John chapter 10, verse 11. I want to expand our thinking
on this reality here before we move continually in the argument
of John 10, sort of like I did last week, looking at good and
bad shepherd, understanding the imagery. I want to take the time
today to deal with what Jesus says when He says, I am the good
shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His
life for the sheep. I had someone ask me back a few
weeks ago, because we as a congregation obey the Word of God by His mercy,
and we do exercise public discipline, and have had to do so. Recently, several times, someone
asked me sincerely, is our purpose in church discipline to produce
and to create a perfect congregation? And of course, that's a loaded
question. It could be answered, yes, absolutely. Perfect in the
sense that we are following after Christ in obedience to the Word.
Perfect in the sense that discipline actually does purify the congregation
from people who are unwilling to be subject to Christ and to
one another. Sin in itself is not grounds
for expulsion, it's relational strife. The decision to say,
I will not change and I do not love you. That's the point. That's what discipline proves. Someone who does not love. Because
when we refuse, when our arrogance, when our pride causes us to refuse
to come to terms with the structure of the New Testament teaching
and the apostolic authority that we see there, in other words,
what Christ commands His elect to do in relation to life together,
we have to exercise discipline. I pray by the Lord's mercy we
don't have to any time soon. I pray that we don't. It just
seems like, you know, it just sort of came in waves there,
unexpectedly. It's not like we just wake up
tomorrow and say, you know what, I think this week is the week
I'm going to die, or this week is the week that I think so and
so is going to sin, or this week is the week I think that I'm
going to come to the end of whatever. We don't plan that way. Life
happens and in some sense it's chaotic, in some sense that it
seems like it never really stays together on a trajectory that
we would appreciate or enjoy. And the world looks at it and
they think it is chaotic. But we as the church, we as the
elect of God, we as the body of Christ who have been saved
through the finished work of Christ completely, we understand
sovereignty in the picture of calamity. We understand sovereignty
in the picture of strife. We understand sovereignty even,
and listen to what I'm saying, not what I'm not saying, even
when it comes to sin. even when we see these things
take place, and we find ourselves wringing our hands wondering,
when will we ever cease to have these issues? Beloved, that is
the wrong question because we already have been given the answer
to that very clearly, and the answer to that is when we stand
completed in Christ. Until then, we are to grow up
in every way mature into Him who is our Head, Jesus Christ. How do we do that? What matures
us quicker than trouble? What matures us quicker than
having to be forced to make decisions using the counsel of God's Word?
What matures us quicker than having to rely on one another
for our emotional and physical and spiritual needs? What matures
us quicker? You can't learn maturity from
an essay. You can't learn maturity from
observation. You must be mature. You must
be pruned in the context of life. And we as Christians, even when
we lose someone to death, we mourn not as those who have no
hope, but those who have hope. It's what Paul teaches the Thessalonians. And whether it be life or death,
whether we are being given over as sheep to the slaughter, or
whether we sit on high places as elite people in society, it
is all by the hand and the mercy of God. It is all by His sovereign
decree and by His will that we stand. I'm very labored today,
physically. I've not slept well in the last
few weeks, and I'm very labored, so my speech will be a little
slower than normal. Maybe you can understand it a
little better. But I'm very tired. But more than my physical labor,
my physical burden, I am very burdened spiritually for you. I'm very burdened spiritually
for you. Twenty-one years ago when I started in pastoral ministry,
I was taught that the cue that you look for, that test, that
litmus test, that diamond that sits atop the podium of successful
ministry is a church without problems and a church without
pain. And for the first half of my tenure at the church that
I was in, I thought, you know what? Because the first month
or two, the honeymoon period is always awesome. Nobody tells
you there's bedbugs in the sheets until you start seeing bites.
Nobody tells you that there's cow piles in the yard until you
start smelling it. But other than the honeymoon
stage of ministry, any particular ministry, particular people,
particular group, it's marked with pain and suffering. If we're
honest, if we speak the truth in love, at the same time we
need to do that in a way that's not complaining. We don't need
to complain all the time to one another. When we know what's
happening, then we can rejoice and give counsel in it. Because
a complaining heart is a labored heart that's not trusting in
the sufficiency of the sovereignty of God. And that is, there sits
a seesaw, there sits a scale. of impossible outcomes. Where are we to balance ourself
on speaking the truth in love, and being honest about our suffering,
and not complaining, and then rejoicing? You see what this
starts to look like, like a scale, an eight-tiered scale, and you
have to keep it all balanced? It's not going to balance. The
only way that it balances, beloved, is that we stay together in the
Word of God, and we are constantly in prayer for one another. That's
the only way it's going to stay balanced. And when someone wants
to know what's happening in your life and you want them to pray
for you, you just tell them, pray for me, I'm struggling.
