. And here comes Jesus. And yet they judge Jesus. And
Jesus, what does he say? I've not come to speak by my
own authority, but I speak the words that are given to me by
my Father. Who is your Father? Jesus says
if you knew the Father, you'd know me. Abraham is our father. No, if
Abraham were your father, you would not be seeking to kill
me. If Abraham were your father. You would know that I am Abraham
longed for my day and rejoiced in it. Because before Abraham
was, I am and they took up stones to kill him because he declared
himself to be God. The Bible says that Jesus is
God. Not a God, not one of many gods,
the one and only High One, the Creator of all things that when
there was a beginning, He already was eternally. The Scripture
in its totality, authoritatively, as God's Word, self-revelation,
self-illumination, the light revealing Himself to His people,
says that God is the author of all things. So if we hold to
the sufficiency of scripture, if we hold to sola scriptura,
if we hold to that as a people, as individuals even, But yet
we placate to the idea that there's some things we don't know or
that there's some other authority that could lead us to places
that the scripture does not lead us, then something is drastically
wrong. And that is that we can't say
we believe in a scripture that states in itself it is the authority
of the living God. It is the word of the living
God. It is the supreme revelation of God alone. And it's not just
that. See, another problem that we
have, another opportunity we have that I see all the time,
that I see all the time, is that people like to argue translation. People like to argue versions. People like to argue words and
sentences. And there are, if there's opportunity, And if I just post, let's just
do social media for a minute, if you just post a verse, just
a verse, there will be a plethora of interpretations based on that
verse. I've had people sit in this assembly
before having spoken to me weeks prior before coming and say that
only this particular version of scripture or that particular
version of scripture is authoritatively the word of God. So to read or
to teach out of any other version or to paraphrase in your own
words as you teach is a sin because this is God's word. And by one
accident one morning I grabbed that version over this one and
read from it and taught from it and they were still not satisfied
because they did not recognize it. And when following up with
them, they said, well, we just love everything, but we just
can't stomach that ESV. And I try not to smile, and I
just, well, Lord bless you. Find the fellowship you're looking
for. Because I definitely taught out of their version of scripture
that day. We have that opportunity. We can argue about it all we
want. And it doesn't just start from scholarship. It could be
from commentary. It could come from history. It
could be all sorts of things. It's amazing to me how many people
are spending more time worrying about the validity of the Bible
they read rather than the truth contained within. And I'll quote
a very dear, beloved brother of mine who has great credentials
in the text of scripture. He says, maybe those people should
spend more time worrying about the authenticity of the maps
in the back rather than the text in the front. I'm like, that's
pretty funny. I don't know if it's really something
we should say to them, but it's pretty funny. But here we come
to this text. Are you hearing, verse 47, John
12, the words of Christ? Now I want to remind us of a
couple of things. Faith, we see in Romans 10, that
in order for us to have faith in the Lord Jesus, we have to
be granted that faith. We have to be converted by the
Spirit. through the granting of regeneration,
the gifting of faith. Because Christianity is not an
academic pursuit of all of this stuff and say, oh, yeah, you
know what? I think this is true. This is pretty true. Knowing
or thinking something's true when in itself it says that true
faith is believing in the finished work that I'm telling you that
I'm doing. Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood,
you won't live. Unless you are my sheep, you
cannot hear my voice. If the Father doesn't give you
to me, you cannot come to me. But if the Father does give you
to me, you will most certainly come to me and I will never cast
you out, but I will give you eternal life and raise you up
in the day of judgment. I will give you life. I, Jesus
says, will give my sheep life whom the Father have given to
me, you see. Are you hearing the words of
Christ? Some people like to take and make the gospel a small nugget
of a presentation. That's not true. There's nowhere
in scripture that teaches the gospel is a nugget to be presented,
is a small particle of Scripture, just a truth about the Jesus
in one way. No, the gospel is inclusive of
the totality of the teaching of Christ throughout the entire
Bible, even Genesis. And our hermeneutic for the Old
Testament is through the authority of God the Father through the
