This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Truth that I heard from God.
This is not what Abraham did. You were doing the works that
your father did. And they said to him, we were not born of sexual
immorality. We have one father, even God.
And Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love
me for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord,
but he sent me. Why do you not understand what
I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are
of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's
desires. He was a murderer from the beginning
and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in
him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for
he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you
the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts
me of sin? I tell you the truth, why do
you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words
of God. The reason why you do not hear
them is that you are not of God. The Jews answered him, Are we
not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?
And Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my
father, and you dishonor me. Yet I seek not my own glory. There is one who seeks it, and
he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if
anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. And the Jews
said to him, Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died
as did the prophets. Yet you say, if anyone keeps
my word, he will never see death or never taste death. Are you
greater than our father Abraham who died and the prophets died? And do you make yourself out
to be? Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.
It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, He is our
God. But you have not known Him. I
know Him. If I were to say that I do not
know Him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know Him and keep
His word. Your father Abraham rejoiced
that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the
Jews said to him, You are not yet fifty years old, and how
is it that you say you have seen Abraham? And Jesus replied, Truly,
truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. So they picked up
stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the
temple. Let's pray. Father, as we hear
your word this day, Lord, I pray that it would have full effect.
God, that you have promised in your word that you will send
it to do that which you intended for it to do. God, that it be
your will that we would rejoice in it, that we would hear it,
that You would call Your sheep to Yourself, that You would secure
us with the joy that is often inexpressible, that we would
know and understand and be satisfied in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Father, I pray these things desperately, but Lord, I pray them by faith.
knowing that it will all work out for your glory after the
counsel of your will, so that any outcome that we see, Lord,
as your people, we know that it is for our good and that it
will bring us the greatest of joys. Father, we thank you, Lord,
for the freedom to be able to worship, to be able to hear your
word, to be able to proclaim the gospel. And Father, we pray
for many who have that freedom, God, that they would stand on
the truth, and proclaim the word that you have sent through your
son. And it's in his name, the name of Jesus. Amen. I told you
last week that we're going to have several more weeks in John
8. We're not going to be able to
get through all of the rest of the chapter today because the
dialogue is just a little bit too thick. There's a lot in there
that needs to be addressed. Of course, it's one argument.
It's one thing. The ultimate end of it is what?
Jesus is showing the Pharisees that their faith in Him is spurious.
that they do not love Him, nor do they know Him, and because
of that they do not know the true God. Though they use the
Bible, though they practice a sense of righteousness, though all
of these things are true of them in their culture and in their
lives, they are not God's people because they reject Christ. And
Jesus unpacks this over the last few weeks. We've seen last week
and the week before how Jesus confronts their confession of
faith and shows that it is not something that they can hope
in because they still hope in their own righteousness. They
still hope in their own work. They still hope in their own
faith. So as we looked back last week, we stopped with verse 37
that Jesus concedes, I know that you are the offspring of Abraham.
I know that you are indeed Jews, if you will. You are genetically
connected to Abraham. Yet you seek to kill me because
he says, my word finds no place in you. So I need to begin there
today as a way of working through this. What does it mean for the
word of God to find no place in these people? Well, you know,
if we think about the Word, and I've often heard through the
years of ministry, people say, there's a famine in the land
of the Word of God, and all this kind of, you know, you've heard that.
There's a famine in the land, and yet I see Bibles galore.
So some people hear that, and they go, well, there's plenty
of Bibles out there. There's plenty of versions of Bibles, and plenty
of paraphrases, plenty of good translations. You can get Greek
New Testaments. You can buy the Septuagint, which
is the Old Testament Greek. I mean, you can go and find almost
any version of the Bible you want anywhere that you can Hope
to find it. There's no famine in the land
of the Word of God. But then we understand that it means there's
a famine in the land of the preaching of the Word of God. But then
people would argue, well, there's a church on every corner, there's
a pulpit in every building, there's pastors and Christians galore.
Had many conversations face-to-face with people this week that really
blew my mind, and God was preparing me for this day. to show the
implication of that type of faith, of that spurious reality that
so many people come to acknowledge some kind of psychological adherence
to the Christian truths of the Bible, yet they've never been
born of God. And that faith is fleeting. And
then the other part of that in the evangelical cult world, And
you know, I've differentiated what those are. But the evangelical
cult world, they're the ones who would come and say, well,
you know, well, we know that, I know that I'm a believer because
look at my life. I don't lie, I don't roll my
eyes, I don't smoke, dance, cuss, or date girls who do. All these
different things, and you know, I'm a pretty good guy, and God's
pleased with the way I live, and you must not be a Christian
because you don't say these things are part of your life. There are even certain groups
of individuals that say if you're not part of their denomination,
you're not in the faith. And then it goes on to this little
small place in our world today where it's almost impossible
to detect, but we have to be sure and be certain that we're
in the word of God enough that we may have enough of the true
taste of truth. I know that seems redundant.
but the taste of truth in our mouth, in our spiritual mouth,
that when somebody offers us a taste of something that's not
quite authentic, that we can find out. I mean, we're so well-tuned
with our taste buds that we can tell the difference in Diet Coke
and fake Diet Coke, you know? Or Dr. Pepper and fake Dr. Pepper. You know, Mr. Pepper,
he never finished school. or Mountain Dew or Mountain Lightning,
which is the Walmart brand back when I was, you know, in the
early 20s. It's like five cents a can. I'd pay 10 for them to
keep it. I mean, you know, that kind of
stuff. You can tell the difference in food. How come it is so difficult? Why is it so difficult then for
us to have that same discernment, the same discriminatory taste
bud with the spiritual things in our life? Oh, it's a church.