And how much you tell them after that is your business. It depends
on how chatty you are or how open you might be. But we are
never going to see a day when all is bliss, because it's impossible
to do that, because we have been promised suffering for all who
desire to live a godly life. And as we mature in the faith,
we learn more and more that suffering is not just common, it's to be
expected. And not only is it to be expected,
it is part of God's ultimate point to bring us to glory. And you might think, well, what's
this got to do with John 10? It has everything to do with John
10 and John 9, 8, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, all of them. It's got everything
to do with everything written in the New Testament because
every audience receiving these letters for the first time were
marked by two specific things. Faith and the unity of the faith,
passionately with a supernatural affection for the Lord and for
each other. That's one. I know that's probably six things,
but that's one. And then secondly, they were marked with suffering
in the flesh, in the heart, in the mind, in the body. They were
marked with suffering. It is the mark of a true believer. It is something that's going
to happen, because as we've been looking at Romans on midweek,
we know that if we suffer with Him, we will also be glorified
with Him. That's the expectation that Paul
has, not just for the Romans from the church at Rome, but
also the church in Corinth. That second letter, chapter 4,
which is one of the most powerful passages for we who labor in
the faith, as Christians, as a body, as a church, we labor,
we love that text because we see Paul who suffered greatly
and we see him say these things that I've been cast down and
stricken and all these things, but I'm not driven to despair,
I'm not perplexed, I'm not alone, I'm not crushed. But this light
momentary affliction prepares me for an eternal weight of glory
that is beyond all comparison as..." What is he doing? The
active present tense of his doing. What is he doing? "...as we are
looking to the eternal," not the temporal. "...as we look
to the things that are unseen," not to the things that are seen.
Now let's relate it to this text. We have people who like to take
out of context the Bible and they put it in their own parameters. We call that, whether it's the
Bible or a math book, we call it a pretext. You take something
out of context, you put it inside its own parameters that you've
chosen, it is a pretext. We ignore syntax. And syntax
is how language works together, subject, verbs, and all these
different pieces of our language, and creates a sentence that makes
sense, that communicates something to us. So syntax defines all
terms. So if someone's talking about
sheep, and we think they're talking about farm animals, it's because
we haven't read the context. When Jesus says, I am the great
shepherd, and somebody wants to take the Hebrew word for shepherd
and build an entire theology around it, they are ignoring
the context, and thus do not understand the teachings of Christ. And when we see this sometimes,
where it says the sheep hear His voice, how many people have
you ever come across in life who claim to be hearing the truth
of Scripture, only to twist it the very next breath? And then
they want to blame you for not hearing. Isn't that funny? That
what we see clearly, and I'll pound this podium, lest it fall
over and crash. We know what we're talking about
because the Lord has shown us. The Word has said. The Scripture
has spoken. How many cults don't say the
same thing? False converts don't say the
same thing. Where do we go in the world today,
other than the bizarro world, where we have people who don't
take the Bible and say, this is what it says. My interpretation
is different than your interpretation, and so I hear the voice of my
Savior, you do not. How do we know we're right? Some
people like to say, well, it's history. We've been right for
so long, we must be right now. That's not true. History has
proven itself to be more of a heresy herald or the heresy chronicles,
as I've called them, rather than truth. The longer we get together,
the less we start aiming to the truth. Some people look at the
majority as the authority. Well, there's so many people
that believe this, it must be true. Well, friends, there are
people who have believed all sorts of things as a majority
even in the last 200 years that we would laugh them out of a
medical facility if they tried to do these things today. In
your lifetime, some of you remember stories of lobotomies. This was
a medical procedure whereby you would be healed of your problems,
your cognitive function. Whatever it is that they wanted
to, where they drove a rod into your eye socket and healed your
brain. Of course you didn't want to overeat anymore. You didn't
want to eat. But there were doctors who were like, this is great!
And very wealthy people lobotomized their children for behavior disorders
and lobotomized themselves for anxiety. I mean, it'll work.
You hit yourself with a hammer, it works just the same. Right
there, just ping, it'll work. But it doesn't make it right,
true, or scientific. So how do we then, as a church,
as a group of believers, as a gathered family in Christ, how do we know
that we're hearing the voice of our Shepherd? Well, that's
why we stay, listen to this, in the context of Scripture all
the time. That's why we stay in the argument
of the Bible, not just in John's gospel all the way, but in the
New Testament completely. And we understand the Old Testament
by knowing the New. It's not the other way around. And I say all these things because
I want you to know that people love to twist what is taught
here in John 10. Some people have fled from us.
Y'all are strangers. You're not the shepherd. You're
not shepherding, you're not pointing to Christ. How do we know they're
not right? Because what you read in Scripture by the Holy Spirit
should show you in the context of Scripture that what I'm teaching
is contextual, which makes it true. If it's not, you should
run. You see? But most importantly,
we need to recognize that the Holy Spirit alone gives illumination.
The Holy Spirit alone gives understanding. Because as Jesus taught these
things, the Pharisees, the spiritual leaders who knew the word of
God like the back of their hand, but yet did not know one jot
or tittle from it, could not understand one truth therein.
They were listening to Him, and they will accuse Him of having
a demon when this conversation ends. They have gone, and I've
said this I think six times in the last eight weeks, they've
gone from confessing publicly that Jesus is the one come from
God, sent by God, to having a demon. The same people in three short
years. Why? Because not only did they
not want to see the truth, they could not see the truth. They
could not see the truth of what I'm going to show you today as
I expand, not contextually in the exegesis of this particular
passage right here, but to remind us of exactly what we've already
learned thus far in John's Gospel. What we've learned when we went
through Ephesians. What we learned when we went through the letters
to the Thessalonians. What we've learned as we've been
going through Romans. What we've learned as we went through Philippians
and Galatians and other texts that we've learned through the
last seven years together, we are learning and now we're going
to be reminded by what we see here in this text today. Some
people would say that the going out in green pastures and having
the abundant life is actually getting everything that the world
has to offer. Some people would say that it's
actually getting all sorts of prosperity in your flesh, or
in your pocketbook, or wherever it might be. They will say, the
thief comes to steal that away, but I came that they may have
life abundantly. Now the irony, if we believe
that, we've not listened to anything that Jesus has taught thus far.
because everyone who has came to the knowledge of the truth,
everyone that the Father has given to Him that He will die
for and He will propitiate for them, their sins will be forgiven
and they will be made righteous. One day they will be made alive. They will come to believe that
the work of Christ was sufficient for them. They will be saved
by Christ, but know it by faith. Some people like to say that,
but the irony is that everyone that's in the earshot of Jesus
who are His disciples this very moment, they never have a good
life after this time. The disciples are hunted down.
