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. I'm going to deal with the latter
part of these six verses today, where Jesus cries out and speaks
again that which He has spoken prior. Now we could go back and
we could take six weeks and we could establish the restating
or recapitulation of these teachings. But the whole of it is this,
is that Jesus has come to the end of his public ministry. He's
finished with his teaching ministry. He says in the previous verses,
believe now while the light walks among you. Walk in the light. And then now in these verses
44 through 50, he gives two specific things that are true. One of
them is good and one of them is very bad. And I know that I say a lot about
this because the gospel of John just sort of beats it off the
page, just sort of like a broomstick. It just, it's here. Let's get
him out of the bushes. Let's, let's, let's get these
squirrels out of the attic. And that is that in our time,
I want you to listen to this beloved. A majority, a majority
of evangelical Christianity is devoid the gospel because they will not take what
we see in verses 44 and 50 as the holistic expression of the
redemption of God's people. Christianity today, by and large,
is just a way of life. It's just a worldview. It's just
a denominational emphasis. It's just a political platform.
It's just a lot of good things to do with good people who are
having a good time. And friends, that is the furthest from the
truth of Scripture. And so we have, by the grace
of God, determined to know Christ and Him crucified. And we establish,
we have been established in the gospel because of the Word of
God. Because of the Word of God. The Word of God that was given
to us, the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,
for which we contend we have been given and we hold fast to
this. The Word of God does not change.
The Word of God does not need a relative place amongst society. It does not need to consider
the first century compared to this century. Now, of course,
a hermeneutic would require that, an interpretation, but not an
application. We need to realize that the theological
principles of the immutable God are eternal. By definition, God
is the High One. He is unchanging. He is eternal. He has no beginning. He has no
end. So therefore, God is not subject to that which He creates. He's not subject to His creatures.
He's not subject to the laws of physics. He's not subject
to the world that He made and the cosmos and its infancy. He's
not subject to even time. For it is His to own. So therefore,
God is established as He is revealed. And that's the only way we can
know Him. And the only way we know Him, as we read John 1,
1 through 18 this morning, is that the one and only God who
sits at God's side makes God known. And that is Jesus Christ.
Now friends, I know that for most of us, this is preaching
to the choir. But because we know this is true,
there has to be a little pastoral housekeeping. Of which, for 105
sermons in John's Gospel, I am probably willing to bet the $4
in my pocket that I have not failed to beat the pulpit on you reading
the Bible. If I have, it was a fluke, because
it's constantly on my mind. You know what's not on my mind?
Amazing doctrines that I want you to grasp. You know what's
not on my mind? The ability for me to come in
and debate and argue and to teach in such a way that you're just
going to be wooed and pass out, just can't wait to live for Jesus.
You know what's not on my mind? That you could care about how
awesome I am Or how cool the teaching was. I have a cup of
coffee in my hand today because I need it. Not because it's cool.
I mean, I did earlier. I need it. If I could put it
in an IV in a bag behind my back, you'd never know. It'd be fine.
I need it today. I'm a little tired. I don't care
about all that stuff. It's not in my purview. It's
not in my book. It's not in the appendix. It's
not on the backside of the sticky note of my calendar. What is
on my heart and mind every single moment of my life outside of,
I hope my house gets finished painting, but outside of that
is concerning you is that are you in the Bible? Are you in
the scriptures? Not are you in a forum online
talking about doctrine. Not are you saying, yeah, the
Lord is so good and I'm praying for my co-worker. Nothing wrong
with either of those, but those things are so far beyond the
veil of God's power that sometimes we think that we're actually
walking with Christ when we're doing all sorts of things that
are sort of Christ-like. And it's no different than the
situation that I spoke of just a few minutes ago. That American
evangelical Christianity in its essence is just a lot of good
people doing good things and having a good time. A lot of
good ministry. Beloved, this is not my opinion.
This is the Word of God. And it speaks for itself. And
Jesus is going to say something here in verse 47. He says, If
anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge
him. And that is a pretext from heaven.
