This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at www.gracetruth.org and www.anchoringfaith.org. A
people for His glory, by His grace. That's like when you used to
have those weekly or those, you know, ongoing revival meetings. Y'all remember those? And the
pastor would say on that first day on Sunday morning, if there's
ever going to be a time you don't want to miss, it's tonight. And
then that night he'd say, now, the only time you don't want
to miss is tomorrow night. And it's just, you know, it's the same
hot dog every time you go. They make it sound so good the
day before. John's gospel. There's a lot
of bad in that. Sorry, guys. John's gospel. John 11. Let's read verse 38 through verse 54. Then Jesus, deeply moved again,
came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay
against it. Jesus said, Take away the stone.
Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this
time there is an odor, for he has been dead four days. Jesus
said to her, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would
see the glory of God? So they took away the stone, and Jesus
lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you
have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this
on account of the people standing around, that they may believe
that you sent me. When he had said these things, he cried out
with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The man who had died came
out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face
wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, Unbind him
and let him go. Many of the Jews, therefore,
who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in
him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what
Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the
Pharisees gathered the council and said, What are we to do?
For this man performs many signs. If we let him continue this way,
everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and
take away both our place and our nation. But one of them,
Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You
know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better
for you that one man should die for the people, not that the
whole nation should perish. He did not say this of his own
accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that
Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only,
but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered
abroad. So from that day on, they made plans to put him to
death. Jesus, therefore, no longer walked openly among the Jews,
but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town
called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples. Now, verse 55 is a segue into chapter
12, so it doesn't go with what we're doing, but that's where
they put the number, so that's why I stopped there. Here we've seen the ministry
of Jesus now for three years as displayed in John's Gospel.
For those of you who've read through the synoptics, you know
there's a lot more that took place. The Bible even says that
there's not enough paper in the world to hold what Jesus has
said and done. And so now we're at the place
where Jesus is validating His claim to be God, validating His
claim to be sent by God the Father, and proving the fact that He
has the power over life and death. He's shown in many ways who He
is and what He can do. And people have been in awe of
what He can do. They have followed Him because
of His power. They've followed Him because of His kindness.
They've followed Him because of His teaching. They've followed
Him for many different ways, but only a small few have actually
followed Him because they've been born of God. And throughout all the discourses
that he's had with different groups of people, none have been
as scathing as his dialogue with the Jews, with the Pharisees,
the Sadducees, the chief priests, the high priestly families, and
so on. And one of the reasons that they
hate him so much is because, as we've already seen, he robs
them of glory that they feel they deserve. He robs them. Much like pastors sometimes feel
robbed when one of their church members says, oh, I listened
to a sermon this week, by such and such. Or I really, you know, we traveled
and I visited church, oh, that Sunday school class I was in,
or that Bible study I went to, I mean, the Lord just really
used it. Isn't that amazing? People get, they get uptight
about that. Now, you get uptight if you're
listening to a heretic or if you're being overcome by some
falsehood, but it doesn't matter, really. Because the Word of God
is going to teach you rightly, and we're going to correct that,
it's going to be done. But there are people in this world who
love their self-glory. They think that they're something.
If a million people know your name, you're really not special. You're not special. To have fame
is to be exposed to all people. You're the common denominator
in the life of a lot of mysterious, unique individuals who have far
more worth than you. But that's what happens in the
life of people who feel esteemed in their own heart. We feel like
that people are coming to hear them say what they need to say
because they have something to say. Look at the blogosphere.
I mean, 20-something years ago, when my wife and I began to write
online, it was really just a journal. Nobody looked at stuff like that.
And now, somebody gets a thousand people wanting to hear what they
have to say, and they're a god in their own hearts. And whether
it be in ministry or music or whatever, how many YouTube stars
are making millions of dollars? It's a pathetic life, it really
is, in comparison to the reality of the glory of Christ. It's
just a wasted, hogpen life. That's what life is without Christ,
it's a wasted hogpen. The pods mixed with manure that
the prodigal son in Luke 15 desired to eat was worth more than the
life of a wasted man. They had more value than the
man did. The Jews in Jesus' day loved
glory, but they did not love the glory that comes from God,
as we'll see, and that's just about a direct quote from John
chapter 12, where many would believe in Jesus, but we know
that that faith was spurious. It was not a divine work. See,
regeneration precedes faith. Now, people will argue with you
on that, but there's no other way to put it. Scripture teaches
it very plainly. In other words, you must be born
again before you can actually have faith in Jesus Christ. Now,
of course, you can believe some things about Christ, but any
man can do that. Even the demons can believe who
Christ is. But it's always going to be subject
to our own cultural ideals and philosophies if we are not born
of God. If we're not born of God, then
we're not going to be granted divine faith. Faith is a gift
of God. It's not an exercise of the volition
of man. We've already learned that. It's said several times
in Scripture. It is not by the will of man.