The church is hunted down century after century after century.
And friends, if we did not have a constitution that granted us
religious freedom, the true gospel of Jesus Christ would be stamped
out of the United States of America so fast. our heads would spin. It would be gone. This country
despises the Gospel. Most churches despise the Gospel. Most so-called Christians despise
Christ because they don't know the Christ of Scripture. They
know the pretext Jesus. You hear me say it this way often.
They live and believe and love the caricature of God that they've
created in their own culture, their own mind. Well, I know
that God is this way. I know that God means this. I
know that God wants this. How do we know that? If the Bible
doesn't teach it holistically, if the Bible doesn't teach it
contextually, then it's not true of God. So Jesus comes, look at verse
7, again and says to them, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the
door of the sheep, And all who came before Me are thieves and
robbers, but the sheep do not listen to them." Now before I
keep on going, he's talking about the Pharisees. Remember that?
The ones that are standing there listening to him. Those who supposedly
are pointing to God, pointing to the Scripture, pointing to
the truth, but yet they don't know the truth and they're not
pointing to the truth. The God that they serve, Jesus says,
is who? Satan. The God that they have
created out of the text of Scripture is actually the devil. And they
are doing His will, not the will of God the Father. They are doing
the will of Satan. The amazing thing about that,
as I started this service today, is that even the will of Satan
is by the mighty decree and the will of God. And you want to understand how
that looks? You can see it in all the narrative of Scripture,
but you can see it really well in the book of Job. God sent
Lucifer to do what He did to Job. It was a gift to Job, because
to the praise of God's glorious grace, Job cried in the end. And that filled Job with all
the fullness of joy. See how silly that sounds to
the logical mind? So, I'm the door, if anyone enters
by me, he will be saved, and he will go in and out and find
the pasture. The thief comes only to steal
and to kill and destroy. I came to them to have life and
have it abundantly. Verse 11, and this is where we're
going to be all morning. I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd
lays down His life for the sheep. Now let's think about this for
a second. What is He talking about? Well, we've looked at
Good Shepherd last week, we looked at Bad Shepherd, we understand
the imagery of this parable, then the explanation's very clear. Jesus is saying that the only
thing, the only one who can lead us to true life, the only one
who can take us to God, the only one who can give us forgiveness. The only one who can be our bread.
The only one who is our living water. Is this starting to make
sense now? The only one who can cause us to be born again. The
only one who is the great bridegroom. The only one is the Good Shepherd. You can't go through any other
way to get any of these things that Jesus is. You can't go through
any other means. You can't go through any other
doctrine. You can't go through any other type of or means. You can't go through the shadows
of the Old Testament. You can't go through the law.
You can't go through anything. Go to any place or go by any
person except Jesus the Christ who is the Son of God. God in
the flesh. He is the Good Shepherd. Now
next week we'll talk about hirelings. We'll talk about pastors. We'll
talk about what that looks like. But ultimately, Jesus today is
reiterating some things to these people that they didn't quite
grasp yet because they didn't have the cross to look back to.
Now think about a shepherd in himself. What does a shepherd
do if a wolf comes in to the sheepfold? Literally, a wolf
comes snarling around the sheep. He kills the wolf. A bear. He kills the bear. David is recorded
to have killed bears and lions and wolves and elephants or whatever
else he killed with his bear hands. You might find that hard
to believe, but I saw on the news just this week that someone
actually killed a mountain lion with his bear hands, surviving
the attack. I'm thinking, you go, boy. They'd
have found me dead running the other direction if I hadn't had
the kasul. But it happened. Why? Because the shepherd cares
for the sheep. That's the simple reality. Why
does he care for the sheep? Was David intimately involved
in naming all of his sheep and putting them to bed at night
and getting them warm milk to drink? No, they were animals.
They were gross. But his role as the shepherd
was to protect them from harm. Why would you let, like if a
hawk comes to my father's chicken farm and goes in that place,
you don't shoot a hawk inside a chicken house, by the way.
Because loud noises cause more death than a hawk ever could.
But you don't do that, but you do have to get the bird out.
Why? Why not just let him in there? Because he could eat a
thousand birds. He could scare the whole lot
and kill 50,000. A fox going into a roost. How many eggs are
you going to get? You just let, oh that's a cute
little fox, let him go. No, you get that fox. Why? Because those
sheep belong to you. Those eggs belong, those chickens,
we bought those chickens and raised these chickens so they
give us eggs. What do you do with a chicken that doesn't produce
an egg? Most of us just call it a pet. I call Colonel Sanders. Sheep are important to the shepherd.
He owns them. He's paid for them. He's bought
them. They're his property. I want you to get this picture.