I could start an entire cult on that phrase. And we would
be the happiest bunch of reprobates this side of the Mason-Dixon. Let's hear the word of the Lord,
verse 44 through 50. And Jesus cried out and said,
whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent
me. And whoever sees me, sees him
who sent me. I have come into the world as
light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
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 world
has a judge. And that is 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 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 this is not, none of
this is new. None of this is new. But I think
the evangelist places this here by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can be reminded of
just the essence of who Christ is. The essence of what Jesus
has come to accomplish and the authority by which he has accomplished
it. Many men have come through the
world. Many leaders have come into our
world. Many people have come in times
of hardship and times of trouble and times of calamity, and they've
been heroes. We see God even establishing
the picture of his election in the Old Testament through the
narrative of Joseph, through the narrative of Moses, through
the narrative of Pharaoh, through the narrative of Esau, through
the narrative of all these people, they all relate to the sovereignty
of God over salvation and history and the free will of man. But even those things that aren't
necessarily pointing to Christ. We can look throughout history
and we can see famous people that are famous now because of
what history says about them. And we can sometimes be in awe
of the hero who runs through the fire and comes out with a
child in its arms. It gives us chills, especially
if it's put to cinema with really good regal music behind it. Slow
motion, that makes it even more exciting. We could think about the heroes
of the Holocaust. We could think about the heroes
of genocide. We could think about the heroes
of India The heroes of the apartheid. The heroes of slavery, the heroes
of the world, they are nothing. But yet we celebrate them in
our hearts in a manner that subjects Christ to be just like them. What does a hero accept? A person
in the hand of God doing that which God has ordained for him
to do. I'm not saying we don't celebrate. Heroism. But I'm just saying that I do
believe that sometimes we look at Jesus through the same lens.
Jesus is not a hero. Jesus is not a worldly, secular
savior. Jesus is the God of the cosmos. The God of the heavens. The eternal
God who never began and all that there is that we can see and
ever know, even the knowledge of our logic, God created it. Jesus created it. Man did not
discern these things. And in the snap of the proverbial
finger of God, it shall all be washed away. You see what you're
building? In 2002, I'll tell you this.
It's amazing how these things a long time ago just pop into
my head. I can't remember what I talked about yesterday. But
in 2002, right around September, and I remember it because my
grandmother passed away that year. The week before she died,
I was talking and teaching And I talked similarly about this
very thing, about how the world is passing away and that we live
in a place to actually build idols that God will crush for
His glory. That we spend our heartbeats
and our time and our money and our mouths and everything else
building everything but Christ and Him crucified. And we think
sometimes we're doing that for the glory of God, which is really
abominable. Instead of holding loosely to
the things of this world, every one of us in this room, me also, fight idolatry. And I remember talking about
the beauty of buildings. I love architecture. I love it.
I love things. If I had my way, I'd like to
have the largest, most gothic, stone-driven worship center in
the world with a bell and Quasimodo to boot. I would love it. Ding
that thing at 1030, y'all would be on time. I mean, you know,
it would be great. Oh, Quasi's dinging the bell,
time to go to church. I mean, I just love it. I love to walk
into those places. I mean, everywhere I've ever
traveled, especially when I was in music school, I always had
my soprano with me, because you could sneak that into place.
I'd go in there, and I'd find a nice big cathedral area, and
I'd just play. Me and some of the guys would
get in there and do some a cappella singing, and we'd always get
busted. I've been thrown out of more malls and church buildings
for trespassing and singing and saxophone than anybody in the
history of the world. It wasn't terrorism, though,
in the 1980s and 90s. I love it. But I remember saying
something like this and talking about the greatest thing that
we could ever accomplish in this world, in this earth, it is just
dust and before the hands of Christ in glory, everything beloved,
all of it. And in the midst of that congregation
that day was an architect. who had just got through creating
on paper this most magnificent structure. He came to me after
service and was distraught. He goes, the reason I went into
architecture is that my footprint of this world would remain and
you just stepped on it. I said, no, I didn't, Jesus did.