It is not by the decision of man. It is not by the andros,
the mind, the head of man. Which, by the way, just for your
fun facts, andros can also be translated husband, head, mind. It is by the work of God alone
that causes a man to be born again. And only when that man
is born again has he been given the mind to be able to see. Only when Jesus opened the eyes
of the man born blind could the man see. The man could envision
all he wanted. I wonder what this man looks
like. I wonder who Jesus is. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.
And he could read an entire poetic, I don't know, volumes about the
face of Christ. But until Christ opened his eyes
to see him, he could not see him. And until Christ proclaimed
to his new eyes, I am He, he could not see him. and all the miracles of Christ,
all of them were for the sake of the glory of the Father. They
were all to point to the truth that unless God works divinely
in an unregenerate lost person, that person will die in their
sins. Now there is a group and individuals
we would call traditionalists who would argue until the cows
come home and then pack up and leave because they're tired of
the fighting. that there is something that God needs for us to do in
order for Him to work for us. As a matter of fact, I've been
told by a few people, a lot of people in my lifetime, but just
in the last few weeks, I've been told by a few people that until
we do something to move toward God, that He cannot, according
to His nature, do anything for us. Because He holds fast to
the freedom of our will. Where is that? I mean, of course,
it works. In this example, doesn't it?
Lazarus decaying in the tomb, and he surely did, was thinking
about the idea. Man, my body's really sitting
here. I don't want to be in this tomb anymore. I don't want to
be dead. And, you know, he's sitting there thinking, and he can hear
the voice of Jesus. Lazarus, he's going, do I, do I not? Do
I, okay, I'm coming back. Thank you, Jesus, for calling
me. I never would have, never would have given it a thought
until you called me. See, you wooed me with your powerful words,
Jesus. Your voice is so soothing, and
I came right in. Or maybe the blind man, you know, has never
seen. It's impossible for him to see. And Jesus just spits in the dirt,
puts mud on his eyes, and tells him to go wash his eyes. That
man could have said, you know what? I don't want my sight back. Too late. Too late! Jesus gave him his sight. He
didn't have to want it. Jesus gave the man who didn't
walk for 38 years his legs. And he sat there in his self-pity,
in his self-religion, in his self-righteousness, that's what
a picture of all this is, asking for money, sitting at the pool
of Bethesda, waiting for somebody to dip him into the majestic
waters, the magic waters, the angel wings. And even when Jesus asked that
man, do you want to be healed? He says, nobody's going to take
me to the water. They're too slow. I need some fast people.
I'm going to rah, wah, wah, wah, wah. And Jesus never does a thing
and says a thing about his legs. He doesn't touch him. He doesn't
rub. He doesn't pull them to make one come longer than the
other and all that other garbage. I learned that in the first grade,
by the way, out of a Mark Wilson magic book. He just commands the man to stand
up and take his mat. And dude just went, boom, took
his mat. violated the Sabbath twice that day and it enraged
the Pharisees. Why? Because the Pharisees had
everybody where they wanted them. Scared of eternal judgment and
knowing that the only way they could stand before God is if
these people, these groups of people, I'm going to speak to
the first person as if I'm a Pharisee, as if I, the chief priests and
all my little fledglings, point you to God. You'll never see. And that's how sometimes people
feel that they are in the ministry of the cross. That's how the
Pharisees... We point people to God. This
man doesn't have the right. He's a lawbreaker. He's a wicked
man. He's a sinner. We're the conduit
to God. We're the mediator. I'm the chief
priest. But Jesus is God come to man,
setting up His tent with us, that we may see face to face
with no mediator but Christ, the fullness of the glory of
God. And Jesus, I saw this question
somewhere recently. It wasn't asked of me, I just
saw it. Is John 11, the resurrection
of Lazarus, A place where you can teach regeneration precedes
faith. Yes. Indeed. Yes. God, not only did He command
Lazarus to life, He brought him out of the tomb. And what we'll see during this
little segue is that even when Christ is proven Even when the
Word of God is obvious, even when God's people stand on truth,
there is a majority, not of pagan God-haters, there is no God,
not that type of people. You notice you don't see many
of those in the narrative of Scripture. Just like you don't
see many of those in the culture of the South. But what you do see is a lot
of Pharisees. What you do see is a lot of self-glory
seekers. What you do see is a lot of people
who want to be seen and want to be heard instead of getting
out of the way that Christ may be seen and heard. With what
we say, we should be I don't know, displaying the words of
Christ, the mind of Christ, the heart of Christ, the compassion
of Christ. This is what it means to be an ambassador of someone
else, that we speak on their behalf, that we live on their
behalf, that we work on their behalf. This is the point of
what Christ has done in the lives of His people. That it's not about us, but it's
about Him and His glory. I recently read a book, and it's
a terrible book, You ever read a book and you
feel like you need to go bathe when you get through? This was
a theological book. And I'm going, why did I... I
just couldn't put it down. It's like, you know, is somebody else
going to catch on fire here? Let's just keep watching this
morbid thing. Like, you can't help your... And I got through
reading and I'm thinking, this is terrible. This person was
postulating that the whole reason that we do what we do as Christians
is so that we can engage with the unchurched in such a way
that they would have a reason to want to come and be close
to Jesus. It's nothing new. You know, Robert
Shuler had this mindset. Charles Finney had this mindset.