It says church must be church. They're using a Bible, must be
biblical. They say they're standing on the word of God. They must
be orthodox. I know a lot of people who stand
on the Word of God to get the dish out of the top of the things.
The family Bible's pretty thick. I mean, it doesn't mean that they're
orthodox. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. Just
because I have a Bible before me and I'm standing in front
of a lectern and y'all are sitting out there and listening and nodding
doesn't mean that I'm orthodox. Except that you have spiritual
discernment to know that what I'm teaching is true and you're
willing to eat it. But our culture is inundated. If everybody who
is supposedly a pastor, teacher of the Word of God, then there
is no famine in the world today of the Word of God, but yet there
is a famine in the world today. Because the Word of God, just
as in the days of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus and the ministry
of Paul and the apostles in first century Palestine, the Jews were
known to hold the oracles of God, to be the bearers of God's
Word. But yet they could not hear it,
did not know it, could not teach it, and could comprehend it not. And friends, I'm going to tell
you, it's worse today than it ever was in first century. It's worse
today than it ever has been in the history of the world. Now
see, some people hear me say stuff like that, and I remember
2012 when I sat down with a group of men who, oh, we'll just let
that go, and I expressed a few things in that nature. And what
they heard me say was what I did not say. What they heard me say
was, oh, you think you're the only church with the gospel. I didn't say that. But I'm telling
us all. that in two decades of ministry,
beloved, in 21 years of pastoral ministry, I have seen more false
converts and false unconverted pastors and apostate congregations
than I have ever seen authentic holding to an orthodox truth. Why? There's many reasons why. There's many implications as
to what happens when you don't. Because in our culture, it doesn't
grow rapidly. It doesn't grow rapidly. There's nothing that draws the
unregenerate man to the teaching of God's word. And there's nothing
but weirdness when an unregenerate man comes into the fellowship
of a body of believers and they're loved on around the intimacy
of God's word, it freaks them out. Now, sometimes it freaks
even the believers out. Some of you guys are creepy,
but we still love you. We still love you. But the world
does not comprehend the truth of Christ, and you'll see that
as it plays out in this conversation. But it's very easy for us, and
we need a proper hermeneutic, that means a proper understanding
of how to interpret the actual writing of Scripture. We must
put ourselves in the comprehension of the culture in that day, not
ours. When we think of the church of
first century, we think of Corinth. You know, we think of all the
problems that the Church of Corinth had, and the congregations that
were plentiful, there were many, manifold. There were many congregations,
and Chloe snitched on them, and Paul wrote back and said, y'all,
I've heard all this, and I've heard this, and I've heard that.
It wasn't one big group of people, it was many congregations with
elders overseeing them all together. And we hear those things, and
we visualize, oh, well that must have been, you know, people got
rowdy. Pastors up there preaching. Didn't have a microphone at the
time and, you know, somebody's busting out in a foreign language,
somebody's dancing in the aisle, somebody's just, it's just chaos.
The person in front of them couldn't see or hear. They didn't sit
like this. There wasn't this type of thing. I mean, imagine
if you went to visit with someone in your family and when you got
there they put up a lectern. Now we're going to visit. And
we appreciate you all coming to the house today. Over here
is the den that you've seen 40,000 times. And there's the bathroom
down that way there. And mom, are you nuts? I mean,
we know where things are in the house. And this is where you're
going to sleep over here. And we need you to register.
So come on. See the formalizing things. This isn't prescribed
by God. We hold to RPW, but it's not
prescribed by God that I stand here, you sit there. But what
is prescribed by God is that we learn the Word of God together
in assembly, and that the elders of the congregation, those who
oversee her, who are also part of her, teach. But this is just the way it's
most productive for who we are as a people. Now, if it were
like my friends in Kabul, We wouldn't be in this building,
we'd be under this building. We wouldn't have a lectern, we
surely wouldn't want to be loud, we wouldn't want to be public,
but we'd be crammed into a place where everybody would be sitting
almost in each other's laps. Some of us not having bathed
for days. Nobody would complain about anything. Dirt would be
all over us. I might have a New Testament,
you may have a piece of the Bible, and somebody else may have, I
don't know, a tablet or something that might have some downloaded
material. And there's nobody with instruments,
there's nobody singing really loudly, but they will sing sort
of like with no music, like a mighty fortress, but they wouldn't sing
it too loud because, you know, worshiping God is not necessarily
mandating that we sing so loud that we get our heads cut off.
So they're having church and a gathering just the same way
we are, but it looks different. But what needs to be consistent
is the truth of God's Word. You see that? The vehicle through
which it's done and the environment in which it's learned is not
prescribed. This is what we're able to do
in our culture. This is what we do in our culture, so this
is how we do it in our culture. But the problem is, when people
see it done this way, they automatically assume what? It must be true. But Jesus says, My Word finds
no place in you. The Word of God finds no place in most all
people. The Word of God actually, according
to the parables and the teaching of Paul and the teachings of
Jesus in this parable, the Word of God finds no place in any
person unless they've been born of God. In the parable of the
soils, Jesus says that there's four soils, the rocky and the
weedy and the thorny. The shallow soil, the birds and
the sun and all these things, that's the enemy taking the Word
of God from the heart of those people. The stress of life coming
up and just burning and they run away from the faith. And
then that insufficient foundation that there's some spurious faiths,
sort of like the Jews and some of the people there in the hearing
of Jesus during this time, whereby they cannot grow into any fruitful,
what? It's not a true faith. But the
only soil that actually works is the good heart. What's the
good heart? Is it the person who is so good
that God just like, you know what? I think I'm just going
to plant the word in his heart. No, it's the heart that has been toiled
and prepared by the true maker, by the creator, the heart that
has been prepared to receive. That's regeneration, guys. That's
being born again. That's being saved. So the person
who is born again has faith. Otherwise, the Word finds no
place in you. The Word is not set on the hearts of these Jews.