That's the point, right? It's either all about Christ
or it's all about us. And when it's all about somebody
else we love but Christ, it's still all about us. Don't misunderstand
that. But that's not a pastoral teaching
for you to just get rid of everything and let's just wear sackcloth
and eat dirt. Fix the upstairs and live in
a commune. Hunt dove as they come by. That's what we eat for
breakfast. No, do all things under the glory of Christ. Whether
you eat or drink, whether you work, work as if Christ is your
boss because he is. Back to the point, the reason
we have such a hard time with idolatry, even when we're trying
our best to live for Christ, is because we're not in the word
of God. That's it. We're not in the scripture. And
after service today, I want to talk to us about some of the
things we're going to do to remedy that in discipline, in practice. Just like if we were competing
for a sport, which is the analogies that Paul likes to use, or growing
a crop. There is a discipline required
for the body of Christ to stay focused. Jesus repeats himself, verse
44, whoever believes in me. Whoever believes in me. Is that
you? Are you believing in Christ? Now, see, this is where it gets
tricky because there are so many Christ's in our culture. There
are so many iterations of Jesus under the guise of Christendom
in our culture that it's very difficult to understand when
somebody says, yeah, I believe in Jesus, to see exactly what Jesus they
believe in. And so in order to bring all
of that through a filter, what our culture has done, which is
what the flesh does, what the human depraved condition creates
is this. We'll put a test to those who
say they believe in Christ and watch them. Then we'll know who's
really in Christ. But the Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible says that those who
profess the words of Christ as he has said them are actually
professing the words of the father as he has commanded them. That's
why we close our sermon today. And only that will substantiate
someone's new birth. That's it. That's it. So whoever believes
in Jesus, Jesus is saying, you're not even really only believing
in me, but you're believing in the one
who sent me. Now, why is that important? I'll tell you what,
for those of you who pay attention to the Grace Truth Chat, a lot
of you are in there, but if you notice how a local brother had
posted something in there about Jesus is, what? The Father expressed. And of
course, Eddie with his great grammar and Cindy with her great
grammar came in and corrected my excitement over that. But it's okay. The point made
is that Jesus reveals the Father. He's not the father. He is not
the father. He is the son and always has
been, but he is God. And when he speaks and when he
works, he works as God, the son, and he does the will of God,
the father, and speaks the words of God, the father. And so when
we believe in Christ, we're believing in God, the father. But they
are not the same person. That would be a heresy. called
oneness or Jesus only. Whoever believes in me believes
not in me, but in him who sent me. This is what separates Jesus
from all the heroes of history. This is what separates Jesus
from everyone in all of humanity. Jesus is not just the prophet. He's not just a well-placed birth
in history. He's not just somebody who came
along to help us understand the Bible. Jesus is the living God
who came to earth in a human body. And he came from God the
Father. In the future, you will hear
Jesus say the words, I am the way. I am the truth. And I am the life. And no one
can come to the father except through me. There is an exclusivity
in Christ teaching that is so prolific. That for someone to
say that people who just worship a God, they're really worshiping
the one and only God, they just don't know him that well. Makes
that sound silly. I used to think that I remember
at the age of 15 meeting the first person who I thought was
Muslim, but he wasn't. He was a nation of Islam, big
difference. And I remember thinking as he told me about his God using
the Old Testament, I think, oh, he believes the same God I do,
but he doesn't because he didn't believe in Christ. And believing
in Christ is not what the culture would say about you do this,
or you say this, or you act on this, or you come down the aisle
for this, or you do these, or you do that, do that. There's
nowhere in the Bible that that's found. Since the day of Christ, people
have been preaching a false Christ. People have been preaching a
false approach to God. People have been segwaying in
their iteration of Jesus, their version of Jesus into their so-called
gospel message. And friends, it's getting worse
and it's going to get worse. It's not going to get better.
And we'll see more and more as we hold to the words of Christ,
we will see more and more people who claim to be in Christ begin
to hate our message to the point they hate us. And what does it
look like? For most of us, it won't be observable. It'll just sort of be after we
leave the room, people go, can you believe they're in that cult? Well, after they leave the room,
I can't, you know, shh, don't say anything about Jesus in front
of them, because they'll ask questions. Or they'll say something to your
face, but most likely it's behind your back. And you'll hear about
it. There's no honor amongst thieves,
there's no honor amongst gossips, there's no honor amongst murderers. You'll hear about it. The Christ
that is revealed to us through the lens of scripture is the
only Christ that is truly the Christ. The word Christ is Messiah. He's the only Savior. He's the
only Redeemer. His name is Jesus. So Jesus emphasizes
this in verse 45. To say, not only are you believing
in the one who sent me, this is the authority through which
Christ comes. This is what I was trying to get to, and I got sidetracked.
