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. Preaching should be done, and
what exposition really is, it'll take you in different places.
Now, somebody who's new in the ministry and maybe in one of
their first assignments, I say the word very lightly, as a pastor,
their first call as a pastor, and they've not been teaching
for a while, they may not spend enough time in the text to see
certain things, or they may see things holistically throughout
the narrative to just get to the point of the matter and move
on, and all of that is good. But then when you begin to study
and you begin to read and you begin to know the gospel of John
and the doctrines that are there, even in the narrative, it is
good for the church, it's good for us to slow down and to look
at these things, even though they are so connected, it's good
for us to slow down. Otherwise we could have like
a four hour sermon on John 8 and be done. But, you know, that
would be difficult to digest, it'd be difficult to apply. When
it comes to preaching, exposition is a safety net. I've talked
about this many, many times over and I assert this dogmatically
that those who teach outside of exposition are really doing
an injustice to the church. They're doing harm to the church
and they're doing harm to their own spiritual growth because
it is good for me to pick what I want to talk about. And if
I have a besetting sin, I have frustration, I have a particular
pet thing that I really want to get across, I want to, as
someone has recently accused me of guilt-shaming the church,
I could easily do that just by picking and choosing whatever
text I so feel fits the occasion to pound into your head, to make
you feel bruised and battered, to manipulate you into behaving
or thinking the way I want you to think. But when it comes to
exposition, literally, verse by verse by verse, what is it
that God has said through the writing of these letters, and
then how were they to be received by the church? First, they're
to be received through the ears, that we would hear them and read
them. You ought to be reading the Gospel of John throughout
the week. You ought to be reading the Gospel of John in context.
Because you can't teach this verse without the verse before
it. You can't understand the explanation of what Jesus is
doing here without the prologue and so on and so forth. But exposition
protects the church because it protects the church from error.
But there's a frustration that comes for me, inside of me, that
comes inside of me when I see people who bark at exposition. For example, what does it mean
when I say that? If we go to the first letter
to the Corinthians, and we see Paul in chapter 5 just really,
I mean, he's pounding sexual immorality. He's pounding public
sin. He's pounding that this stuff
should not be named, nor should it be tolerated. Expel the brother
from among you. Okay? And if that text was before
us today and I'm preaching it, I must preach it. And if in the
understanding and the intimacy of our fellowship we have those
sins, not only must I must preach it, I must operate under the
authority of Scripture that I might work in us an understanding of
how it's going to be dealt with in our own fellowship. And we
have done that. Twice. It's not wrong to preach that
which God has written in His Word, nor is it ever out of place
for the Beloved of God. But we have a lot of things that
happen. We have people on both ends of
the spectrum. Sometimes we have guys who don't
want to study, who don't want to do anything, who don't want
to spend time. They have more leisure than they do study time. And so therefore, the best thing
they know how to do is come up with a philosophy and match some
Bible verses to it. That's not preaching. That's
not teaching us what God is saying in His Word, that's teaching
us an inference philosophically that man has derived from some
cool things. You know what, I could do the
same thing with a box of fortune cookies. I'm serious. And I could spiritualize those
things to sound like Christ to such a degree that you all would
go, oh wow! Not you all, but the world in
a sense. Because you all have been given wisdom to know the
difference. And I might get away with one of those every now and
then, but if I did that two weeks in a row, there'd be a line at
the door. And I wouldn't be on the receiving end of the blessing,
if you know what I mean. But exposition must deal with
the totality of the text. The problem comes is when people
think that what Paul is saying is contradicted to the gospel
of grace. Friends, Paul's arguments undergird the reality of the
grace of God. When Paul commands us to walk
in a manner worthy of the calling, when Paul commands us to wipe
the sinner out from among us, when Paul commands us to never
be hateful, this is not legalism and it is antinomian to charge
it as such. It is not right to extract the
correction of Scripture and only deal with the resolution of the
behavior. We know that the gospel is our
only hope, but beloved, as a church, As a fellowship, as a gathered
people, we do have to continue to love each other and to work
out our differences. If we cannot work out our differences,
we are worthless. If we cannot teach the scripture
holistically, we are powerless. People say, well, what does it
mean for the church to have power, for the church to continue? That's
what the church has power. The church continues in perpetuity.
The fellowship of Grace Truth Church, if we continue, it is
a testimony of the grace of God. If we do not, it is a testimony
of the sovereignty of God. The Lord is patient. The Lord
is kind. But the teaching of His Word
is the only hope that we have to understand where our intimacy
lies and the power of God within. When we step outside of the written
Word and begin to philosophize on how we might deal with life,
or what we want other people to say for us, or do for us,
or think for us, we have failed to trust in the power of God. I want you to hear that, church. You may be redeemed, you may
be born again, hallelujah, but just like the Galatians, you
can be bewitched by the philosophies of the world, some of which are
so closely related to truth that they can deceive you. Anytime counsel comes from without
the Word of God, it is to be taken with a grain of salt. The Gospel of John, chapter 8,
verse 33. Read there with me. Let me start at verse 31. So
Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him, If you abide in
My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free. And they answered Him, We are
the offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.