And while they use the Word, while they have academic knowledge
of the Word, it is not alive in them. It is not living in
them for the purpose of faith. See, without rebirth, the Word
is just another teaching to which man can apply and live out his
own established goodness. It's just another way for humanity
to say, okay, I'll trust in this teaching of Christianity, this
teaching of this book called Scripture or the Bible, and I'll
just follow after it, and therefore I must be a Christian. That's
what most people think converting to Christianity is, is they start
dressing the part, talking the part, acting the part, living
the part, doing the part, which includes coming in and sitting
in front of somebody talking. And some of the evidences of
these things that I say is not just because I'm critical, because
I've been there. When you have rows of several
thousand people in your Sunday school and in your midweek services
and your children's ministry, you begin to wonder, are there
really this many Christians in this building this week? Let's
see. Hey guys, Wednesday we're going
to have a very deep time in the study of the letter of 1 John. Like you and your best friend
and your neighbor show up. Next week, we're going to have
hot dog supper and a magician, and you've got to call the state
police to direct traffic. No kidding. The sheep of Christ
are fed by the Word of God. The Jews here and those who believed
in that day were not necessarily the sheep of Christ, so their
faith was not fruitful. These Jews used the Word to establish
what was right in their own eyes. They refused all the attributes
of goodness in their own lives because they refused the One
who is good before them. Jesus, the living Word of God,
stood before them in the flesh and they refused Him. And when
the Bible says that they believed in Him, it doesn't mean they
believed in Him for salvation. They believed He could work as
Messiah. Yeah, yeah, we can work with
this guy. We can work with this guy. He'll do. Look at the people who follow
Him. Look at the people who follow a caricature of Christ in our
world. And it's closer to home than
you think, beloved. Don't think I'm talking about somebody that's
from a far off land. Don't think I'm talking about
the cults. Don't think I'm talking about world religions or atheists.
I'm talking about people who are sitting in churches this
morning who do not believe the gospel
of grace. Jesus speaks before these men
as witnesses of God. He is the truth. What does that
mean? It doesn't mean that Jesus is
all truth. Jesus is not the truth of algebra, though Brother Trey,
he's in North Carolina today, but you know, if he were here,
he'd argue that. Yes, it does. Yes, he does. But
Jesus is the truth of God. Everything there is to know about
God and what God does in salvation, and how God operates in the world,
and what God's promised to the people that He loves, Jesus is
the only truth in which to find that. And the Jesus that Scripture
shows is the Jesus who saves His people from their sins and
that God the Father gives those people to Him so that, why? So that they would be atoned
for. so that God's justice would be satisfied, so that God's standard
of perfection, impeccability, would be established in His people
through the imputation, that means the credit of something
that's not ours, but on our behalf, the imputation of the righteous
obedience of Jesus Christ, the man, the human, would be counted
on our account, and His death would be counted in our guilt,
for our guilt. And Jesus speaks as the witness
of God, as the truth, but they do not hear Him. He's been saying
this for years to them. This isn't new. Six months before
this dialogue, He said it. Before that, He said it to Nicodemus
who came after his baptism. Who are you? We think you are
from God, we know that you are from God, for no one can do the
things you do except God be with him." And Jesus' response is,
truly, truly, I say to you that no one can, what, enter the kingdom? No, He says, first, see the kingdom
of heaven, except you are born again. Jesus is the truth. He is the
only way to God. He is the only life for humanity. There is no other life in Christ
except in Christ. Yes, we may enjoy life. We may
enjoy relationships. We may enjoy our children. We
may enjoy the world that God has created and do so without
sinning. We may enjoy the blessings of
life. We may enjoy time at the park or time at the beach or
watching a decent movie that doesn't violate our conscience
or cause our brother to stumble. And so on and so on and so on.
But that's not life. That's not living. That's not
truth. Christ alone is truth. Sometimes I believe that the
persecuted nations of this world have a deeper and truer faith
than the church of Jesus Christ in America. Because we have it
too easy. We complain about the niceties
that aren't necessarily going our way. We fuss about the temperature,
or the finances, or the fact that the car is too old, or the
grass is too tall, or the paint is peeling. We complain because
the plumbing doesn't work. Lord, have mercy. Even when you
re-plumb a house, it's still gonna tear up. Toilet broke in
my house two weeks ago. The chain, you know? Why does
the chain break? How does that happen? I mean, are my kids in
there going, rah! I mean, what's going on? It just
happens. But yet we find ourselves occupied
with the frustration of these things where our brothers and
sisters who are being persecuted for breathing the name of Jesus
don't care. Praise God for the blessings
of America. May we as the church see the idolatry of it and not
rest in that, but rest in Christ and thank Him for the blessings
and enjoy them, but not hold tightly. These people, these Jews here,
hate God because they hate Christ. And you know why they hate Christ?
Here's the way it closes us out. I'll give you the preview. They
hate Christ because He has authority over them. They feel it. When Jesus preaches, the Pharisees
sent the temple guard to arrest Him. And what did they say? They
came back like, we're not touching Him. I'm not arresting that guy. Why? Why didn't you arrest him?
You know, I'm sure one of those guards would like, why don't
you go arrest him? You go put your hands on him in front of
this people. He says no one has ever taught the way he talks.
There's something about him, he's powerful, he speaks with
authority. We can't put our hands on him.
They had a true problem arresting a man that they knew with all
their cognitive ability that he was speaking the truth. The
Jews were no different, but they hated God so much because they
hated Christ so much because He had authority over them when
He spoke. Why do people get angry when we call out their lives
with the use of Scripture? Now, you might think that that
means something else. I'm not talking about calling out somebody and
just being judgmental. I'm talking about the authority
of Scripture. If I share the Word of God with people, I don't
say any commentary. I don't have to say commentary.