Sorry. Christ is different than every other person because he
comes by the authority of God, the Father. Now I know it may
be troubling. Well, what is this triune God?
What does triune even mean? Tri means three, une means one.
One God in three persons, that's what triune means. We're not
Unitarians. We don't believe in one God,
one person, three manifestations. We're not modalists. We don't
believe that God changes into the Son, into the Spirit, into
the Father. The Bible teaches Trinitarian
doctrine throughout. And those of you who were at
our conference in May, you got years worth of teaching in nine
lectures. And it's on the church website.
Just go and listen to it. If you paid for that in a classroom,
it cost you six figures. It take you 10 years to parse
the word of God, to figure all that out on your own. But yet
these brothers came and just gave it to us. Their life's work. Did you invest in it? Did you
eat of it? Whoever believes, believes the
one who sent me. That's the emphasis Jesus is
showing. And so whoever sees me, sees
the one who sent me. In the future here, the disciples will say, show
us the father. Show us the father. Just that's
all we want to do. We want to see God. You see,
we want to see God the Father. That's what Moses wanted. You've
heard me talk about this many times since John five, because
it's just it's always on the coattails of this teaching. I
just want to see God. I want to see your face, God.
I want to see the face of the father. I want to see the face
of my God. I want to see the face of my creator. I want to
feel the hands of my creator. I want to see the eyes of the
one who made me and loves me. And Jesus said, look at me. And
you'll see the father. He's not saying I am the Father.
He's saying I am one with the Father. And the authority of
God the Father who cannot be seen is seen in me. The work
of God the Father cannot be observed, but it is observed when I do
it. The words of God the Father come through me. Who walked in
the garden with the first humans? It is Jesus Christ, the Eternal
Son. Who did Joshua bow down to? Who
did the patriarchs eat lunch with? Jesus Christ, God the Son. And then Jesus created Mary and
created the womb from which he was born and created himself
a body and then came into the world so that his people, by
the will of God, would be able to see their God face to face. That's what it means. The fullness
of His glory. What is glory? What is the glory
of God? We talked about this several
months ago. The glory of God is the revealing of God as He
truly is. In John 11, when Jesus says,
this death does not, this sickness does not lead to death, but that
the son of God may be glorified through it. So Jesus is saying,
God, the father ordained and decreed that Lazarus death would
be the means through which I would reveal the fullness of who I
am in my divine person. And it would reveal the fullness
of who I am by the authority from which I came. from God the
Father. And there will be no, absolutely
no doubt. But what does man do without
being born again? They don't doubt. They know when
they suppress that which they know. Romans one teaches that
clearly. And we do the same thing. Our
culture is notorious for suppressing the truth of the gospel in the
name of Christ. Whatever Christ they think. And
friends, these aren't these aren't doctrinal problems. These aren't
theological things. These aren't academic issues.
These are eternal life issues. Because Jesus starts that out,
believes in me, believes in the one who sent me. You're not just
believing in Jesus, you're believing in the father, you believe in
the father who is the author of salvation. He is the one who
sent the son to do the work that he declared for him to do. And when we see Christ, we see
God, the father. Verse 46, I have come into the
world as light. Now, I know if we're not careful,
if we don't read in context. And the context would not contradict
itself. We can easily start to impose
the idea that Jesus just reveals himself to everybody. Is that
true? No, it's not true. Matter of
fact, the very prologue of the gospel we read before the service
reminds us that he came to us on his own, did not receive him.