How is it that you say we will become free? Jesus answered them,
Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave
to sin. The slave does not remain in
the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you
free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are the offspring
of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place
in you. I speak of what I've seen with
my father, and you do what you have heard from your father.'
They answered him, Abraham is our father. And Jesus said to
them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works
Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told
you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham
did. You were doing the works of your
father. They said to him, we are 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 on 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 the
truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me
of sin? If 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. Let's pray. God, there
is no way we could grasp this without your spirit bringing
us to life first. First. And as Jesus speaks to
these people and as we continue through the weeks to go through
this discourse between Jesus and the Jews, God, help us to
see where we were and from what we have been saved and from what
we have been set free. And give us, give us, Lord, the
discernment and the conviction by your Holy Spirit alone to
continually come back to the cross of Christ and not to anything
else. Father, that we would wallow
and be immersed in the gospel of Your grace and the finished
work of Your Son and nothing of our own hands, nothing of
our traditions, nothing of our lineage, nothing of any of these
things. And Father, by Your mercy, O God, call Your people to salvation
this day. And by Your mercy, O God, keep
us therein. And by Your mercy, O God, continue
to empower us through the Scripture. Let us shake in the light of
the reality of Your judgment, but then let us look bold to
Your face and stand as we call You Daddy because of Jesus Christ. We pray these things. Amen. There's several things I want
you to see here, and I'm going to try to make application in
this teaching. for not only us as readers, but
also us as Christians. Shepherding the church is not
a job. It is a burden. But it is not
a burden like when the water pipe bursts, or when the tire
blows out, or when the roof leaks, or a tree falls on the house.
or the dog runs loose or whatever. It's not like that. We go, oh,
great. When will it end? No, it's a
burden that is delightful to carry. It is delightful to carry. Many of you don't let me know
what's happening in your life because you think, oh, Pastor
Jessica, it's what I am. Please don't rob me of the burden
of shepherding you. Please don't rob the elders of
the burden of shepherding you. Do not withhold the truth of
your needs and your spiritual place. Beloved. The work of the
ministry is not what the world has called it to be. It's not
about finding a building and calling it the church. It's not
about developing programs or building a stage or putting on
a sermon. It's not about show. It's not
about experience. It's not about any of these things.
It's not about a set of rules that we follow. And if we do,
we're right with God. It's not about, you know, how
we're looked at in the community, because if we're truly following
Christ and trusting in the gospel of grace, the community will
hate us in our silence. Not because we're polarizing
with the way we speak. It is a burden that is joyful
to be a part of a spiritual family that Christ has purchased and
established. And we come together this day
because we are obligated to one another. You're not obligated
to me, though I am obligated to you, but we all in turn are
equally obligated to one another as we are obligated to Christ
because we love Him so, because He loved us first. You see how
that works. We are not under compulsion out
of fear. We are not under compulsion to
be together out of some social picture. or shame. We are obligated
because of our love for one another. I'm obligated. If we saw someone
choking, I don't know about you, but I've heimlicked many people
in my day. I frequent restaurants often.
They're my second office. And not only am I there, but
I'm around people. I've heimlicked many people in
my day, and one such woman, I gave the heimlick to. She was turning
color and I mean, everybody else was like, oh, what's going on?
Call 9-1-1. And I'm going, no, pow, pow. And it was really gross. She stayed around for hours,
continuing to talk to me and to just be so excited that I
had saved her life. She could not get over it, just
tearful. And it's OK, I understand. I
just did what anybody would do. I mean, what am I going to do?
So you check and it's, oh, gosh, this is the end for her. Angry
birds. No, nobody does that. It doesn't
work that way in our society. Human beings are concerned with
the care of others. And then after I saved this woman's
life physically, she was so overcome by it, she tried to give me money.
She tried to pay me. She's pulling out like $18.05
and stuff in pennies. And I'm like, woman, I don't
want your money. Let me give you something that's more valuable
than your life. And I share the gospel with you.
And then she wants to stay around more. And so if that's the way it is
for us in this temporal world, how much more affection do we
have for Christ who satisfied the wrath of God on our behalf?
For there is no choking in this physical world that we can be
saved from that is greater than the salvation that comes
through Christ. So we come together, the point I'm making, we come
together because of each other, because of Christ in each other.
We don't despise Christ's left hand and love His right hand.