A lot of people had this mindset. It is the bedrock of traditionalism
in our culture. We've got to reach, teach, love,
live, laugh, leftovers. Amen. That's bad to see. I'm
going to eat. But the body of Christ have been
made alive by the Lord Jesus through the Spirit of God. And
then as we are alive, we learn by the Spirit through the teaching
of the Word of God. We come together not so that
we can figure something out to do that's different than the
world offers, or maybe a little bit better, but a little Jesus
sprinkles on top of it. We come together because we are united
with the same Spirit. And we want to eat real food. We want to eat sheep food. We
want to eat the Word of God. We want to eat the truth. We
want to find camaraderie and intimacy in a way that we actually
see the power of God manifested in the people of God in a true
sense. Not in a superficial way. The
true sense in which Jesus raised this dead man to life. So has
He raised you and me to life. But I would say that the new
birth is a greater miracle than the resurrection of the body.
The new birth is the righteousness of God displayed because God
in His righteousness, let's use the word justice in place of
that for a few minutes. God's justice is satisfied in
the killing of Jesus Christ. Jesus who is truly man and at
the same time truly God. suffered on the cross in place
of His people alone, so that God's justice is satisfied in
forgiving and forbearing with wicked sinners." Who are His? His elect, His people. Jesus was raised from the dead
and He overcame death because He was not guilty of sin and
did not deserve death. So His righteousness is vindicated. His death is proven to be what? Substitutionary. Jesus substituted
for His people and it is finished. The righteousness of God prevails
and is displayed apart from the law through Jesus Christ who
satisfied God's wrath and God the Father put Him forward. This
is the plan, this section of Scripture is where this comes
to a real, a reality for Jesus in time. It was a reality for
Jesus, the Son of God, eternally. But here is where it sort of,
the rubber hit the road. Because they saw everything Jesus
did. Keep this in view. Jesus starts his ministry. What
happens when John the Baptist comes on the scene before Christ
is identified? John the Baptist is preaching. John the Baptist
is baptizing. That's why they call him the
baptizer, the Baptist, the dipper, the sprayer, whatever, however
iteration you want to find out. He's the Baptist. And he's preaching
the Pharisees, the chief priests, some of these groups of the Sanhedrin,
some of these people come to him and say, who are you? By what authority are you baptizing? And he says, I'm not the Christ.
Are you Elijah? No. I'm the voice crying out
in the wilderness, make straight the path of the Lord. Behold
the Lamb of God. Behold the One who takes away
the sins of the world. Behold. I'm not worthy to unlace
or lace up His sandals. He who came after me is before
me. And they go and they inquire,
and Jesus is on the scene. And what do they do in the beginning
of Jesus' ministry? After the wilderness, after His
baptism, and then the wilderness temptation of 40 days, Jesus
comes into the synagogues and He begins to teach. And He teaches
the year of Jubilee, the year of redemption, the favor of the
Lord. And it says that all the hearts
and eyes were tuned to His teaching because He was so gracious. Why? Because He was giving them what
they thought applied to them. And they're thinking, wow, this
is a prophet of God, this is a teacher, and we love the teacher. We love the teacher. Anybody
that starts to preach, I mean, Jesse can tell you this firsthand,
you get out there in the community, you start to preach, everybody's
like, oh, we just love you, we want you to come preach here,
we want you to come preach here, until they hear you a few times, until
they actually listen to what you're saying. And they wanted to listen to
Jesus. And then that very first event of His teaching ministry,
after His wilderness temptation, those people's hearts turned
on Him in a quick second. Because then He preached other
parts of Scripture that says, but this isn't for you. As God
shut the heavens and the wombs of His people and opened up blessings
on pagans, such shall He do this day with the kingdom. And you
know what they wanted to do? Push Him out of the temple and
push him over the cliff and kill him. But the scripture says that
Jesus divinely walked through their midst and escaped. And
that was the first day of his public ministry. And here is
the last day of his public ministry, or his last week. And here's
this last season of Christ. You've seen people love Him and
believe and cherish Him and try to share the glory. Oh, you know,
because that's what you do if somebody's taken away your glory. One of the greatest things you
can do is to sort of stand next to Him. Stand next to Him. Just get close to Him. You remember
a couple of years ago when President Obama was speaking and there
was this guy standing next to him in the podium doing sign
language? And he was making up sign language. He just jumped
out of the crowd and stood there and started signing. Secret Service
and everybody just stood there. And the reason they caught him
is because there's a lot of deaf people watching TV and they're
like, what is this guy doing swatting gnats? I mean, what
is he doing? And he was brought in and investigated. But, dude,
that man had his day in the limelight. He stood next to the president
without authorization. I mean, that's just a real gutsy
move. And he pulled it off. And, you
know, just get close and share the glory here. I can't shake
his hand or stand up there and rub his shoulders, but I can
pretend like I'm interpreting. And that's what they tried to
do with Jesus. That's what they tried to do
with him. That's what Lucifer tried to do with God. I want
to stand up there and show everybody that I'm just as glorious as
you are. I'm just as awesome as you are. I'm radiating the
same essence as you. Why can't I be just like you?