He came to the world, the world did not know it. But all who
did know Him, all who did receive Him, that is, those who believed
in His name, He gave the right to be the children of God, not
by the will of their flesh, nor the decision of their mind, nor
the blood of their genealogy, but by the will of God. And when
the will of God is to show His people His glory through His
Son alone, it's the only way in which we can know God. The
Jews throughout millennia could not know God. They had his oracles, they had
his prophets, and they preached and they killed them all. And they preached and they went
into slavery, and they preached and they went into rebellion,
and they preached and preached and preached. And out of the
world, God created a nobody who became somebody, Abram, who was
a pagan worshiping the moon. That was his answer. That was
his Christ. And God, by his by the counsel
of his own will before the foundation of the world, purposed to take
Abram out so that he would show his purpose of election in the
whole totality of the human race, to pull a people out of this
human race who were condemned to save for his own glory. And
then as that particular people, Abram, who was not an obedient
man, whose faith was credited to him as righteousness, because
he believed in the one who had the power and the promise of
eternal life, God the Father. who promised to send God the
son to Adam. Jesus declared himself the savior of Adam to his face. And then out of Israel, as they
grew, it wasn't the firstborn of Abram of Abraham, who was
the son. It wasn't the firstborn of Abraham
who was Ishmael that had nothing to do with human will, had nothing
to do with human plans. It didn't matter what they did
or how many children they had before. Isaac was the son of promise. So it didn't matter how many
sons you had, Abraham. It didn't count. Didn't matter
how many children come from your loins until my son of promise
is born the way I want him to be. There is no election. And
so even in Israel, even through the lineage of Abraham, God chose
one, a particular person to prove that he alone is the author of
salvation. He is the redeemer. He is the
one who creates his way and has his way. And then even out of all of the
history of Israel, the nation of Israel, God condemned the
majority of them generation after generation, after generation,
after generation. But yet he would save a small
minority of them. He called the remnant, which
we know as true Israel, that we are grafted into as those
who are in Christ. So even out of the physical choosing
of a people, God's purpose of election is then further microscopically
revealed. I have come into the world as
light. I've come to the world to reveal
the Father in the fullness, to reveal God to you, for I am God
and I do the work of God the Father. The light is the life of men.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome
it. So Jesus does not reveal himself to everyone. Jesus does not show every human
being the truth. I can preach the word of God.
Do you understand this? Listen, regeneration. And defining
these terms may be a little difficult, so we might have to go through
this next week or something. But regeneration. It's not set
through any visible means. According to Jesus' teaching
in John 3, God the Spirit blows as He wishes, when He wishes,
where He wishes. So that means that only when
God the Spirit wants to regenerate His people will He regenerate
His people. There's nothing that man can
do to press that reality. But we know that regeneration
precedes faith. We know that faith is on the
cuff of the new birth. And we know that it always faith
always comes with truth, doesn't it? In order to believe in something,
you have to know of something. So God then purposes through
natural means of the word that he's given to the prophets and
the apostles that at that moment, as he wishes, he brings to life
his people who then will believe what they hear concerning Christ.
That's salvation. That's the gospel message. That's
evangelism. Why are we teaching it differently
as a culture? Because the devil has been in the business of the
false gospel since the garden. God promised Adam and Eve life.
And the devil said, I can make it better. I've come to the world as light.
so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. Now, there's groups of people
in the world today who hate spiritual things, groups of people in the
world today who hate religious things, who hate mystical things. They count them silly. They count
them foolish. And sometimes when we hear these
words in the gospels, we think, oh, that's what he's talking
about. He's talking about these pagan unbelievers, anti-Christ type
people. Well, those adjectives might work. However, in light
of what we see here, at one time, a few years before Jesus, these
words would have applied to Nicodemus. These words applied to Caiaphas
in John 12. These words applied. to the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
These words apply to most evangelicals. These words apply to people who
live comfortably under the guise of thinking that the decision
that they made for Christ is a sufficient decision to get
them into heaven. What decision? You don't make
a decision to believe what you see. You were given eyes to see
it, and you believe it. And believing is not saying,
oh yeah, that's true. Believing is trusting. Pestis or Pestuan in the Greek
connotes the idea that there is an absolute convincing that
Christ is my righteousness. You see, what is salvation all
about anyway? What is it? What's the core of salvation?
is that we are sinners and God must in some way, in order for
us to stand in His presence, make us righteous. How are we
to become righteous? Do you know if you're not declared
righteous, you will suffer and die in your sins? and forever
you will be subject to the wrath of God. If you are not perfect
in absolutely every way, you will suffer the wrath of God.