We don't despise His ears and love His feet. We don't love
the hair of Jesus but hate the beard of Jesus. It's hard to
be so funny. We love Christ and we are the
body of Christ. We must love each other and we
must deal with each other and relate to one another in that
vein of thinking. It is because God has loved us
in Christ that we are to have love for one another. And when
we correct those things, when we as the elders of the church
correct the lack of attentiveness to the Word of God, it is not
only good, it is ordained and commanded by God for us to do
so. How do I know you're not in the Word? Because you are
stressed out and frustrated and don't know where to turn and
don't have an answer and don't know what's going to happen.
You're not believing in Christ. You don't have joy. And I can
see it in your face. If I look at your faces. I can
tell something's wrong days before you tell me. And sometimes it's fatigue and
sometimes it's tragedy. Sometimes it's emotional strain.
That's the life of a Christian. We don't come in here and pretend
with a happy face with this, well, I don't even know who did
it, it's probably apostates anyway, but you know, this plastic mask
of charade that we put on. We don't come in here pretending
to be something we're not. We're broken people living in
a world that despises our Lord and Savior, that hates the very
nature of God's righteousness. And then so many people that
are supposedly like us in the world hate everybody else. And
so we get it from both sides. We're hated by the world in a
natural sense because they hate God. And we're hated by the world
in a relational sense because we're ascribed to be the so-called
Christians that the world so despises because of their stances
and their mouths and their hatred. Our men's group talked about
that yesterday. How do we deal with the issues of social justice?
How do we deal with the issues of sexual morality? How do we
deal with the issues of things that are evil being made righteous
by the law of man? One of the ways we deal with
it is we recognize that these people are not our enemies and
that we don't have a stake in this and we're not trying to
change the morality of the world. As a matter of fact, 1 John 5
says we're not to even worry about praying for the change
of the lifestyle of an unbeliever. Paul tells that to the Corinthian
church, don't judge the outside world. It's none of your business
what they do. But judge among you. with all authority, Timothy,
with all power, with all patience, with all kindness, with all affection,
look after one another, see. Some people think that the ministry
is where the pastors sort of look out over y'all in our high
holy horse and go, straighten that up, don't yawn in church,
don't chew gum. Are you taking notes or are you
doodling? You're doodling, you sinner. Did you drink? Was it too much?
I mean, this is not the way the church operates. We're sinners
amongst sinners who have been sanctified by Jesus alone, fully
and completely. We are done. We have the finished
work of redemption and we await glorification. And in that meantime,
in that pause, in that light, rest, it is affliction. And it
comes from within, it comes from without, it comes from around,
it comes from up and down and it's all over. And we have fleeting
moments of happiness, but we have an eternal standing of joy.
The world we live in The Christian world we live in, and I'm going
to put quotes in the air, Christian world we live in is so parallel
and akin to the nature and to the heart of Judaism in the first
century that when I read this text, I mourn so badly over the
condition of so many souls who claim to be in Christ this very
day. I'm going to show you the security
of the Jews. We are, the verse 33, we are
the offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.
How is it, Jesus, that you now say we will become free? I landed with this last week
and I told you I was going to pick it up from here. The security
of the Jews who are in their lineage, The security of the
Jews was their heritage. The security of the Jews was
their practice. The security of the Jews was
their religion. They felt that they were never
spiritually enslaved. They were never blinded. Though
they had been many times over, through many centuries, slaves
to particular governments. And I'll remind you, and I'll
say it again in a minute, that God put them there on purpose. God
put Israel in bondage on purpose to show not only the temporality
of conditional covenants, but their worthlessness of temporal
conditional covenants. And if you don't know what I'm
talking about there, I'll push you over to one of Trey's Wednesday
nights. You can go to the church website and see it where he talks about
covenants. It's a very good message on covenants. But the lineage, they were Jews
and they've always been Jews and they were fine. They had
no reason to not feel confident in their relationship with God.
They felt that as God looked at them, they were good in the
eyes of God. There was nothing that could
cause them to fall out of God's grace in their own mind. There
was nothing that they worried about. There was nothing that
caused them any type of fear whatsoever. So much so that they
could see the world around them and even their own Jewish brothers
and sisters who would come to the temple and partake in the
festivals and feasts. And they would say that these
people don't even know the law. and they're accursed, but we
do because we're following it, and we're leading people in this
way, and we're doing this and we're doing that. We're okay,
not only because we're doing these things, but because we
are the children of Abraham. And God promised to make us a
great nation. And God promised to make us as
numerous as the sand on the shore. And God promised to send a Messiah
where we wouldn't bow down to Rome or any other place ever
again. And then they believed. You know
this part of the dialogue is when they believed that He was
Messiah. And Jesus confronts their belief and shows them it's
unbelief. Oh, y'all believe Jesus is Messiah? Yay! No, you don't. You're a slave. I'm a slave? If I'm Messiah, the whole idea
is I'm coming to make you free. They were free. They had nothing
binding them up in their conscience. They had nothing binding them
up in their mind. They had nothing binding them up in their heart.