I don't have to say that. That applies to you because I'm
just saying if I share the Word of God with people in the midst
of counsel and sometimes they get angry because they don't
want to hear what Jesus had to say. You know who they blame?
Me. You're being harsh. I'm being harsh. Well, I apologize. Now you're being condescending.
I mean, you know, you can't win. And that's for a believer. In
our sins sometimes we find a little animosity toward the Word of
God, don't we? I want something else. I don't want to follow
what the Scriptures teach us. I want punishment and recompense.
Rawr! I mean, you know? Our children
are that way. Don't just correct him. Throw
him down the stairs. I mean, you know, that kind of
stuff. He looked at me funny. Don't look at your sister that
way. Chop off his head, Dad. He won't look at anybody. You
know? Now those are all theoretical
conversations. But these Jews are doing the
work of their Father because they listen to the words of the
devil. They listen to the whispers of
the flesh. They listen to the temptation of the enemy. The
same way Jesus was tempted by the enemy is the same way we
and our flesh and humanity are tempted by the enemy. We listen
to the thoughts of the devil. We listen to the words that he
whispers. But brothers and sisters, when
God calls us out, when we hear those words, we go, that ain't
the voice of my Savior. That's why the Bible teaches
that our hearts are inerrantly wicked and deceitful above all
things. We don't trust our feelings.
You don't use your feelings except to recognize you have them and
then to judge them by the truth who is Christ. This is how I
feel. You know how many people have
come across the counseling desk and said, well, I know that I'm
right with God because I feel that I'm right with God. What does
that have to do with anything? I feel like a bird. Why don't
you go fly off that cliff then? It's like the comedian said years
ago, for boys, superheroes are options for future employment,
not make-believe. Well, I would say that we, as
humanity, we think we are little gods to come to the truth that
we want to create in our own hearts and minds, just as Calvin
would write that the heart of man is just a continual, what,
factory of idols. Brothers and sisters, by the
grace and the mercy of God, through the finished work of Christ,
by the redemption of the spirit and the regeneration that comes
through hearing the word at the will of the Father, we are no
longer prisoner to that. These Jews could not hear the
word of God. They could only listen to their father, the devil.
They can only do that even though with all of their academic wisdom,
they understood that Jesus was Messiah. I want you to understand
that. They never rejected that. but they continually tried to
poke holes in that reality because they hated Him. It wasn't because
they were trying to defend the truth. They hated the authority
of Christ over their lives because they could not see that they
were dead in their sins. and that only Jesus Christ could
save them from their sins. Only His atoning work on the
cross could satisfy the wrath of God. They could not realize
that God had a just cause to be angry with them because they
could not see that they were sinners. Does this start to sound
familiar? Does it sound familiar to the people that we talk with
on a daily basis, on an ongoing basis? And what's really strange
is sometimes the people that we're talking to are the most
judgmental of others. They're the ones who continually
have a problem with how other people are living, how other
people are acting, how other people are speaking. And yet
when you confront them on that, they will come to a place of
saying, well, you know, I really don't, I know I'm not perfect,
but that's a very dangerous thing to say. And we often think that
the Jews thought they were perfect. They didn't think they were perfect,
but they knew they were walking for the Lord. I know I'm walking
for the Lord. Are we really walking for the
Lord? What is it that Abraham did? Friends, and I will say
this and I won't bring names into it, but commentators have
butchered the reality of this text here, especially when you
get to the idea of Abraham doing and they're not doing. What is it that Abraham did?
We'll look at that. So what they do here in response
to Jesus saying that they listen to their father, they assert,
we are Abraham's children, verse 39. I know it's been a long introduction,
but here we are. If Abraham's children, they'd
be doing the work that Abraham did. And they're thinking, we
circumcise our children, we sacrifice, we do that. We're doing the work
that Abraham did. That's not what Jesus was talking
about. Never when we see Jesus talking about abiding in the
word and doing the work of Abraham, do we ever, ever, or should we
ever, ever consider that as moral action? Because there's nothing
to do with it. Because if we weigh the balance
of Abraham's narrative, what is he? A liar. He's a liar. And the Jews knew
he was a liar. He's a liar. He's a deceiver.
He's an unfaithful servant. But yet, he believed God even
in the midst of that, didn't he? I know God's going to do
it. Maybe this is how God's going
to do it. I'll do this. You do that. Oops. That's not
how God's going to do it. You know how God does it? Without
us. God doesn't need the instrumentation of our plans to orchestrate the
outcome of His will. He'll cause us to do what He
wants us to do when He wants us to do it. And if that's a
cop-out for you, shame on you. Because Paul prohibits that kind
of cop-out. Well, I guess I'll just live
on my sin until the Lord stops it. That's not the heart of a
regenerate man whatsoever. and it'll find you in public
discipline. So, go right ahead. But these weren't Abraham's children
because Abraham did a different work. What was the work that
Abraham did? Abraham believed in God. Abraham looked to the
day of Christ. Abraham trusted in the promises
of God through the Savior, through Messiah, through Jesus, the one
who would come through the lineage of David, who was promised to
Abraham not just to save and to be a large nation for a temporary
time, but to save his people from their sins. That's what Abraham did. That's
the work of Abraham. And I'm not making this up, and
I'm not reading in this bias of antinomianism that I'm so
often accused of. I am telling you that when Jesus
even says the words to Nicodemus, you must be born again, or you
cannot see the kingdom of heaven. You must be born from above,
or you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Nicodemus was a poster
child of morality, a poster child of obedience. Paul was a perfect
Pharisee, the most zealous of zeals Paul had. But when the
law came alive to Paul, he died. You say, what must we do to be
doing the work of God? Oh, they ask. This is the work
of God. This is what God wants you to
do. This is the action that God is commanding of you this very
day. This is what God desires of you. Oh, Israel, believe in
me, the bread of your very existence, the sustenance of the breath
of God in you, the blood and the flowing of my blood to satisfy
His vengeance against you. Why would God be upset with me? They would say. That which is
the whole comes to the surface as a small dialogue. That's how
John lays out his letter. They would believe. See, there's
no work or effort in us in which we would, quote, get to the gospel,
or even better, get the gospel. There's nothing that we can do
so that we might, quote, live a life so worthy to get God's
attention. Jesus is saying, you would be
believing as Abraham believed if you were Abraham's children.