Spirit given to the apostles by whom they wrote the New Testament
to tell us what the Old Testament was referring to. We start our
new school year on the 20th and I'm going to teach with my high
schoolers the book of Hebrews. It's going to help them see this
very thing. The authority of God's Word,
as Paul would say, how can one know if they do not hear? What
are they hearing? They're hearing the proclamation
that Jesus taught concerning Himself having been sent by the
Father to redeem His people from their sins. And how were they to hear if
no one goes? Blessed are the feet of those
who preach the good news of the finished work of the free and
sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ. That's what's wrapped
up in that entomological iteration we say gospel. that faith does not come except
by hearing the words of Christ. And hearing the words of Christ
comes from hearing the words of Christ. No other way. Hearing the words of Christ in
a divine way through divine prerogative is what grants you faith to believe
in the words of Christ. And no natural man can come to
the conclusion of saying, yeah, I think I can get behind that. It must be given and granted
of him by God. So if anyone hears my words,
can you hear the words of Christ? For years, evangelism was something
extremely different for me as I was raised up in my teen years
to be evangelistic. And evangelistic, just like I
talked about in the context of authoritative words and even
scripture, was more of an opportunity. Evangelism was more of an opportunity
for most people. There's an opportunity for you
to understand how you can be saved. That's not the gospel. That's not evangelism. Evangelism
is a proclamation of the words of Christ that save. Not what
we do with it, what God has done. You see, a little loud. And friends, I will say this
probably the dozenth time I've said it in this year. That iteration
of so-called evangelism is demonic. People are not saved in spite
of it. People are condemned because of it. And Jesus says that here.
He gives this wonderful hope. If you hear my words and you
keep them, I do not judge you. What is keeping the Word of God?
I love the legalists of our culture. The legalists of the past 400,
500 years even. The Jews that just happen to
take an evangelical slant. The Roman Catholics who just
happen to be free from the Vatican. Keeping the Word of God is obeying
the Law of God. No, it's not. Jesus has not said
anything in this text about obeying the Law of God. What must we
be doing? The people ask Him when He tells
them to get away from Him because all they did is want some more
food. What must we be doing to be doing the work of God? What
does God require of us, John 6? This is the work of God that
you believe in the Son whom He has sent. I want you to think
about that for a second. There's no place in John's Gospel
where Jesus is quoted about Himself and speaking of himself and his
authority, his own authority, without attaching the fact that
he was sent by the Father. It's not there. I speak the words
of the one who sent me. I come on the authority of the
one who sent me. I do the work of the one who sent me. I am
sent by the Father. It is not I who have come to
do my will, but the will of the Father, and so on and so forth.
Because the scripture Jesus claimed to be God the Son in the flesh,
sent by God the Father to do His work. So if you keep the Word, what
does it mean? You believe it. You believe it. You trust therein. How many hours do we spend, beloved,
sitting here twiddling our thumbs or writhing our hands or whatever
the word, you know, whatever we do, twill our hair, whatever. These ticks wondering how we're
going to get our lives together to be presentable to God. And
in doing that, we're not keeping the Word of Christ. When we see our sin, we hate
our sin. Sometimes we wish we hated it
more. And so we're either, we're in
this conundrum. I hate my sin, but I can't seem to get rid of
it. I must not be right before God or I don't hate my sin enough.
I must not be right before God or I have no sin. And that's a whole nother conversation. But we get there and we want
to always, we want to be prepared for worship. We want to be prepared
for the Lord's table. We want to be prepared to study the Bible.
We want to be prepared to pray. Let's be honest with ourselves.
It's war. There are a bajillion more other
things that could readily be on task rather than reading the
Bible, praying, and focusing on the gospel of grace. Especially
when we want to satisfy our own consciousness within our own
flesh. Wow! If I'm really in Christ,
why do I lose my temper? Wow! If I'm really in Christ,
why do I still feel angry? If I'm really in Christ, why
don't I want to read the Bible more? That's where the discipline
of the fellowship comes together. The intimacy of the fellowship.
The love of the body. You ever had a child that wouldn't
eat? Just wouldn't eat. Losing weight, wouldn't eat.