If you are not in every detail of your thought or your mind
in every aspect, when you were an infant and you cried because
your daddy snatched the toy out of your hand because you hit
your mother with it, it is worthy of wrath. Do you know because
of that you are worthy of justice? Because you were born into this
world under the guilt of Adam, you deserve the justice of God.
And the only way that you can escape the justice of God is
that you are declared absolutely sinless, having never sinned
in thought, word, or deed, or essence. Your ontology, that
means your being, the existence, cannot become from a human being
who was a sinner. So how are you going to escape
the wrath of God? By being just like Jesus in every
aspect. How are you going to be like
Jesus? This is the gospel. His obedience and His death established
you before God. Perfect. Because it's been credited
to you, the perfection of Christ. That's it. So faith in Jesus,
believing in Jesus is believing that His life and His death is
how you're righteous before God. It's not a righteousness of our
own. God is not. Listen to what I'm about to say.
God is not in the business of transforming sinners into righteous
people so that he can measure us at the day of judgment. He
goes, see, look at my good work. It's not happening. People teach
that they're liars, but they're deceived. God is in the business of saying,
here is my perfect son and his humanity is perfect. His death
was unwarranted. So it satisfied my judgment against
my people, my elect people. So therefore now there is no
condemnation for those for whom Christ died. And when that gospel
is presented by the Holy Spirit's power, you believe that Christ
is your only hope to stand before God justified as if you've never
sinned before God whatsoever. This is the gospel. Unconverted
people, unregenerate people can't grasp it. They want to come to
the table of saying, okay, it's Jesus, now what do I do to get
it? How do I come to the table of salvation and which cup do
I drink from? Sort of like the, you know, that
thing in that movie, whatever, Indiana Jones. Which one's the
cup that I drink from to give me eternal life? The blood of Christ is what you
drink from. The body of Christ is what you eat of. That's what we do. And when we
are able to know that it is the blood and the body of Christ
alone that satisfies God's wrath for us, we have been born again. And that is saving faith that
we believe in that we trust in him. And when we find ourselves
in sin, we have an advocate with the father. Lord, I know that
I'm sinning. Help lead me out of temptation. Jesus models that. And sin is not always this grievous,
wicked action. Sometimes it's this omission,
this laziness, this apathy, this spiritual refusal of getting
involved with the word of God, because you know it's going to
cause a wave of frustration in your life. But the joy that comes through
Christ. dispels the darkness. The light
that we have, we who have been shown the truth of Jesus, are
not in darkness. We do not stumble around with
self-righteousness. We don't stumble around trying
to figure out our way of honoring the Lord. Is my hair too long?
Is my hair too short? Is my lipstick too cold? Is it
too bright? You know, should I wear a hat
in church? Should I wear a hat in church? Should I wear flip-flops?
Should I wear shorts? Should I watch a movie if it's
got killing in it? Is Spider-Man sinful? Probably. No, I'm not joking about this
stuff, it's just I mean, why are we spending our life doing
that when we need to spend our lives rejoicing that we're not
in darkness? Verse 47, if anyone hears my
words and does not keep them, listen, If anyone hears, let
me tell you what the words of Christ are, if anyone hears all
that I've taught concerning myself and the salvation of my people
and does not keep them, that's what that means, I do not judge
him. You see what I said earlier?
I could build a really awesome cult out of that text. Because
I did not come to judge the world but to save it. Now what does
it mean to keep the word of God? What does it mean to keep the
words of Christ? Faith comes by hearing, hearing through the
words of Christ. That's what it says in Romans 10, 17 and all the
manuscripts. That's what your Bible should
say. Hearing comes through the word of Christ. The teaching
of Christ, the revelation of God's redemption through the
person of Jesus Christ, not only is teaching, then the apostles
come and they teach Christ. And then pastors come and teach
the apostles. And then you take the, you know, and you teach
it to each other, teach it to yourself. We all learn together.