But in contrast, see, how I know Jesus is God, but He knows their
heart, that's why He's saying these things. How I know that
you are not the children of Abraham, the true seed of Abraham, is
that you want me dead. Now what does that look like
today? Let's make some application here. What does that look like?
Because we're not Jews, we're not Pharisees, we're not in the
first century. How does that look today? Nobody really wants
Jesus dead. I mean, He's been raised alive.
How silly would that be to try to kill Him again? And He's not
here with us physically. How is it that the world that
we live in today can put Jesus to death? Let's put this away. Let's just put this away. Let's just find a teacher that'll
teach what we know we like to hear. Let's just come to a place
where we can sort of blend in, and nobody's going to notice
anything that we are, and we're just going to fulfill our cultural
obligation to Christianity, and we're just going to get out of
it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't teach me things about Jesus. Don't
talk about anything outside the ABCs of salvation. Don't, you
know, I know I'm right with God, so don't give me any reason to
doubt that. Don't do any of these things.
They just want Jesus to go away. That's what it looks like. And it's mostly fleshed out in
the sense of fellowship when people say, I don't want to be
with the church. You don't want Jesus' body around
you, you don't want Jesus around you. I just love old granny,
but she stinks so bad I don't want her visiting. Her body smells,
but she's so sweet. Let's look at a picture of her. You know, what's up with the
world we live in? Now, does that cause guilt? I
pray not. Because here we are, beloved, and even when that happens,
does it happen? Yes. Good gracious. That's a whole nother sermon.
Give me three or four weeks, get out of date, and I'm going to do
a little sermon on that. How we continue to grow in intimacy
in spite of our differences. Because I think it's time to
talk about that as a church. It has nothing to do with us
being saved or not saved. We're going to stress, we're
going to have trials, we're going to have strife. If we don't,
we're not alive. If we're not arguing sometimes,
we're really not intimate. But we are the children of God,
so therefore we would not want to sever ourselves from each
other. Maybe today, maybe right now, but not ultimately. Does
that make sense? Because people will accuse me
of being harsh when I say stuff like that. that these Jews, they appeal
to their origin. We are the children of Abraham, but Jesus is saying,
I speak the truth that I've heard from God from the beginning.
And Abraham, if you look at verse 56, down that way through verse
58, Abraham rejoiced in my day, and they get upset with him about
that. Abraham believed in me and was glad when I came to the
earth. Abraham's aware of me. And Abraham received Me because
he received My Word. He received the Father's Word,
which is My Word. Abraham received the living Word
of God, and he believed My Word was true. He trusted in the words
of My Father, which I now say to you, because He sent Me to
say these things." See, Jesus is continually reasserting this.
And they understand it very clearly. But guess what they do? They
do the, yeah, but. Yeah, but you. They talk about
Jesus, they point a finger at Jesus, they try to discredit
Jesus, but they do so by saying what they are not. Look at that. We are not born out of sexual
immorality. See, in the fifth grade, if somebody
just said that in an open conversation, everybody else would be like,
ooh. Boy, that's like saying your
mama. I mean, you know, that's what
these guys, that's all they had. Jesus says, you're not the children
of Abraham because you do not believe the Word of God that
Abraham believed. Abraham believed in me, looked for me and rejoiced
in me and you do not because the Word of God is not in you,
you cannot handle it. He'll say in just a few minutes. And you know that I speak the
truth yet You will not believe my word, though Abraham believed
my word. You are not doing what Abraham
did because you do not believe in me. Abraham believed in me."
And so their response is, yes, but we were not born of sexual
immorality. Now why would they say that?
Because that was the rumor of Jesus. Mary was pregnant as a
young girl with Jesus Christ. With Jesus the Christ. And what was fitting and that
Joseph wanted to do to save her reputation was to put her away
quietly in a divorce that she might go on with in her life
and not be in the public eye as a pregnant unwed mother. but
the Holy Spirit of God calls Joseph to understand and sent
an angel to share with him that this is not because of adultery,
this is not sexual immorality, Joseph. God the Father calls
to this child inside of her, and this is Immanuel. You know
what the word means? God with us. She shall give birth
to a child and His name shall be called Immanuel. Emmanuel,
and the nations shall rest upon His shoulders." And He's already told them a
thousand times, I am from the Father. And they say, yeah, you're
born in sexual immorality. And He said, we all have one
Father. We have the same Father. Who's your dad? They've already
asked Him that earlier in this chapter, in chapter 7 actually.