And he'll kill anything that comes in there to try to steal
a sheep or kill a sheep. Anything. He'll stop it. And I know some shepherds. I
know some present-day shepherds. Some good brothers in the Lord are
present-day shepherds. They have sheep. You can get sermons. You
can just stand there and watch those animals. You can get illustrations.
The second to watching children, you can get some illustrations
of why God calls his people sheep, and how we act, and how we follow
the crowd. But I know some present-day shepherds,
and I know that they would go out there with all the artillery
that they could have. One of them even has a mule that
stays out with the sheep. You know what that mule will
do? If someone or something goes out there and it doesn't belong,
it will stomp it to death. You have to go get that mule
off of whatever it's killing. I didn't know that. I got some
respect for those animals now. Ugly, and they stink. And they're
just about worthless, unless you want to pull something really
heavy. But I didn't know they would protect stuff like that.
They will knock it down. And these guys will get up in
the middle of the night, and they will get bazookas if they have to, laser-guided
air-to-surface missiles if they have to, to shoot a fox or to
shoot a bear, to shoot a dog or something trying to kill their
livestock, because they enjoy doing that. more than anything. But I'd seriously doubt any of
them would die to save a flock of sheep, in a literal sense. Has it ever been told? I mean,
who's getting the reward of that? The shepherd who owns all the
sheep kills himself in an attempt to save his sheep from a wolf.
It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. It might happen
by accident. but it doesn't happen intentionally. In the picture of that, Jesus
is the Good Shepherd who does willingly die for the sheep.
To keep them from the thieves who want to steal, from the robbers
who want to kill, He intentionally lays down His life for the sheep.
That's what He's saying here. And if you go down, verse 14,
look at that. Because there's a contrast, verses
12 and 13. In verse 14, Jesus picks back up. He says again,
I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own, and my own know
me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and
I lay down my life for the sheep. And what we know now, is that
Jesus laid His life down for His sheep. Now let's think about
what that looks like for a second. This is a rerun. This whole sermon
is going to be a rerun. It's going to be a rerun from
Sunday school 35 years ago for some of you. 45, 55, 65, whatever. What is it that Jesus did in
laying down His life? First thing we need to remember
is that Jesus willfully laid down His life. Now, in case some
of you are confused, he's talking about the cross. He's talking
about being subject. We call this, this is a technical
term, it's a judicial understanding, the passive obedience of Christ. That word is used, that adjective,
passive obedience, is used to explain anyone who submits themselves
to a governing authority. It's called passive obedience.
Don't speed, pay the fine, etc., etc., etc. That's called passive
obedience. Jesus' passive obedience is to
subject himself to the arrest and the crucifixion. I mean,
he was actively doing it, but it is a technical term. Sometimes
I say that, and they go, Oh Jesus, what? Passive, that's heresy!
Grow up, get a dictionary. Okay? And that's as troll-y as
I'll get on that one. Just be calm, don't get triggered. Let's get a dictionary and understand
it's a term that we need to comprehend if we're going to speak without
having to use 60 words when we could use 2. So, in Jesus' passive
obedience, He's talking about laying His life willfully, purposefully
down so that He could die. He went to trial. He was betrayed
by Judas. He was found innocent at both
trials. And because of fear and public
outcry, this is from the human point of view, Pilate washed
his hands of Jesus and said, His blood is not on my hands.
This man has done nothing wrong. He is innocent of all crimes.
And if you do something with him, it's not my fault. That's
a coward's way out. Why? He followed the law so carefully
that, as we'll see a couple of years from now, Pilate could
not crucify Jesus because he was innocent. But there were
people who were scheduled to be crucified, so if the people
were to allow one of them to be released, Jesus could die
in place of this guilty man. Now, look at the picture there. So Pilate, in order to appease
public opinion, usurps the authority of the office of the sword and lets the people choose who to
let go. Who did they let go? They let
go a man named Barabbas who was a convicted murderer of human
beings. A murderer. Let Barabbas go. Why would they pick him? Because
he was probably the most recent conviction. Because it wasn't
like you sat on death row waiting. I mean, you were convicted and
you pretty much died within a couple of days. They probably go, I
remember Barabbas. He was at his trial. We said,
Crucify him! Let him go and crucify Jesus.
And from a Worldly perspective, we look at that and we think,
this is unjust. And it is unjust. It's unjust that Jesus was subject
to be crucified under the court of Rome when He did nothing worthy
of crucifixion. But it was not unjust under the
court of God. It was not unjust under the economy
of grace. And we see what Paul says in
Romans 3 there. about the economy of grace, about the justice of
God, about the righteousness of God. Though the law and the
prophets bear witness to the righteousness of God because
we can see the nature and the disposition of God in His holiness,
His set-apartness, how different He is from us, we also can see
more perfectly the righteousness of God in the killing of the
Son. Now see how that conflicts with
the judicial attitude of a world that we live in and a righteous
justice of the attitude of God, of the mind of God. So Jesus' death could not just
be some picture of justice. It had to be true justice. It can't be a picture of justice. It had to be true justice. So
Jesus laid down His life for His sheep. Jesus willfully subjected
Himself to the Father, to the Father's will. Willfully subjected
Himself to being killed as a criminal on the cross, publicly shamed,
publicly ridiculed. Death has been on our minds a
lot in the last few weeks. Isn't it amazing after a funeral
you start thinking about what you want to look like in your
casket? Isn't that the most absurd, narcissistic thing you've ever
thought about? That shows you the level of how much we love
ourselves. Because we don't want somebody
to go, well, he was ugly. We all think about it. Jesus is the God of heaven who
created all things. And He did not once think about
how He looked to anybody except the Father. Oh no, they're going to strip
me naked, Father. I don't want to be crucified if I have to
be naked. I mean, that would be a deal-breaker for most of
us, wouldn't it? I don't want to be paraded through the streets
without clothes. Oh, no, no, no, Father. I'm going to be stripped
naked and whipped. All the flesh of my back and
ribs are going to be torn out of my body. I think that's going
to be too painful. And I'm being a little droll. I don't want to be ridiculed.