We're growing in the knowledge of grace and the finished work
of Christ. But there are many people who
hear the words, but do not keep them. What does that mean? It's
like, if I give you directions and I say to you, Oh, you asked,
where is this? And I say, you go out the door,
you take a left two blocks, take a right. It's five feet on the,
on the right. You go, OK, and you just leave and go to McDonald's. Well, I tell you, Jesus Christ
is your righteousness or you will die in your sins and you
go, OK. I'm living pretty good, I'm all
right. I love the Lord, I'm OK. That's not keeping the words
of Christ. Not holding to the gospel, you see that it's not
about behavior, it's about belief. holding the word of God, keeping
the word of God. And James deals with this very
clearly to the saints who are sealed by the spirit, who cannot
be lost. James and first John are taught
to saints who will never be lost about living a little bit like
they love one another because Christ loved them. If anyone hears my words and
does not keep them, you hear the gospel, you hear what I'm
doing with my body and my blood, Jesus says, and you just sort
of ignore them. And I don't judge you. The point of me coming and being
the light is not to tell you you're in darkness, you're just
going to stay there if you don't keep my words. You're in darkness
already because you love the darkness. Jesus said in Nicodemus,
you love your religion. You love the Sanhedrin. You love
the Bible. You love meeting on the Sabbath.
You love sacrificing. You love prayer. You love theology
answers. You love all these cool things
that we do in the world for the sake of Yahweh. You love all
this stuff. You love evangelicalism. You
love missions trips. You love VBS. You love all this
cool stuff. But you're not hearing my words.
You're not keeping my word. I'm not going to judge you. You're judged already. I came to save my people out
of the world, not just Jews. I mean, most of the Jews are
condemned. I'm going to save my people out
of the world. And if we stopped there, we could really infuse
what we could at. Because we've got the rest of
the Bible and we've got the first 12, we got the 12 chapters of
John already, so we know he's not gonna contradict himself.
So we see verse 48, the one who rejects me. See, not keeping
the word of God is just basically rejecting. Not believing on what
Christ says is basically rejecting Christ. But the one who rejects
me and does not receive my words, you see, that's how I know that
I'm right. Because the Bible says in the
very next sentence, the one who doesn't receive my words and
keep my words are the ones who reject me. They have a judge. It's not me.
I'm a savior. But what's going to judge them?
What's going to judge? See the beautiful promise of
salvation. If you believe in me, you're not just believing
in me, you're believing in the one who sent me. And the one
who sent me, I'm doing the work. I'm the light. And the one who
sent me sent me to be the light to save my people who believe
in me out of darkness. And they're not in darkness anymore.
They have eternal life. But those who do not keep my
word and not stay in the gospel, who do not believe that I am
their righteousness, do not believe in all that I've said, do not
drink of my blood and eat of my flesh by faith. I'm not going
to judge them. My word is going to judge them.
How's that work? The word that I've spoken will
judge them on the last day. Let's use one of the most benign
words of Christ. Come all who are thirsty. Pretty cool, huh? I think about John 6 and when
he fed those people and they stayed up all night by the thousands. And God blew boats over to the
shore so they could get in boats and come to Capernaum and find
him. And he said, Oh, Rabbi, when did you come here? And he
rebukes them sharply and said, Do not labor for the food that
perishes, but labor for the bread that endures to eternal life. I am the bread that comes down
from heaven. What do they say? What must we
be doing? What does God expect of us? What
kind of work should we be living? What kind of life should we be
leading? What kind of worship should we
be doing that God would give us this life, give us this bread?
Where do we come from? What sign do you bring to prove
that you have the bread from the Ark of the Covenant? Your
forefathers ate the bread in the wilderness and they died.