Who's your father again? Don't we know him, Joseph? Weren't
your parents not married when your mom got pregnant? Most so-called Christians, that's
how they live their life too, by the way. Where's the grace
in that? If God is not the giver of life, then why are we upset
about anything that happens to children? No matter the means
to which they come into the world. We have one Father. Even God
is our Father, they say. Abraham is our Father. You know
what? Even God's our Father. God's our Father, because God's
the Father of Abraham, and we're Abraham's children, so God's
our Father. They appeal the negative to try to show that Jesus has
no room to talk because He is born in sexual immorality, and
they come out with this. I'll tell you, church, and maybe
I may be misapplying this in my heart. I know I'm not exegetically. Because it's sort of simple in
the text there, it's easy, but maybe in the application, pastorally,
I might be misapplying this, but I pray that I'm not. I believe
that many who claim to be godly in their lives and in their actions
because of their assertion that they are indeed in God is as
close that they get to God. People who don't take correction
and judge others claim to be in God a lot. And I see it. I've got a friend, and I won't
say where he's from, but I've got a friend in the ministry,
we've been friends for 16 years, and he's suffering deeply in
the faith, and he's suffering deeply in his pastorate because
of people who walk around, I'm God's people, I'm godly, I'm
godly, and godly, and they're murdering him and causing him
great pain. He's a very sensitive man who
loves the church, and they take advantage of that. They exploit
that for their own power and control over his life. But yes, these are the people
who stand before the church every week and, you know, oh, church, we
need to hold the Bible. We need to love our pastor now. We need to respect our pastor.
And then when he turns around, they stick him in the back, you
know? They stick him in the back. Is that the third time I've growled
today? The growl of Christ. Many claim
to be godly in their actions, and that's what they were doing.
We're godly in what we think. We're right to want to murder you,
because we're with God. God is our Father. I mean, how
many crusades through many different faiths and cults through the
years have been carried out because of the claim that God had some new prophet that finds a
plate in the woods, or some new prophet that sits on a certain
throne, and some new prophet that proclaims something that's
not in Scripture, but God has shown them that it's God. I mean,
that's the trump card. That used to work in the medieval
times. It doesn't work today. Well, God told me. He did now. Now the millennials are smarter
than that and say, chapter, verse, please. I assert that if God tells you
anything, it either has to be found in here or we better get
those blank pages to work. Because if God shows you something
that's not in here, you better add it because it is the Word
of God. And then we're going to put it to the test. How many
apostles do we have in the church today? The true answer is zero. Because I've got the apostles
right here in my hand. I don't need to be one. Thank God. They will say that because they
are in God, their actions are godly. Few will actually confess
that they're really in Christ, though. You notice that? Well,
we believe in Jesus, but they won't pray in the name of Christ.
They won't assert the name of Christ. They won't hold fast to the work
of Christ. It's all about being in God.
I'm godly. I'm God's people. I'm this, and
I just love God. I don't love Jesus. And if Jesus, Jesus is just an
instrument, which by they flip on the switch of godliness. Oh,
Jesus. Yeah, Jesus. He paid for my sins. Now look
at me, God. Jesus, Jesus, would you get out of my way for just
a minute? You're in the way. God needs to look at me. You see,
that's the mindset. That's the, that's the sin of
the Galatians. It's Christ alone. It's Christ alone. It's Christ
alone. Judiagoras come in and say, yo, yo, yo, snippy, snippy.
You're really a Christian. You better show it. Jesus, I swear you're in the
way. God needs to look at our circumcisions so He can be proud
of us. See how weird that is? Misunderstand
it completely? I've been told, I mentioned those
people this week. Many people will present themselves
as moral. And they won't confess Christ
or the need for Christ because they're doing okay. And they think that they don't
sin to such a degree because their moral life is not perfect,
but it's good enough. And you might think that I'm
talking theoretically, but friends, I mean, three people this week
have told me that to my face. People that live in this town
have told me that. They count themselves in the
faith by measuring their own lives, by measuring their actions,
their affections, their desires, and their morality by their own
standard that they believe fits the standard of God. And what's
crazy is all three of them, when I share the gospel after that,
they all said two words. What were they? Yeah, but...
I'm serious. It's like the conjunction of
heresy. Well, he used the conjunction of heresy. He's probably lost. Now, we're not going to judge
him that way, but he's definitely wrong. Someone holds to a false gospel,
we can't count them as brethren, can we? No. One even supposes that during
a season of his life where he was not as moral as he should
have been, that he was actually lost. But now that he's come
back to morality, he's actually saved. He's moral enough at this
present time to be secure. This leads to contrasting and
measuring the standard of, quote, goodness by what we consider
as human beings, what is very, very bad or very, very good,
rather than what God has established in his word to show us the standard
of perfection. And we all know that Jesus Christ
alone is the only human who has ever met that standard of perfection.
Getting close is not enough. Being perfect today but where
we were imperfect yesterday and being perfect for the rest of
our days is not enough. We are condemned before God if
we're not fully and wholly and eternally and always perfect.
And because we have inherited the guilt of our father Adam,
we are guilty even before we sin willfully. And as I press the Word of God
with people like this, it reveals an anger in some of them. It
reveals a hostility in all of them. Sometimes it's an uncomfortableness. And it's not an uncomfortableness
to me or the conversation. It's not a hostility toward,
you know, the, quote, Jesus of their life or the, quote, Christianity
of their culture. It's a hostility and an anger
to the grace of God through Christ. It's a hostility to the fact
that there's nothing they can do to set themselves before God
in any way that God would be pleased with them, except by
faith alone in the finished work of Jesus, you see. Because an
unregenerate man wants to continue to hold the reins, even if it
is a gift of God, he wants to steer the cart toward the gift
and pick it up with his own two hands. And it is an absolute
impossibility to pick up salvation. It must be granted. It must be
given. It must be secured in the person
of Jesus Christ. And Jesus, what does He do? I
could teach the rest of this part as a whole in another sermon,
but what does He do? He doesn't reassert. He doesn't come back
and answer them with an apologetic. like we know today. He doesn't
answer them with a polemic. Judaism is this, Judaism is that.