I don't want to be spat upon. I don't want to be mocked. I'm
God. I don't want to be mocked. I
don't want to be poked at and made fun of. I don't want to
bear the reproach of some of these very people who may be
casting rocks at me and pulling out my beard and putting a crown
of thorns on my head. The King of the Jews over my
cross. Why would I want to do that?
See, that's what we would do. But because Jesus is impeccable
in His humanity, that means He never sinned, nor could He sin.
He never had these thoughts concerning His own body, His own esteem,
His own life. But He willfully laid it down
for His sheep. And God put on the body of Christ, this innocent
man, all the guilt, all the sins, all the wickedness, all the unbelief,
all the evil, everything, all of it, on Jesus Christ, only,
listen to this, He put all of that only for the elect. Jesus bore the sins of His sheep. He says, the Good Shepherd lays
down His life for the sheep. I know My own sheep, and My own
sheep know Me, and I lay down My life for My sheep." For the
sheep. Because Jesus' death must have
done something. It accomplished something. What
was that accomplishment? It paid for the sins of the sheep, and only the sheep. Jesus did
not lay down His life for the goats. Jesus did not lay down
His life for the wolves. Jesus did not lay down His life
for the dogs. He did not lay down His life
for the Pharisees, for Israel, for America, For Canada, for Africa, for Asia,
for the world, He did not lay His life down for every human
being. Because had He done that, then
every human being would be justified in the sight of God. See, that's where we have a problem
when we're interpreting Scripture, when we take it out of context.
and we put in our presuppositions, our biases, our prejudices, based
on the caricature of God that we've been taught since we were
wee little children. We think, oh God loves everybody
and Christ died for everybody. You just got to accept Jesus
and you're saved. Well then guess what salvation
is? Your choice. Your decision. And guess what
God is? A liar. God is a liar if that
is true. Because Jesus says He lays down
His life for the sheep. The death of Jesus Christ accomplished
salvation for the sheep. It's finished! It's not an offer. It's not an opportunity. It's
not a suggestion. It's not a picture of something
you can grasp. It's a picture, not just a picture,
it's an accomplishment of what God has done. It's a perfect
accomplishment of finished redemption. Jesus died in order to purchase
life for His people. And when He said, it is finished,
He bought us all, beloved. He bought us all. He bought us
all. And faith is believing that,
that Christ paid for the sins of His people. Christ paid for the sins of His
sheep. Christ paid for the sins of the
elect. Christ paid for the sins of His
church. Now the reason this troubles
people is because salvation is an acceptance of what Jesus did
in our culture, and it has been since the latter part of the
1900s, not before, just then. Now we could look at some theological
things that were deemed heresies at their infancy throughout history,
but Pelagianism and Arminianism and all those big words that
most of us don't even grasp and don't need to. Let's know the
true gospel and when something comes along, no matter what it's
been called, we know it's wrong. Or we know it's right. But this idea that salvation
is just bagged up by Jesus and He's like a spiritual Santa Claus
walking around with a sack on His back full of redemption.
And you've just got to reach in there by faith and just pull
it out. What did you get me, Santa? Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas to me. That's
what Christmas is all about. Jesus making Himself available
for anybody who wants Him. Well, the problem with that is
that the Bible says that no one wants Him. In John chapter 2, a lot of people
wanted Him, and Jesus says, well, I don't want them. You don't
believe me? Look at the last four verses
of John 2. Many people believed in His name because of the signs
and the wonders that He did, but Jesus did not believe in
them. For he knew what was in man, no one had to tell him what
was in the heart of man. Now there was a man of the Pharisees
named Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night and confessed. He wanted
Jesus. He wanted Jesus to be a prophet
from God. We know that you are the one come from God, for no
one can do what you do except God be with him. And Jesus says
to him, Truly, truly, you cannot see the kingdom except you be
born again. How am I to do that? You can't, Nicodemus. You don't
want to be born again because you love the darkness. Because
your works are evil. You love the darkness. Your prayers
are evil. You love the darkness. Your evangelism is evil. You
love the darkness. Your contentment is evil. You
love the darkness. Your teaching is evil. You love
the darkness. The way you see Scripture is
evil and you want to be counted as the one who does it all. You
want people to look at you and glory at you and say, wow, what
a great man of God you are. What a great teacher of the Word
you are. What an eloquent prayer master you are. Look at all the
things that this man has done. Whoa! Wow! Awesome! Look at him! Praise be to God! And we think
that that's not self-glory. It is self-glory. But those who
come to the light do so that it may be clearly seen that their
works are being carried out in God. What does it take for us
to stop being self-righteous and self-religious and self-redemptive? It takes a work of the Holy Spirit
of God to bring us alive. You know what that word's called
in theological terms? Regeneration. John 3, Jesus says,
new birth, born again. You know the result of that?