Just don't have time to eat. What do you do? Oh, who cares? I don't care. I know they've
lost 40 pounds in three months. It's alright. You ever had a
loved one sick, wouldn't eat? What do you do? You force feed
them. You take them to the doctor. You do what it takes to help
someone stay healthy. You don't just watch them wither
away. The same is true in a spiritual sense. If you are having trouble
reading your Bible and being disciplined therein, welcome
to the club of misfits. I often shudder to think what
I would be doing with my time if I didn't have to stand here
on the Lord's Day. How much Bible would I really
absorb? So one of the greatest graces
of God in my life is to call me to the ministry and refuse
to allow me to do anything else. So even then, now I can be in
the scripture. If we're together, our appetite is whetted, it's
prepared. And then together, that's why
we are going to, as I'll describe at the end of the service, be
reading the book of Colossians together on an ongoing basis. It's new, we're gonna try something
different. but simple. Are you hearing the
words of Christ? The scripture says, if you hear
my words and you do not keep them, I do not judge. Remember
last week when I said I could build a colt out of that? For I did
not come to judge the world, but to save the world. Now what
is Jesus saying there? I've explained a little bit.
Let me expound on that in this context that I've been belaboring
here. The words that Jesus is speaking
promise life, right? They are eternal life. His words
are eternal life. What's the meaning of that? When
he says, in my body and with my blood, I satisfy the Father's
wrath for my people. And those who keep my word, that
that I just said, trust therein, in the truth of what I say I
have, will do at this time, and have done now. They're alive
in me. So how is that a judgment? Well,
Jesus says it's not a judgment, because these words are a promise
of life, not judgment, right? That's what he's saying. Nicodemus,
John 3, this is the judgment. the light has come into the world. That's the judgment. Jesus Christ,
the light of God, the light of the life of men, has come into
the world. So by the positive doctrinal
affirmation of Christ being the revealed truth of God and His
work to save His people, It is judgment. Why? Because people
love the darkness rather than the light. See, this is where
modern day evangelism really makes a train wreck of things.
Modern day evangelism will say, well, everybody wants to get
saved. Modern day evangelists say, well, everybody wants to
escape judgment. Modern day evangelism will tell you all sorts of things
that everybody wants to do, yet those things in themselves are
not motivators unto life. Christ is unto life. The truth
of the gospel is unto life. It's not opportunity for salvation,
it's proclamation of salvation. I'm going to say that so much,
you're going to get sick of hearing it. But if you hear my words and
you don't believe in them, that's all right. It's not any judgment
on you. Why? Because the words that I'm
telling you, Jesus is saying, is eternal life. So if you don't
believe in eternal life in me, then why is it that you're judged? I didn't come to judge. I came
to save. Now see, we know that that's
actually not a contradiction, but it's a setup of two truths.
And that right there is a promise. It's a promise that Christ's
proclamation of the work of God the Father in redemption is intended
for life. And who are saved? The elect
of God. I came to save the world. Verse
48, no. The one who rejects me and does
not receive my words has a judge. So here's the emphasis. Jesus
isn't playing with words here. He's making something extremely
strong. He's saying that the very words
that give life to God's people are the same words that pass
judgment on those who reject it. Because if Jesus says, I am life,
and people go, eh, not for me, and Jesus is truth, than those
who say not for me are judged by the very words of truth spoken. If there's a pathogen that's
released into this building and gives us a couple of days to
live, we can't leave because we're quarantined. And the CDC,
you know, through one of the cracks under the doors, real
sealed building, one of the cracks, they shoved the antidote in there.
They shoved the antibiotic. It's real easy, it's just like
a Jolly Rancher, whatever flavor you like. You just gotta, you
just gotta, don't bite it, you just gotta let it melt in your
mouth. If you do that, you live. You just live. That's the truth. That proclamation, that truth
doesn't judge you. You are dying already. Now don't
hear what I'm not saying here. That truth proclaims your salvation. So for those who say, I'm not
sucking on that candy, that's just stupid. I don't want to
do that. I'd rather die. Well, there you go. And the very
word that this is your antidote, this is your salvation, when
you reject that, it's the same word that judges you. And what does Nicodemus hear?