He doesn't answer them with logic. He doesn't answer them with philosophy.
He answers them with the same, in their mind, quote, absurd,
stupid, foolish, blasphemous thing that he's been saying from
the beginning. And he says this, what does he say? If God were
your father, you would love me. For I, here it is, I came from
God and I am here. I have come not of my own accord,
but He sent me." What is Jesus doing? He reasserts the truth
of who He is. He continues to say what He says.
Because He is God and He is the truth bearer and the revelation,
the fullness of all that God is, we see fully in the humanity
of Jesus and we hear fully in the humanity of Jesus in the
teaching of His Word, which is the Word of God that was with
God in the beginning, that became flesh and tabernacled with us.
And we have seen the fullness of the glory of God as of the
only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." And the Gospel writer, he says,
from Moses we receive the law, but from Christ we receive grace
upon grace upon grace. And here's a picture of that
playing out right there. We want Jesus to hold our ankles, but
we want to put our hands on Moses. It doesn't work like that, friends. It won't work like that for a
true person of faith, because faith is in Christ alone. Jesus doesn't appeal to any authority
other than the Word of God. What I have said to you is the
Word of God. I've been telling you the Word of God from the beginning. Abraham
knew the Word of God that I'm telling you now. I'm the Word
of God, and I'm telling you the Word of God, and this is the
authority. The Word of God is authoritative over you, and they
hear it, and they hate it, and they hate him, and they hate
God. He reasserts His position of authority, proclaims that
He has come from God. He was sent by God to do the
will of God and that He is here before them and God's people
will hear Him and they will love Him. We don't need elaborate dialogue
on philosophy or apologetics for the sake of another's belief,
for the sake of another's faith or salvation. We don't need this.
Jesus never did this. The apostles never did this.
They appeal only to the Word of God and only through the Word,
supernaturally, can a man come to believe in the Word. Only through the Word, supernaturally,
can a man come to believe in the Word. So I don't have to
piece it apart and explain it in such a way for an unregenerate
person to acknowledge and come to this cognitive reality that,
oh, I get it. That's not what it is. It's God speaking His Word to
His people and then at the will of the Spirit, God, He blows
where He wishes and regenerates where He wishes and causes faith
where He wishes. And then when I get to the end of the day,
as a regenerate person, I can sit down and go, why is it that
I believe this? There's no logical explanation. But it's all I have. It's all
I have. It's that everything Christ has
said, I hold 1,000% as sufficient for everything I need. And He
is the only way to life. And I don't want that life except
that now I can see that He is the life. You see that? And then Jesus asks a question,
not because He wants to know, but because He wants us to know. He says, why do you not understand
what I say? And He answers it. Why are these people not understanding
what we say? Why are they so hostile? Why did the Jews not understand
what Jesus said? Why couldn't they get it? Aren't
they not smart enough? Was Nicodemus not like the PhD of Israel? Yes,
he was. And then some. Why do you not understand what
I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. I could
give you some grammar there. I don't want to take the time
out to do that, but I could give it to you. Jesus is saying you
can't bear it. You hate what I say because you
hate the God from which it comes. I mean, have you heard that recently?
That Jews, Israel, they love God. They don't love God. They hate God. They hate the
Word of God. Judaism hates God, always hates
God, and continually hates God because they hate Christ. Jesus does not contradict the
teaching of Judaism, He helps us understand it. He opens it
up for us to see. You've established, Jesus is
basically saying, you've established in your heart your own law, guys.
You've established in your heart a law of death. You've created
in your heart your own God, your own selfishness, and you're doing
exactly what your Father does and has been doing from the very
beginning. You're lying. And you're murdering. Those are
the two things that Jesus pulls out. I'm lying, they say. Yeah, you're lying. You say you
love God, but you want to kill Him. You say you have the Word,
but you can't recognize it. You say you know the Father,
but you're doing everything that the Father says not to do, and
you're saying it's the Father sending you to do it. We have
a Father, one Father, even God. We're doing His work, murdering
you. You've established your own selfishness.
You're liars. Thus, because you're liars, my
word has no place in you because it responds, your flesh responds
with enmity against everything that I teach because you are
in person anti-Christ, anti-God, anti-peace, anti-everything that
God is. So your mind is warped. And my
word has no place in you because you are in person and in pleasure
and in purpose anathema. You are cut off from God. And
you are depraved. You're engaged in the lies of
the flesh, the blindness because of your depravity. And you cannot
bear to hear me speak. That is true because though you
know it is true, it indicts the very nature of who you are. Remember
in times when I said when you call people's baby ugly, Jesus
would call them ugly. Y'all ugly. You see this stuff
we wear. And this isn't just here. John
3, 3. How many times have I said it
today? I say to you, unless you're born again, you cannot see the
kingdom of God. And again, unless one is born of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 544, how
can you believe when you receive glory from another and do not
seek the glory that comes from me? And John 6, 44, no one can
come to me unless the Father who sent him draws him, and I
will raise him up on the last day. These negative things, these
implications, these imperatives, you cannot come, you cannot believe,
you cannot. You are of, why? Because verse
44, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do
your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning
and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in
him. When he lies, he speaks out of
his own character because he's the father of lies and he's a
liar." Everything the devil says is
a lie. And it's easy because that's
who he is. That's the essence of his person. That's His character,
that's His nature. And so those who are not in Christ
are able to not just lie. And people think, well, you know,
telling a lie. Did you run that red light? No, sir. I swear on
the Bible that. Yes, that's a lie, but this isn't the lie in view
here. The lie in view here is to say that you are God's people
when you reject the gospel of grace. The lie in view here is to take
credit for your own standing before the Lord through some
volition or decisive act of will. Now I know this is troubling
for some of us. But friends, salvation is either
as Jesus says it is or it's not. And when we want to murder Christ
by not going there, I don't want to learn that high doctrine,
then you don't want to know Christ. And in our infant stages of our
faith, we are ignorant of so many things and it's so easy
to be drawn to the theology of Google and the theology of YouTube
and the theology of all these places and to learn all these
cool terms and to have a good handle on it. But beloved, if
God's going to teach us, we need to be in the Bible. And we need
to be together to have that safety net of intimacy that establishes
in us what is true and what is a little bit off and what is
flat out heresy. as we hold fast to the confession
of our hope, who is Jesus Christ, who is the God of heaven, because
those many who claim Him are indeed the children of Satan. In verse 45, Jesus says, Because
I tell you the truth, you do not believe Me. You hear that? Your nature is
liar. You say you're God's children,
yet you are having a heart against the very nature of God. You hate
God because you want me dead. And the reason you don't hear
what I say is because I tell you the truth. Did that click? That's why you hate it so much
because I'm telling you the truth. You don't want to hear it. You
don't believe me because I'm telling you the truth. Doesn't
that sound like a contradiction? Isn't that a dichotomy that just
doesn't flow well in the logic of our own minds? Wait a minute.