Paul makes it very clear. You know how we know when people
are regenerated, they have been granted repentance. Their minds
have been changed from self-righteousness and self-religion and self-order
and self-glory to all of a sudden see that all of that is worthless
and evil and wicked and has no effect before God to their credit
and that only the obedience and the finished work of Christ on
the cross is sufficient for their eternal life. And that is what
God gives in repentance and then always, Every, all the time,
for everyone that Christ died, when God the Spirit chooses in
His timing, He will cause all the elect to come to faith, and
they will be granted repentance, and they will be gifted faith. We're not saved because we believe,
beloved. We are believing because we've
been saved. It's a huge difference. One is
taught in every aspect of the Word of God from let there be
to don't add. And the other is the construct
of a self-righteous generation. Jesus laid His life down for
the sheep, and the sheep know it. They know the voice of their
Savior. They know the truth of Christ.
They know the reality of what God has done through the Son.
Why is this offensive? Let me ask you this. Why is it
offensive? It's not offensive if Jesus just dies as a martyr
showing the way. I have friends who have died
in the line of duty. War, law enforcement, and just
good Samaritans. And they were martyred for the
things that they believed in. They were martyred for trying
to help someone else. They were murdered because they would be
willing to die for someone else. But their death, as beautiful
as it is in the context of their dying and saving a life, that
life that they save will eventually die. And their death just stayed the
reality of the wage of sin. That's what martyrs do. Martyrs,
if we look at the annals of history, we see, like Fox, Fox's book,
you should read those. They're free online to download.
And you read the annals of how the martyrs of the faith and
Mary and all of her fury as a Catholic burned many Protestants. And
to hear them sing doxologies as their beards set fire. See,
some of you younger men ought to learn not to have such big
beards. How do they do that? People go,
oh, they're just so strong in the faith. No, they weren't.
But God was strong in them. The Spirit was strong in them.
But even their death, it's an example to us. What's the example
of martyrdom? Same thing, the example of Paul.
He lived for Christ and he died to gain Him. Don't mourn the dead. Mourn the
living. That's the reality of the gospel.
That's the teaching and application. So that we who are in Christ,
we rejoice in Christ, not because we're alive in the flesh. We
rejoice because we're alive in the flesh to live for each other,
and in doing so, we live for Christ. But when Christ calls
us home, my goodness, we're the ones that are selfish and weeping. Martyrs are not somebody to be
praised and hope we can be like them, like Thomas. Thomas saw
Jesus as a martyr, as we'll see when we get to chapter 20. Let's go die with him, Thomas
says. Let's go up there. He's going
to die, we're going to die, we're all going to die. I'm ready.
Do it! It's like my friends who are firefighters. There's a lot
of things I can do, but fighting fires is not one of them. Oven
starts smoking, I'm running across the street. Call the cops, I'm
at the fire department. How is that? At least the lights didn't go
out this time. But we, you know, firefighters,
I don't know how they do it. They're brave, and they just
run right in there. They've been trained, it's training, it all
boils down to training. People go, man, that's just so
brave. Most of them tell me after their
first fire, they get really sick when it comes to them. They go,
I could have died. And the adrenaline wears off,
and they just get very sick. Same thing with a shooting, or
same thing with trauma doctors that I'm friends with, you know,
trauma nurses. I have family who are trauma nurses. I'm like,
how do you do this? You just do it, and then when you're done,
you just go, oh no. How do we manage that? I mean, martyrs
are something to be looked at, but Jesus isn't a martyr to be
looked at. See, Jesus doesn't show us in His death, this is
how we live. You just take up a cross and
go the way I go, and if you die, you die, yay, you're like Jesus.
No, you're never like Jesus. We're never like Jesus. We will
be, but we're never like Jesus in this world, in this life.
Even when we're molded into the, quote, lightness of Christ, that'd
be a good thing to talk about. What does that look like? It's
just a shadow. It's never even perfected in
one iota, one small minuscule way. Our perfection has never
even started here until we're glorified, and that is not part
of this world and this life. But Jesus Christ is not to be
looked at and we need to just go out and do what Jesus did
and say what Jesus said and act like Jesus acted. That WWJD is
such an ill-gotten question. Not what would Jesus, what did
Jesus do? What did Jesus accomplish in
His death? Much. Let me just give you a
short list. I think I've talked too much.
A short list. Jesus obeyed the Father in His death. He laid
down His life by the will of God, the eternal decree to sacrifice
His Son that we saw through Moses and then all the prophets of
the Old Testament. We saw the coming of the Son of God to take
on the iniquities of His people, and by His wounds we are healed. That we who were not a people,
He would make a people, and we would be His God. He would be
our God. Look at that. Gotta watch out.
Heresy. You better find it. We would
be His people. He would be our God. It's amazing
what a pronoun mix-up can do. We come to understanding that
Jesus obeyed the will of the Creator. It was God's plan to
crush His Son. It was God who, as Paul says
in Romans 3, there we go again, put Christ forward. What do you
mean? He pushed Him out front as propitiation. He put Him on the cross. God
the Father put Jesus on the cross for propitiation. God killed
His Son. That's the first thing we see,
the obedience of the Father, the will of God. What's something
else that we see? Jesus' death pleased God. Why? It was pleasing. But why is it
pleasing? Because God had forgiven many. According to Scripture, God gave
eternal life to Adam. The first prodigy, the federal
head of our fall, He gave eternal life to a lot of people before
Christ died. How did He do that? Because in
His decree, He had justified His people. He had redeemed His
people by decree. It will be done so that God,
if He were to forgive people whose sins had never been, what?