He's baffled. How can I, a Jew, be judged?
Look at my life. Look at my prayers. Look at my
service. Look at my love. Look at my lifestyle. Paul would brag to the Philippians,
according to the law, blameless. And then he would confess to
the Romans, oh what wretched man am I. Because he couldn't see. the
truth of the law as its shadow was pointing to the salvation
of Jesus. It judged him as guilty, not providing an opportunity
for him to know how God wanted him to live. So Jesus is saying the very words that I've spoken will judge him
on the day of judgment. Now, that's a play on words.
It's a positive negative statement. A positive statement that he's
already given In verse 46, whoever believes lives. Verse 47, whoever
believes lives, but whoever doesn't believe, I'm not judging. Verse
48, the word that I just spoke to you will judge. And what does
John say in the beginning of this gospel? In the beginning was the word,
and the word was God, and the word was with God. He was the
light of the life of men and the Word became flesh. Jesus
Christ is the living Word of God. So this isn't about the writing
on this page. The writing on this page is bound
up in the person of Jesus. You do not have a relationship
with Jesus Christ. when you are not intimately disciplined
in his word. I see that contradicts some of
our worldview, doesn't it? Some of these opportunities that we've
had, some of these things that we've learned. Oh, you know,
Christianity is about a relationship. No, it's not. It's about the
righteousness of God being fulfilled. It's about God's relationship,
the Father, with God, the Son, from all of eternity to provide
righteousness with great assurance and absolute certainty for the
elect of God. And nothing can separate us from
that love in creation. Nothing can separate us from
that love. Yet, that is not a relationship
with Jesus. It's not a relationship with
Jesus. A relationship has relations. A relationship has intimacy. For some of us, we speak more
to the barista at the coffee shop than we do to Christ, and
vice versa. And we wouldn't say, oh, yeah,
we have a good relationship with John. Oh, I'm sorry, Joe, I read it
wrong. Yeah, Joe, been coming here five years. Way to go, Joe.
Cup of Joe, hey, who'd have thought? I mean, you know, what a great
name to be a barista. You don't have a relationship
with Jesus. Your salvation is not about your relationship with
Jesus. It's about Christ's relationship
with the Father for you. And the work is finished. Your
relationship with Jesus, your intimacy with Him, has nothing
to do with your salvation. Nothing! But it has everything
to do with living a fulfilled life in Christ. And when you
and I are not in the scripture, we have no working, active, living
faith. Working, acting, living relationship
with Jesus. I'm not talking about being justified.
I'm not talking about being saved. I'm not talking about being redeemed.
But it's just like getting married and getting on the plane for
a honeymoon and going to separate places when you get out of the
airport. And you're sitting by yourself
in a Burger King in Jamaica. And your spouse is over there
at McDonald's somewhere across the way. So he says, well, hey,
what brings you to Burger King in Jamaica? Oh, it's my honeymoon.
And you're by yourself. Well, where's your wife? I don't
know. Whatever she wants to do, she's doing something. I don't
know. We're married, though. Man, are we married. We just
got through. We've never been more married.
We just got through with a wedding, spent a bunch of money and everything.