Jesus is saying He says the truth and that's why they don't believe
Him. Yes. They cannot believe Him because
their nature is impossible to see the truth and hold fast to
it even though they know He's speaking the truth. Does Romans 1 come into play
in your mind? For all without excuse, for they
know that God is, I'm paraphrasing here, but they do not thank Him
for being God or acknowledge Him as God, though they know
He is God, but by what? By the works of unrighteousness,
they suppress the truth. Therefore, God turns them over
to a reprobate mind, to do that which is unnatural. all sorts
of wickedness, all sorts of sexual immorality, all sorts of lying,
all sorts of covetousness, all sorts of murder, all sorts of
thievery, all sorts of things. They continue to do it over and
over again. And Jesus in John 10 will call
the very audience that He's talking to now thieves. But they've never stolen a thing
with their own hands. But they're thieves. They violated
the commandment, thou shalt not steal. but they've never stolen
a thing. We'll see that in a couple of
months, years. The disposition to believe Jesus'
work and to believe His word is foreign and impossible apart
from the Spirit of God causing new life. Without the new birth,
the natural man will either reject the message and also, he will
always reject the message, but he will also hate the message
of grace. but he'll also sometimes twist
it to suit himself. Well, I don't want to be a non-believer.
I don't want to be a non-Christian. I mean, I get a lot of business
from the church. You know, I'm a good guy. I need
to be in church. I need to do my duty and have
my religion. Oh, yeah, that Jesus looks pretty
good over there, and he only makes me pay 10% of what I earn.
Good, I'm going to that church, and I'm going to get into that
fellowship, and I'm going to do my Christian duty. We twist it. Because in reality, if we want
to think about it in a way that maybe even our children can understand,
to the unregenerate man, the gospel of grace is poison. Because
the grace of God will kill the natural man. And in our natural
state, we don't want to die. We don't want to die to our selfishness.
We don't want to die to our own way of religion. We don't want
to die to our own caricature of God. We don't want to die
to our gospel. We don't want to die, we don't
want to drink that poison, but all of a sudden the regeneration
of God, the new birth, causes us to go, this is a sick and
depraved thing. Give me the antidote. So that
which was poison is actually the antidote, and His name is
Jesus. The grace of God establishes in us the ability to see that
we are not His. And the power of God causes us
to believe that we are His. And then Jesus asks questions
that we can't answer today. Which of you convicts me of sin? I'll tell you the truth. Why
do you not believe me? And then He says, whoever is of God hears
the words of God. The reason why you do not hear
them is that you are not of God. Do you hear the words? Can you
hear the truth of Christ today? Do you understand what God has
done through the body, the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus,
the resurrection? Do you understand that just in
the divine economy of justice and righteousness, what God had
to do to save us from our sins? that God became man and dwelt
among us, and His nature was truly man, and His other nature
was truly divine, and He existed in this world that hated Him
so that He might save His people from their sins. Beloved, by
faith, you know that you are His people. And those who are not His people
will not hear this message. How will they know if we do not
go? How will they hear if no one preaches? Blessed are the
feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, the gospel of
grace, the truth of Christ. We are of God because God has
purchased us through the blood of Christ. He has satisfied His
wrath through the body of Christ. So consider that, beloved, as
we pray and close this sermon, and as we prepare for the Lord's
table, consider this reality. But that's what we remember here
when we do these things. Let's pray. Lord, we're glad
that You love us. We're glad that You are our Father. We're glad that we are Your children.
But Lord, help us to forever be reminded that it is not because
of what we've done or who we are or how good we are, but Lord,
only because of Your mercy and the counsel of Your will, So
as we continue in our service today, as we partake in the Lord's
Table, Father, I pray that we would be reminded of these things,
and I pray that each of us would contemplate how we are relating
to one another, and that we can forgive one another, and that
we can stand and have peace with You because of the work of Christ,
therefore we can also have peace with one another. And I pray
that Your Gospel would continue to call Your people out of unbelief,
Help us to share the gospel with so many here. Lord, there are
so many sheep who have yet to come to believe. And there are
some sheep who have been inundated with a false hope that they cannot
overcome. Lord, help us to be the instrument
through which you call these sheep home. God, give us the
peace to know that those who do not hear and those who do
not believe, it is not for us to labor wondering how we might
change them, but God, that we can trust that you will change
them if it is your will. in the time that you have allotted
for your people. And we pray these things in the
name of Jesus. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.