That's what He tempted Adam and Eve with. You'll be just like
God. And so the first step in this process of Jesus' ministry
was that these spiritual leaders wanted to get to know Him, wanted
to bring Him into their fold. I mean, nothing greater than
seeing a firecracker preacher full of right theology that you
can just grab in and stick up under your arm and say, look
what I made. He was a made man before he got here, but you want
to take credit for it. I see that often. I see it in
the seminaries often. People want glory and want credit
for everything they do. Keep that in mind. Nicodemus,
we know that you come from God, but Jesus says you've got to
be born from the Spirit. You can't see me or enter into
me unless you're born of God. No matter what you think. And so many times when we see
belief in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of John,
we see it says many believe. It's not a true faith. It's a
faith in Jesus in some sense. But it's typically that He is
Messiah as they see it. not Messiah as He reveals Himself. You see the difference? Oh, the
blind man sees, the lame walk, the dead have been raised alive.
He can really put our country back together. He can really
make our nation work again. He can get Rome out of here. They've forgotten what the prophet
Ezekiel had said to them. It's not for your sake that I'm
about to work. It's not for your sake that I'm
about to act, Israel, you who have defamed my name among the
nations. It is for My great name. Let's
restate that into Yohanan verbiage, to John's language. It is for
My glory that I'm about to do what I'm about to do. And He
brought the remnant of Israel out of captivity. And in the
same way, He will bring His elect sheep out of the captivity of
death and judgment. But the Jews of His day, All
they wanted was to be a people for their own glory in the sense
that they thought they were glorifying God. So, let's get into this
text. Many of the Jews, verse 45, therefore,
who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in
him. You remember? They came out of the house with
Mary, they saw, and it says they believed in him. Now, there are
two ways in which we should take this. We should take this at
its heart. It says they believed in him.
They were granted faith. They were born again. That was
true of some of them. But it wasn't true of all of
them. And it wasn't true of those who
believed in him in John chapter 10, where Jesus turns. What does
he say? He turned to those that believed
in him and said, you are the sons of Satan. And the reason
you cannot believe in me is because you don't belong to me. And he
reiterates what he said over in John 6, the Father hasn't
given you to me. I'm not going to pay for your
sins. You're going to die. Unless you believe, like says
John 8, that I am, you will die on your sins. So we see many
times over, the end of John 2 going into John 3, many believe. And
then we see Nicodemus talking with Jesus personally, and that's
the type of belief they had. Oh, we know that you're the one
come from God, and we know that you're Messiah, and we know that you're
the prophet, whatever. But their view of who the prophet
and who Messiah was to be was a political messiah. Not a spiritual
Messiah. Not a Messiah to save them from
God's judgment because of their innate guilt and sin because
they didn't see sin in their lives. They lived very good lives. They lived very religious lives.
They lived lives that were, by the standard of the common man,
impossible to keep. But many believed. Let's take
it at face value here because there's a contrast there in verse
46. So some of them believed, but some of them went to the
Pharisees. They saw what he did. They saw some of their fellow
Jews This man is from God. Whatever their belief looked
like, whatever they confessed, they saw them no longer having
disdain for Jesus, but honoring Jesus. And the only thing they
knew to do was to run tell the Pharisees. I think I closed it
out reading this text last week. They tattletaled on Jesus. Ooh,
Jesus, He raised Lazarus from the dead. Ooh, He's in trouble
now. I mean, see the absurdity in
that? When I say that like a little
child would say it in preschool or grade school, it's funny.