They threw rice. We're really married. Yeah. Painted my car and put cans on
the back end of it. You should have seen it. We're
married. Where's your wife? I don't know. There's no relationship
there. Though the bond of matrimony
is there, though the legal declaration of unity is there, though nothing
can separate what God has put together, there's no relationship
there. How's the relationship? You've
got to spend time together. You want to have a relationship with
Christ and get to know Him more and see His power work in your
life and see the Spirit teach you things over and over and
over again, then you be in the Bible. Be in the Scripture. The Word
of God is Christ speaking to His people. And that's the beauty. Let me say that again. The Word of God is Christ speaking
to His people. And those who reject what He
is saying will be judged by what He is saying. And what He is
saying is a direct reflection of who the Father is. What he
is saying is bound to the very essence of his existence. For he says who he is, and he
says what he's done, and he does so by the will of God the Father. And that's the authority. Jesus isn't just some man historically
who claimed to have a lot of good answers. He's not a motivational
speaker that got it 99% correct. And I know that I'm preaching
to the choir here, beloved, but friends, I want you to understand
that a majority of those people in your lives, listen to me,
who claim to be in the faith, believe in a different Christ. Listen to what they say. Listen
to how the opportunistic iterations of culture have tainted the truth
of Scripture. And when you open the Word of
God up, some of them, they go, oh, I
see it. But for most, they go, yeah,
but. And you know what I feel about
yeah, buts. It's sort of like the first thing
that comes out of people's mouth when they want to disagree with
truth. I have not spoken on my own authority. But the father who sent me has
given himself has given him has himself given me a commandment. Now we see something extremely
interesting here. I didn't focus on this last week. We see a subordination
of God, the son to God, the father. Not only is God the son not speaking
on his own behalf, God, the son is not speaking his own words.
The words of eternal life, God is the one in whom all life resides,
not just spiritually, spiritual life, there it is, but real life,
physical life. All life comes from God, the
Bible teaches that, that's the whole point of Genesis 1. which is reiterated in John 1,
which is established in Hebrews 1 and Colossians 1. And it's
pointed to Jesus Christ as the God of creation, the Son, eternal
Son. Yet now in His incarnation, we
see Jesus the Son in His humanity being subordinate to the Father's
will and word. I do nothing of my own account,
do nothing of my own authority, I do nothing of my own will but
the will of the one who sent me. The one who sent me has given
me a commandment. And the commandment that the
Father has given the Son is every word that comes out of His mouth
is what He's supposed to say. Now that's a bold statement. Such a bold statement that Paul
would take it this step further. When I write to you, God said
it. If the brothers in this area
don't adhere to and recognize the authority of God in my letter
to you, he's not your brother in the Lord. You know what that
means? To reject the authority of God
is to reject the authority of Scripture, is to reject the Son
of God, is to be in darkness. There is no regenerate person who, having been taught the sufficiency
of Scripture, rejects the sufficiency of Scripture, because in doing so they reject
the words of Christ. And friends, this is a problem
in evangelical life today. The culture, social justice,
and anything in between. We conflate the gospel with everything
going on in the world. But if it is the gospel, the
faith, once for all delivered to the saints of the world, then
what is our cultural distinction here? How is it going to relate
as gospel to my friends in West Africa? It's not. And some of those villages,
they don't care what's happening in the United States of America.
They want to eat and not die, and not watch their children
die. The same thing here when Joe
doesn't put the cream in correctly in our coffee, we want to die. And my friends in West Africa
don't care about that either, first world problems. And we're
not going to make light of the PTSD that happens from both.
Except in some nations, they don't even know it's PTSD because
they don't have enough doctors to tell them. And the only remedy
of them ever having hope is not the reduction of their hunger,
but it's the proclamation of the words of Christ. Sometimes nations starve together,
but live forever. Huh, I made a poem. I do not speak except what the
Father has commanded me to speak. And verse 50 is the whole point
of this entire sermon. And I know that his commandment
is eternal life. This is the work of God. That
you believe in the son whom he has sent. Trust, if Jesus were
saying this, and he does all throughout the scripture, trust
in me. Abide in me. Follow me. Commandments. Eat of me. Drink of me. We have relegated the word of
God to syntax and propositions. And we have a large container
of people who claim to be in the faith, who can only debate
the faith, but not trust in the faith. We have a whole generation whose
leaders are now coming undone. The wheels are coming off of
the young, the restless and the reformed. The wheels are coming
off of the children of the Reformation. The wheels have come off. The
cart has fallen apart. The horse has died. And it's
time that the Church of Jesus Christ stand up and continue
to proclaim that which is essential to life, which is the commandment
of God the Father to believe in the work of the Son. An apologist who is not an expositor
is a worthless man. An evangelist who can't read
the Bible and think it's sufficient enough to save God's elect and
the crowd is a worthless man. You hear all those statements
sound? A pastor who talks too much about
everything but the Bible is a worthless man. I've been a worthless man
and I probably still am a worthless man, but I pray by the grace
of God that I never shut my mouth to the truth of Christ. And that means that I need to
make sure that I stay focused on what the scripture is teaching
and the implications therein rather than all the other stuff
that I could easily get up here and build hours of instruction around. Like the
young, the restless, and the reformed. Where the most of these men in
our present day have forsaken the gospel of free and sovereign
grace, have ruined justification as an opportunity if man keeps
his promise. Where most of evangelicalism
is just looking for sincerity rather than sufficiency in the
gospel. The awkwardness of true evangelism,
just in my own life as I've shared the faith with three different
people specifically this week, who after I, and it was in my
yard, and after I was able to share it, the look on their face
is priceless. And the silence after is eternal. Because everybody's so accustomed
to Christ did this work for His people. It is finished. It is
as if you've never sinned, you were justified. There is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. Christ satisfied the wrath of
God. He cannot condemn those for whom
Christ died. And the list goes on. And then
you get through and they're like... And I just let them stare at
me. And it's uncomfortable. for them. But there's nothing else to say.