That's the third thing, paid for, propitiated, If God were
to forgive sinners before there was a sacrifice for sin, then
God would be what? Unjust! God would be unjust,
so the death of Christ displays the justice of God because God,
in His forbearance against sin, saved a multitude of the elect
long before Jesus ever held on a cross. And so then at the cross, all
their sins are paid. I mean, we use the word a lot.
It's written in our English Bible, most every translation that we
use in the context of our assembly, the word propitiation. In a nutshell,
it actually is that God's wrath is satisfied. that the debt is
paid, that there is no judgment. God is owed nothing more. So
that Jesus died in that instant. God the Father now is completely
satisfied never to bring a charge, listen to this, ever again whatsoever
in any way can He legally under His own nature bring a charge
against anyone for whom Christ died. because the blood of Christ
was shed to pay for the sins of His people. So therefore,
the sins have been set free, have been paid for. I use the illustration of the
mortgage. If someone pays off your mortgage and the deed is
released, but the bank still takes a payment from you, that
is evil. It would be just as evil if God
sends anyone to judgment, brings judgment on anyone, which is
what we call hell. If He brings judgment and condemnation on
any human being who the blood of Christ has been shed for,
then God is like an evil banker. The account is paid. And God's
not an evil banker, is He? He's a just God. He will bring
recompense upon all sins. Did you hear that? Some people
are going, wow, you're contradicting yourself. No, God will bring
recompense. He will bring justice. He will
bring judgment. He will bring wrath on every sin that's ever
been committed. Thought, word, deed, or essence. The difference is, for the elect,
all of that wrath has been poured out on Jesus Christ as our substitute. But for those who are reprobate,
They will forever endure the wrath of God. Jesus laid His
life down for the sheep. That's why He's the Good Shepherd.
That's why God loves Him. The Father loves Him. If you
don't believe me, look at verse 17. Well, let's just keep reading
there. I'm the Good Shepherd, verse
14. I know my own, my own know me, just as the Father knows
me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the
sheep, and I have other sheep that are not of this fold, speaking
physically before Him. There are other sheep. I must
bring them also, and get this, they will listen to my voice. People have argued with me for
the last 12 years or longer. twelve that I can remember in
counting the years, that I don't need to teach election. I don't need to teach particular
redemption. I don't need to teach limited
atonement. I don't need to teach... So my response is I cannot teach
John's Gospel in any part because it's there in the first section,
the prologue. It's there every single step
of the way. Secondly, I can't teach anything
Paul wrote. I can't teach the book of James. I can't teach anything John or
James or Paul wrote. And the book of Acts, the gospel
of Luke, I can't teach that. Well, see, it's not necessary.
It's necessary because it's the gospel that Jesus taught. I lay down my life for the sheep. The reason you do not come to
Me is because the Father has not given you to Me. You cannot
come to Me except that the Father draw you," that's a forceful
snatch, "...and give you. And all that the Father draws
will come, and all that come I will never cast out, I will
raise them up." Jesus laid His life down for the sheep and only
the sheep. and He will save all the sheep.
For this reason, there will be one flock, they will listen to
my voice, the one shepherd. For this reason, the Father loves
me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again." Have you ever thought about that
being the gospel? You want to put people to the
test. You want to give them opportunity for testimony. When they start
talking spiritual things, you can just assumptively ask them
this question. So you are a Christian. What is the gospel? Ask them
that. What is the gospel? And just
listen. Just listen. I remember being a child, it
was always the big sweaty guys at the pulpits. You know, the
pulpits in those days were wide as this stage and about twice
as tall as this one. You know, big sweaty guys, and
they'd spit and slobber worse than I do. And they'd say, do
you want to know that you know that you know that you know you
have eternal life? Do you want to know? Do you?
Stand up if you do. I mean, you know. And they'd
go, why are you sitting down, young man? You don't want to
know? Or do you know? How do you know that you know
that you know? I mean, how many of you have ever been there?
Just raise your hand. You ever seen that? It's like, and when you're seven,
you're going, oh, I'm going to hell. No, I'm not. Yes, I am.
No, I'm not. I do Simon Says for large conferences. When I speak at a conference,
and kids are those, I love to do Simon Says, and just like
my Q&A, I like to offer a prize for anybody who can win, and
nobody's won yet. I can't tell you why, because then you'll
win. There's a trick to everything. But the same thing that we see
employed in our culture with this. You want to know? Yes,
I want to know. Then stand up. Everybody stands up. And there
may be some blowhards in the back going, I'm just too proud
to stand up. My leg hurts. My hip hurts. Well, if you don't
want to stand up, stand up in your heart. I've heard that before. Just stand up. OK, Simon says,
stand up. You want to be saved. And everybody's standing up.
And if you want to be saved, Simon says, come on down. And you're
the next contestant on the price is wrong. And Simon says, would you say
this prayer? Do you know that you're a sinner?
Do you confess that Jesus has been raised from the dead and
you believe in your heart? The other way around. I'm really
twisting things up today, but you know Romans 10. Do you believe it? Are you sincere?
Do you really want to change your life? You ever had that
one? Then you're a child of God. Praise
God. What kind of life change is required for you to be saved?