But it's worse than that. So hated is the doctrine of Jesus
Christ as spiritual Messiah, as God incarnate, as the resurrection
and the life. So hated is that truth in the
flesh of humanity that they would rather Him die than deal with
it. They'd rather Him die. So they
went and told the Pharisees, Why would they do that? Because
the Pharisees couldn't stand him anyway. Remember, before
they went here to Bethany, some of the disciples, Thomas himself
said, we're going to go die with Jesus. Let's go. They didn't
want him to go to Bethany because the Jews were looking for him.
They knew he would be arrested and they knew because how much
he was hated that if he ever got in custody, if Rome ever
got their hands on him, he would probably be crucified. And if
Jews ever got an opportunity, they'd probably stone him in
the street. So this is a real fear of the
disciples. Remember, we learned that in
the first part of John 11. But Jesus is only going to die
by the will of God the Father. He's only going to be arrested
at the moment in which it was ordained for Him to be arrested.
Everything is going to work out exactly as God has sovereignly
decreed it before the foundations of the earth. And nothing is
going to thwart the plans of God, but every, listen to this,
every free will choice that man makes is going to fall right
into play with God's sovereign decree. Everything. And if I'd have just made that,
if I'd have just chosen to, you are where you are because that
is where you are. There's some wisdom for you. Shoulda, coulda,
woulda is a death sentence. We've been born again, beloved,
we don't sit here and worry about the hypothetical of another timeline
that could have been. This is the only one that could
have ever existed because this is the only one that is in the
will of God for you. Don't watch movies and think
you can change your life. Only Christ can change your life.
And it may not affect much on this side of eternity, for the
better. They went and told the Pharisees,
the Pharisees hated them. You know what, why did they do
that? They wanted brownie points. They wanted to be spiritual people,
just like earlier when people went and told the Pharisees this
and told the Pharisees that. There's nothing greater. In all my life and living in a law
enforcement family, I mean, there have been many snitches that
I've met through the years. And they keep themselves out
of trouble by telling on their friends. And in some sense, they're pals
with the police. Same psychology here. We know
that our spiritual heads, our spiritual leaders, our divinely
appointed overseers, they hate Jesus. And now Jesus has done
something so miraculous that our own people, some of our leaders
are believing in Him. So the rest of them run to go
tell the Pharisees, guys, something's going on. This is really bad.
Jesus was a hated man. Now they're loving Him. They couldn't stand it. Some
of these believed in Jesus, could see something. But these others,
man, they could not see. They could not see why someone
else would believe in this weird guy who's doing all this powerful
stuff, but stands in opposition of the status quo of the traditions
of religion. And friends, let me tell you
something, you might wanna put application to that, and you might think
reform, non-reform, let me tell you, there are more reformed
heretics in the world than there are anything. Labels don't bring
orthodoxy. Life brings orthodoxy. Life. And without life, it's
always gonna be wrought with error. If the Holy Spirit of
God does not bring us to life, we will not learn the truth,
we will not speak the truth, we will not embrace the truth,
we will stand on what we've been taught, we will stand on our
philosophy, we will stand on everything but Christ, and we
will create a different Christ. We will redefine faith, as I've
been accused of doing just in the last few days. On a hypothetical. Children. But Christ, it was intended that
the Pharisees would then get together. What did they do? They
put together a council. This council, we see in the synoptics
a little bit more details about this council. But this council,
they get together and the question on the council, you know, it's
very formal, but it's open dialogue. The reason for calling this conference
was to deal with the question What are we to do? That's the only reason they met.
What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If he continues, well let me
put it the way it's in the scripture. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.
And the Romans will come and take away our temple, our place
in society, our status, however you want to interpret that, it's
all the same. Because their status and place in society was bound
to their worship and our nation. So that was a problem. Now friends, I'm not going to
sit here and pretend I don't have a, I have a very prejudiced
view in applying this to our day. So I'm going to keep it
to myself today. Because it's not a prayerful
thing. But I have a strong bias against
American Christianity. Because it mocks the gospel of
grace. I have a strong bias against
historical, theological Christianity. because it gets off the sidelines
so much so that on down the road it's so off that the wall falls
down. I have a bias against the American
church as a whole because they lead people down a road of destruction
by telling them it is true. And I think that it's no different
than what this council was doing right here. There have been councils historically
to stand on the word of God. There have been councils to stand
against heresy. A couple of Wednesday nights,
you know, last month I taught a couple, you know, some, oh
my goodness, abbreviated shotgun church history, considering the
doctrine of Pelagianism and Arminianism and Calvinism and where it all
sort of fits together on a timeline and how it looks. So there have been some times
where the churches and the congregations who held the truth have had to
get together, but now there's so many iterations of Christianity
that who do we know is getting together for what right purpose? Jesus will say and has said,
he'll say in our time together, if you abide in my word, and
my word abides in you, you have life. I am the bread of life, eat of
me you shall live forever. I am the living water and you
drink of me you shall never thirst again. But the water that I give
wells up, it means it stops up like the toilet. It's supposed
to go down but it comes up and it just overflows with eternal
life. That's not what the status quo
of our culture does when it comes to the gospel. People get together
and say, what are we going to do about these people that want
to put the Bible as the authority of the local church? What are we going to do about
people who believe that God is sovereign in election? What are
we going to do about people who aren't willing to stand on the
corners and get into the game on the issues of social justice?