There's no question to offer. There's no pamphlet to give.
There's no nothing. And if you just let people sit
there for just a minute, they'll come back with a yeah but. Or so, what you're saying, they'll
reiterate it very clearly. And then the bewilderment on
their face is probably what Jesus saw in the face of Nicodemus. When he says, do not marvel that
I say you must be born again. Do not marvel. Don't marvel, Nicodemus, you
look confused and you're going to be confused unless the unless
the father grants by the will. Actually, the spirit grants regeneration
to you that you might see it. It's a simple sight. I am the
light. You can't see. And people want
to hurry that along and do something else with it. And for generation
after generation, we've celebrated decisions to believe which don't
make sense according to what Jesus teaches. And then when we don't see people
doing what we think they should be doing, then we undo those
decisions by condemnation. You think you're a Christian?
You think you're a Christian, stand up. You ever seen that? You read the Bible this week?
If you hadn't, sit down. I mean, you know, you see what
they're doing? Christ says, you believe my word.
You believe in the commandment of the father who sent me to
say all that I've said and sent me to do all that I've done.
And I am the eternal life. John would say that in his first
epistle, the eternal life, which is manifested to us. And now
we proclaim to you, this is it. So what I say, therefore, is
what the father says. I mean, what the father has told
me. So the authority of Christ, the authority of the gospel,
the authority of salvation is bound. To the person of God,
the father, his promises, his integrity, his omniscience, his
omnipotence, his power, his sufficiency, all of it, God is not looking
or longing for people to come and to believe he is causing
his people to believe because he has secured justice for himself. For the body of Christ was crushed
by the will of the Father through natural means of the so-called
free will of men who hated Him. And we saw that two weeks ago.
Why did they hate Him? Because God had not opened their
eyes to see. And as a matter of fact, God had hardened their
eyes, hardened their hearts and blinded their eyes. People hate the idea of active reprobation on the
part of God. But we've learned it over and
over and over again contextually. Friends, don't put Jesus in a
box that he doesn't live in. You cannot come to me because
you do not belong to me. He will say later, it is impossible
You can never ever without an absolute. It's absolutely impossible
to the end of age for you to come to me. I'll show you all
that in the future. But those who have come have
been brought by the father. Through the words that he has
commanded the son to bring concerning eternal life, the light to see
and the truth to believe the heart that is transformed by
God. And that's what the table represents.
That's why we're doing it more often. Because it is an opportunity
for us to worship, not just we're saved, but the means through
which we have been purchased. Our salvation is that we've been
bought by the blood of Christ. Our salvation is that we have
been redeemed through His death. So I pray that as we prepare
our hearts to remember these truths, that we realize we're
not remembering a story, but we are remembering the Word of
God, who is Jesus Christ, who is eternal life. Let's pray. Father, as we take
of these natural, normal elements, we are remembering the work that
You've done through Your Son. And I thank You for our learning
in John's Gospel over these last two plus years. Thank you for
listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.