I'll tell you one. The change that Jesus was alive
and then He died. That's what kind of life change
it takes. When Jesus died, you were justified. That's what justified you. Jesus died. People fight tooth and nail for
this false gospel. People fight tooth and nail in
some type of false unity to try to keep a peace that doesn't
exist. And we see this in Scripture
where it says, they will say there is peace, peace, but there
shall be no peace. You see that several times about
the coming of the judgment of God. When people are at peace,
We need to remember that the context is not talking about
people who are living debauched, drunken, orgy-type lifestyles,
that everybody's going, look at that wicked, sinful stuff
over there. No, we're talking about people
who are somewhat self-conscious of a moral standard, who are
living in the name of God to some state of religious proper
standard. That's what we're talking about.
That's what the context is showing. And they'll think they're right
with God. There's peace, there's peace. The death of Jesus Christ
brings peace for God's people. Therefore now there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. There's no condemnation, beloved.
You don't count yourself saved because you give up alcohol.
Abuse. I had to clarify that. Because you give up alcohol abuse,
or drug abuse, or whatever kind of abuse or addiction. You don't
count yourself saved because God might have even set you free
from some vile stuff. Praise Him for it! But what about
those who are set free without Christ? Our hope and the sufficiency
of our hope is in the finished work of Jesus and the blood of
Christ, which satisfy the wrath of God, which brought peace and
life and hope to us. And the Word of God coming to
the sheep of Christ, those for whom He died, they will hear
the voice of Christ and they will believe in the work that
He accomplished. So that there will be one flock.
And this charge that I have for my Father, I lay my life down
willfully, I take it up again willfully and purposefully. This
is what I do. The death of Christ is enough,
beloved. This is the answer to what is the gospel. It is that
Christ has satisfied my sin in His death. And it goes on beyond
that, doesn't it? What else did it do? He was raised
from death to life, and we have a promise of life now. But more
than that, our righteousness. Jesus doesn't save us to make
us righteous in our flesh. God has declared us righteous
through the finished work of Christ. So yes, there is some
maturing and some things that happen at different seasons,
at different levels, at different rates, etc., for every Christian
under the sun. That's why the church together
is so important. So that I can read the Bible
and learn that coarse joking is not something I should be
doing. Not because I'm scared of hell and judgment, it's because
I've been made alive in Christ. That as long as it's up to me,
I should strive for unity and peace with one another. That's
not so that I can be saved. That's because that I am saved.
I want to strive for these things. I do these things because I love
Christ. And even when I do them, I'm not doing them perfectly.
So I can't put stock in these. What do I put stock in? How is
it that God calls me His righteousness? Because Jesus obeyed completely. He never sinned. He never disobeyed. He never made a mistake. He never
thought wrongly. He never spoke in his heart in
an ill way. He never complained, ever, even
in his mind or his desire. And all the perfection of Christ
and all of His obedience is given to us. It is credited to us. A better word there is imputed
to us. Paul would say, I don't have
a righteousness of my own, but I have a righteousness that is
outside of me. It is Christ's righteousness. I live by faith this life in
the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. What does
he say before that? It's not I who live. I've been crucified with Christ.
Because we've been crucified, Christ took our sin and He's
been raised to life. He gives us His righteous works
as our own. And God the Father is pleased
with all of us who are in Christ because He sees the finished
work of Christ both ways for us. That is what Jesus is talking
about. Isn't that a loaded phrase? How
are we supposed to get that? Read the whole of John's Gospel.
You get it. Read the Bible more than just on Sunday mornings.
You'll get it. You'll see it. I'm not an expert.
I'm not intelligent. I'm not the guy with all the
answers. And yet, somehow when I read this, it just sort of
pops in there as clear as a bell because I just read it. Beloved,
if you are in Christ, you'll read this Word and He will show
you these things. And you can walk people through the understanding
of what Christ has done for His people. And it's not a cultural
taboo to teach the gospel of grace. It is wrong according
to the Christianity of America. And I don't really have time
to follow that with a lot of reasons and philosophies. I just
have to follow it with what Christ has said. You cannot see me because
you have not been born again." When I look and talk to people,
I like the question, have you been converted? Have you been
made alive? Can you see the gospel as your
only hope? And you share with them the truth
that Jesus laid down His life for His sheep. And if they are
His, they will hear, and they will rejoice. And they will go,
wow, all these years as a Christian, quote, and I've been working
my tail off, and Jesus did it all. Wow. Praise you God, not
for making me into what I should be, but for your glorious grace. That's what Paul says, to the
praise of your glorious grace. So you struggling with sin today,
beloved? Welcome to the party. Let us strive to put the death
to flesh and let us do it together, but let us rejoice in the finished
work of Jesus Christ who laid His life down for us. Who never
sinned like we have, but He took our guilt on Himself. Praise
Him. Let's pray. We thank You, Father,
for this Word, for this truth, God, for sustaining my mind and
my voice to the level that You've done this day. And I praise You,
God, for showing us, just in small little phrases of Scripture,
the depth and weightiness of Gospel truths. Lord, I pray that
any error that may have come through my ill-preparedness or
lack of ability would just be stricken from our minds, but
that Your Word would be sufficient, that Your Spirit would teach
us Your people, and that we would not glory in the Teacher, but
God, we would glory and the Christ. We would glory in You. We would
glory because it is Your glory that we see in Your grace and
love for us. Lord, You show us many things of what Christ did
and there's so much more that we will talk about in Your mercy. Father, we are glad. We are glad
that we have been called Your own. And it's in Jesus' name
we pray.