What are we going to do that the church isn't answering this
problem or that problem? You see the point? You see why
I don't want to really... What are we going to do? What
are we going to do, what it ultimately boils down with, what are we
going to do or not going to do with this man named Jesus? And
those who are born of God They don't do anything with Jesus
because Jesus did everything for them. As long as man is trying to figure
out what he's going to do with the truth of Christ, then Christ
has not arrested him. Christ has not detained him.
Christ and his sovereign love and power has not snatched him
out of the domain of darkness. Jesus tells Nicodemus that people
do not come to the light of their own free will. Jesus says that
no man can come to the light of Christ. No man comes to the
living water. No man comes to the bread of
life. That there is nothing inside any human being that comes to
God. And people argue, well there
are many, I know a lot of people that have been seeking. They've been seeking
for their own answer, what am I going to do with Jesus? That's
what they've been seeking. I know all this stuff, what am
I going to do with it? I'm going to get my life on track, I'm going
to start doing this, I'm going to tighten my belt, I'm going
to shave a little bit, I'm going to clean myself up, I'm going
to treat people nice. That's what I'm going to do with
Jesus. What are you going to do with the way Jesus reveals
Himself? You're not going to do anything but continue to ask
the question, of what you're going to do until you've been
made alive by the power of God's Spirit. And do you know what
the means of regeneration is? Nothing. To be born again is by the will
of God alone when He wishes. And there's no means. There's
no means for regeneration. Regeneration happens as God sees
fit. Now we always see it coupled
with conversion, with faith, with salvation, with believing. So we always see it after the
fact when we've taught the gospel and then someone believes and
we know they've been born again. But that new birth is not something
that we bring to the table. It's something that God does.
So as long as unregenerate people claiming to be God's spokesmen
are still asking the question, what shall we do with Jesus?
They're always going to follow the same pattern as Caiaphas,
who was a wicked, vile, sadistic, horrible, awful man. I know I
said awful twice. We see how he acted in the Synoptics,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We see how he treated Jesus.
Josephus, historian of that day, writes of Caiaphas, his own high
priest, and says that the man tore his clothes at the guilty
charge of Jesus as if he were in despair to put on airs. What are we to do? as if they
could do anything. See, they thought they were going
to take religion by the horns and to line it back up to where
it needed to be. They were the reformers of this
day and Jesus was the Antichrist. He performs many signs. What
are we going to do? This man works by the power of
God. That's what they're saying. What
are we going to do with him? Because they've already had that argument.
No man can do what he does except God be with him. No man. God is not going to answer the
prayers of what? A sinner. What are we going to do if we
let him? I just want you to hear the gall. If we let him keep doing this,
Everyone will believe in Him. Now see, read what that says.
We have the power to do something about this. What shall it be?
And they're inquiring. And in this council, the president
of this council, the head of this council is the high priest,
whoever he may be that year. Caiaphas is the presiding officer
over this council. And they're all saying, what
are we going to do? We've got to stop it. We've got to do something.
We have the power. They, in their mind, thought
they had the power to stop the gospel. To stop God. And in all of their planning
and hatred and working, they actually thought they were doing
something for themselves, for the betterment of their own nation,
for the betterment of their own, quote, church, their own ministry,
their own religion, and for the glory of God. That's what every heretic and
cult thinks. All of them. Everyone's going to believe in
Him. They're going to stop believing in us and they're going to stop
listening to us. They're going to stop following
us. They're going to start following Him and then we're through. Then
how are we going to buy these fancy clothes? How are we going
to buy that new edition camel? With the leather poop bag? And if we're not careful and
everyone believes in Him, then there's going to be a revolt.