I am the true bread that comes down from heaven. Imagine that
for a second. How is it that Jesus, how is that word judge
people in the judgment at the end of the life, at the end of
the time? I am the true bread that comes
down from heaven that gives life to all men. And those people
who reject that and do not keep that word are judged by that
very thing. Why? Because it is an absolute
assertion with divine authority from God himself who sent his
son to preach these words. And at the day of judgment, we're
not going to be measured by what we've done. We're going to be
measured by have we kept the word of Christ? All of you who believe that I
am the bread of life and have trusted in me as the bread of
life, enter into my kingdom. The rest of you depart from me,
you workers of iniquity, for I do not know you and I have
never known. You see how the Word of Christ
judges? Because if it is true, there's not a loophole. The Word
of God has no loopholes. If Christ said, I am the way
and you go into another way, you're lost. If Christ declares
that he lays down his life for his sheep, and you subject that teaching
to your own philosophy, then you've rejected the very essence
of Jesus' redemption through his body and his blood. The word that I've spoken will
judge him on the last day. And what did the Pharisees do?
Now this is all recapitulation. This is out of like seven or
eight different chapters. What happens when Jesus, in John
chapter 5, in John chapter 7 and 8, when He starts to teach these
things, what happens with the religious leaders who are very
astute, very versed in Scripture? They begin to accuse Jesus of
having a demon. They begin to accuse Jesus of
being blasphemous. Why? Because He makes Himself
equal with God. They begin to accuse Jesus of trying to usurp
the authority of God, or usurp the authority of the Sanhedrin,
or to usurp the authority of Caesar. They'll take whatever
they can get. That's how Jesus gets to the cross. They try to
attempt to get Rome to think he's a problem. Rome dismisses
the case. But fear of uprising, they kill
him anyway. And then here he reiterates,
for I've not spoken of my own authority. I'm not just a man
here speaking truth. I speak the very words of God. The one who sent me. I speak
the very words of the father. Remember in the very beginning
of the letter and we see Jesus calling the disciples and he
calls the first few. What does he do? He says something
extremely amazing. Nathanael comes. And as Jesus
saw him in John 1, verse 47, says Jesus saw Nathanael coming
toward him and said, Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there
is no guile. or deceit, E-S-V. And Nathanael
said to him, how do you know me? And Jesus answered him, before
Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. The omniscience of Jesus as God.
I knew where you were. I saw you, I know what you were
thinking, I know what was going through your heart. I know what was going
through your mind. I didn't have to look and see,
I know. Nathaniel answered him, Rabbi,
you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus says, because I said to
you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? Nathaniel,
you will see greater things than these. Truly, truly, I say to
you, you will see heaven opened. And you will see angels of God
ascending and descending on the son of man. I've not come on my own authority. But the father who sent me has
himself given me this commandment. What commandment? Say what I
tell you to say. That's a commandment. Say what I say to speak. And
I know, verse 50, that this commandment that His commandment is eternal
life. What's He just said there? Gosh,
I need to preach this again next time. Took too long to get here, didn't
it? God has saying that Christ revealing
Himself to His people is the means through which God will
save them. and the proclamation of His imputed
righteousness. What's imputation? If I have
a billion dollars and I give you a signature card, if I put it on your account,
it's not your money, you didn't earn it, but every time a debt
comes due, it's paid. Righteousness is not ours. It belongs to Christ and it is
in our account. And every time we are accused
of sin, Christ's word says no. It's paid. It's finished. What I say is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say
is the father has told me back to the beginning of the sermon. This world is inundated with
spiritual garbage. People want to see things, feel
things, experience things, know things, do things. And if you read God's word, God
is alive in your soul. The power of the gospel of free
and sovereign grace is active and living and breathing. How
do you think Paul could say, it is not I who live, but Christ
who lives within me? Because not only did Paul abide
by the grace of God and the Word of God, he disciplined himself
to maintain the practice of staying in the Word. And the crazy thing
is, Paul wasn't reading his letters for that grace. He was reading
the prophets. Let's pray. Lord, that you might give us
the joy that is ours in Christ. Thank you, Father, for your gospel,
for the body of Jesus, for the blood of Jesus to establish us
before you justified. To credit his perfection, his
perfect obedience. His substitutional death. To satisfy your wrath to us,
to apply it to your people. that You had determined and decreed
before the foundations of the world, before You made any man,
You had already decreed to save Your people. Father, as we go to this moment
of worship, let us forever remember this beautiful good news of the
words of Christ as He's taught us the truth of His grace toward
us. 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.