Rome is going to say, where are you? You're supposed to be stepping
in line. Rome has given us the authority to keep ourselves in
line. We don't want to lose that. We
don't know what to do, but we've got to do something. So this
is what they decide. that something has to be done,
but none of them can discern what it might be. But Caiaphas,
look at his humility. But one of them, Caiaphas, who
was high priest that year, said to them, you all know nothing
at all. He's reiterating what I say often,
you're as dumb as a bag of rocks. You don't know anything. Y'all
don't know what you're talking about. Y'all are clueless. You
have no wisdom. You have no foresight. Now what
is the position of the high priest? The high priest is the one in
the picture, the type to stand between God and the people. to
make atoning sacrifices for God and His people. To show them
the necessity of sacrifice for sin and that by the mercy of
God, God established these promises and this covenant that He would
one day save His people through the true Lamb. So here's the
very man who sits at the throne of being The mediator between
God and man, and He's cursing the very mediator between God
and man. It's not an issue of differences
of opinion, or differences of maturity, or differences of knowledge
or understanding. Friends, when we see people refusing
the gospel of Jesus Christ, but yet claiming to be in Christ,
This is a hatred of God. It takes a divine work for a
man to relinquish his self-glory. It takes a divine work for a
man to stop thinking that even that which God has done in him
powerfully is not some way His doing. It takes a divine work. And Caiaphas
in all of his arrogance says, you all know nothing. You don't
know anything, you don't know what you're talking about, you
are absolutely dumb. Don't you know it is better? No, you don't. You don't understand
that it is better for you that one man should die for the people. You see what's happening here?
Coppice is no fool, he's smart. All of a sudden now, in all this
hubbub and all this fear and all this seriousness, I mean,
because Rome would have wiped them off the earth. And Rome
did wipe them off the earth. Some 26 years from then. He's like, I know how to get
these people under control. Guys, we've got to think about
ourselves. We've got to think about the glory of God in the
nation of Israel. We've got to think about the
temple. We've got to think about what's happening here. We can't let
one man, as glorious as he is, you see how he plays both sides?
He doesn't come right out and say, well, Jesus is the devil,
because that would split the rest. He doesn't come right out
and say, Jesus is Messiah, because that would, it would just be,
he brings everybody to a center, by finding a felt need that they
all agree with. And that main one is that they
don't want Rome to obliterate them as a nation. They don't
want to lose the little bit of footing they have in their religious
tradition. So Caiaphas says, here's what
we do. We let this man be martyred. We let this man die for your
sake, for your children. I know he's a great guy, but
think of your children. Think of what the Roman soldiers
would do when they come to your house, to your children. And
for those of you who didn't know, they'd cut them in half in front
of you. And then they'd carry you off
and play games with you in a cage with animals, or they would put
you on a cross and kill you after they whipped you 39 times. with steel barbs inside a whip. Just think. We can do this. We know what needs to be done.
It's better for you that one man should die for the people.
Don't we love the people? Don't you love the people? Don't
you want to see this one man just not cause any more problems? I mean, who doesn't follow that? when you're emotionally distraught.
Everybody, everybody just sort of goes with it. And I'm not
saying that everybody did, but he got the multitudes on his
side. This council who had the ability to charge Jesus and have
him arrested and bring him before Roman authorities. He says, and if this one man
should die for the people instead of the whole nation perishing. Let's just stop there for a second. The very thing that he wanted
to happen was the exact opposite of what would happen if they
killed Jesus. If the Jews kill Jesus, then the Jews perish. If the Jews embrace Jesus as
Messiah, then the Jews live, but Rome destroys Israel. You can't have nationalism and
be found in Christ in the same breath. You can't have traditionalism
and free and sovereign grace. You can't have all the bells
and whistles of what we feel like is God and divine work and
spirit and truth. It's amazing that Peter says
something a little different. 1 Peter chapter 10. Excuse me,
1 Peter chapter 1. Yeah, it got real long all of
a sudden, didn't it? Verse 10. Concerning this salvation,
he says, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be
yours searched and inquired carefully. Where did they search? The oracles
of God. the timelines of history. They
heard from God, they were given the truth of Messiah through
God's mouth, and they wrote these things down, they proclaimed
them to kings and to nations and to peoples, and every season
of life these prophets would look and they would see, wonder
when Messiah shall be. And now all of a sudden, if you
remember, Zechariah and Elizabeth. Zechariah being chief priest
that year, he goes in to make his offerings and an angel of
the Lord meets him there in the Holy of Holies where God meets
man at the mercy seat. All assemble a shadow of Jesus
Christ and he's there and this angel says, Zechariah, your wife
is going to give birth to a son. He does not believe it because
she's old. How old? Eighties-ish, nineties-ish. Don't believe it. So God struck
him mute, so he couldn't speak. And he would get his voice back
the day the son was born. And the angel of the Lord went
to Elizabeth and told her. And then some months later, Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit. And when John the Baptist was
born, people make much to do with him. Why? They were looking for the day
and searching and inquiring carefully about the promise of righteousness. when God's people would be granted
and imputed righteousness. And because of that, God took
John out of the eyes of society because he would have been worshipped
and he lives in a sort of like a wilderness adventure. When
he comes back on the scene, he's not dressed appropriately, he's
not bathed and groomed appropriately, he doesn't speak appropriately,
he doesn't eat appropriately, he doesn't wash himself appropriately,
he doesn't do anything according to the law appropriately. But yet he preaches and teaches
as a rabbi and he baptizes people. And people searched carefully
Inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them
was indicating when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and
the subsequent glories. See, Peter illustrates this is
something that Adam looked for. Adam looked for it. Noah looked
for it. All the people of God throughout
all of history looked for the day when Christ would suffer,
when the Christ would come and give them righteousness, give
them mercy, give them grace, give them life. Grant it to them. They didn't earn it. Nobody thought
that. It's not taught that way. Obedience
doesn't move God to redemption. He redeems in spite of our obedience
or disobedience. It was revealed to them that
they were serving not themselves. It was revealed to who? The prophets
of old. They were not serving themselves.
They were not getting the Word of God for their own glory. They
had not been given understanding of the righteousness of God and
the promise of Messiah so that they could be something in the
world. They were given this truth for
you. That's what Peter said. in the things that have now been
announced, the gospel of grace, to you through those who preach
the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things
in which angels long to look and to gaze." Angels long to look and to gaze. Now back. You hear what Peter
says. You see what the Gospel is. Now
you see what Caiaphas says, and it's an exact contradiction. We're looking for Messiah to
save us from the wrath of God. We're looking for Messiah to
make us His righteousness. And Caiaphas is like, we're God's
righteousness. We've got to get rid of Messiah
so we can save our own selves. And that is the mainstay of most
ministry in our culture. That's why I tell you I got a
problem. And if it weren't for the mercy of God, I'd be the
poster child of it. Rockstar. We could blow it out of the park,
false religion. And all of us, if it weren't
for the mercy of God, would be part of it. would all be rock
stars for the false gospel. And Caiaphas saying these things
out of his own free will also spoke by the will of God. Look
at verse 51. He did not say this of his own
accord. He didn't just open his mouth and go, what did I say?
Why did that come out of my mouth? I didn't mean to say that. No,
that's what he wanted. But he couldn't see the reality of what
he was saying. He prophesied that Jesus would
die for the nation. And not only for the nation,
but also to gather into one the children of God who were scattered
abroad. So from that day on, they made plans to put Jesus
to death. Therefore, he no longer walked
openly among the Jews. But he went from there to the
region of the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and he
stayed there with his disciples. John the Baptist came to be a
witness about the light. Jesus Christ is the light. The
nation of Israel for millennia were a witness of the light of
Christ. But in this day, in this season,
for the sake of God's purposes of election, For the sake of
God's praise of His glorious grace, this is what God purposed. That those who were the light
bearers were actually the dark walkers. The night walkers. Friends, most, let me put it
that way. I can't give you what most looks
like with my hands. Here's a pot. There's most. There's little. Most find the
path that leads to destruction. And all of them have self-righteousness. Few find the gate that leads
to righteousness. Jesus is the gate. Here's Jesus without any doubt. In any logical mind, He is God. He has power over life and death.
He has the power to forgive sins. We've already seen that. And
they hate Him, and they decide to put Him to death. Why? Because
it is the will of the Father that He die for His people. We'll unpack that more as we
get into chapter 12. My closing thoughts to you are
this. read the Word of God, and pray
that God would show you clearly the perfection and the simplicity
of the Gospel of Grace, so that you would not bog down in what
we do in our society in a heady academic adventure that keeps
you from the joy of Christ. It will keep you from the joy. Jesus Christ is the fullness
of God's revelation. That is His glory. And you and
I have been given the eyes to see it. We don't have to share
crazy theological expressions. We just need to share the basic
truth of who Christ is and what He's done. and for whom. And God will establish His purposes
in that gospel. Let's pray. Lord, these types of teachings,
this section of Scripture is sometimes hard to apply. Lord, help us to see those around
us who are like Caiaphas and pray for them and evangelize
them. Help us to see the little bit
of Caiaphas in each of us. That we think we'll do what's
right for the sake of God's glory, but Lord, if we're not resting
in Christ, then we're not seeing God's glory. We're not seeing
Your glory. Lord, I pray that You continue
to grow us deep in our understanding of grace. intimate with each
other. Father, I thank you that you
have done all the work necessary for salvation. Lord, that as
we part this place today, that we would not part ways in spirit,
but that we would be on each other's mind and heart, and that
we would pray for one another, and that we would study the Word,
not just for ourselves, but for each other, so that we might
be a blessing to our world.