They might have been enslaved politically, but they were free.
They were good. They were righteous. They were
holy. They were set apart. They were the people of God.
And no matter what calamity befell them, no matter what Government
came and overturned them. They were God's people. And they
remembered the exodus and they knew that God would slay their
enemies and set them up as a city on the hill and they would be
something to behold and everybody would go, wow, we should have
listened to the Jews. You see all those references? As a gospel-believing
Christian, you understand them. Unbelievers continue to push
them all the way back to Moses, all the way back to Abraham. And in 1948, they established
that. As a culture, we established that misunderstanding of bondage
and sin and established Israel as a state. God's people are not a government.
God's people are not a nation. God's people are not an institution. God's people are His body. The
body of His Son. Those who have been given to
the Son and are paid for. Paul says that those that are
the descendants of Abraham are not the true seeds of Abraham. But those who are in Christ are
the true seeds of Abraham. Abraham is our Father. We are
His seed. Who are we enslaved to? Why do you say you'll become
free? It implies what? They're not free. I might have said this last week,
but I don't know if I have. It troubles me when I see professing
Christians when I share the gospel with them and they come back
with the, and you know, I hear a lot of people saying this stuff
now, but the, yeah, but what now? Yeah, but you know, I've
been in the church my whole life. Yeah, but I was baptized when
I was seven. Oh yeah, but I received Christ when I was 21. The gospel
is the gospel is the gospel is the gospel. And if you want to
add to it, it is not good news for you. And people are easy to come up
and say, well, they know I don't have sin or I do have sin, but
God's working on me. I'm better today than I was yesterday.
No, you're not. You may have less active, willful
disobedience in your life today. Praise the Lord for it. but our
righteousness is not measured by our lack of willful sin, because
in our flesh we are still fighting the battle over sin in the flesh,
but the victory is Christ's, and He has already won. So the
victory over our struggle in sin is that no matter how hard
it may be, Christ has established our righteousness in His obedience,
and Christ has established our justification in His death, and
Christ has established our redemption. and the future of our glory in
His resurrection. It doesn't matter that we've
been in the church our whole lives. It doesn't matter that we're
reformed. Test that label. It doesn't matter
that we believe in the grace of God. The words mean nothing
without the meaning behind them. The security of the Jews was
their history, was their obedience, was their practice. Just like
many Christians today. Well, I've been in the church
my whole life. Of course I'm a Christian. Because Christianity
to most people who are not born again is what they do with what
they learn. The practice. And I would even
say that the practice of most so-called churches is not even
biblically prescribed. Whereby many people would usurp
the preaching of the Scripture for the sake of something that
would entertain the flesh. I love a good movie. I love a
good dance. I love a good range day. I love
to blow stuff up with Tannerite. I like to play games. I like
to play chess. I like to play instruments and
things like that, but we can come on a Friday and do that.
We can come on a Saturday and do that. We can, after church
today, we can hang around and do all those things. Maybe we
can incorporate a firing range in the church and have the coolest
church building in town. Yes, put that on the agenda for
the next business meeting. Joke. But oh, how horrible would it
be if you showed up today to watch me do a magic show instead
of teach you the Scripture. The security of most people is
in who they are, and what they do, and who their daddy was.
Just like the Jews. But the Jews then are shown,
Jesus shows them their slavery. So they have a security, but
Jesus shows them the slavery. The slavery of the Jews is that they
have a spiritual slavery. Jesus wasn't even talking about
their political slavery. He was talking about their spiritual
slavery, which is a blindness. How is it that you say we should
become free? Jesus says, truly, truly, I say
to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. You're a slave to sin. Beloved, if I said that to you
over coffee, if I said that to you over coffee, I said this
last week, I know that I did. How horrifying would it be to
hear that from Jesus? You're a slave to sin. It would
be weird, wouldn't it? An unregenerate, quote, believer,
one who professes belief who's unregenerate, when someone says
to them they're a slave to sin, they deny it. No, I'm not. Don't you call me
a sinner. There's this movement that has
come back in the last 15-20 years I've heard in different sects.
I'm not a sinner, I'm a saint. That's true, but you're still
a sinner in your flesh. But your sins are paid for in Christ.
I've had people tell me, you know, I'm not tempted anymore,
I don't really sin much anymore. To which I say, then read your
Bible. Well, I don't really have time
for that. You know, the spiritual police come out. You're under
arrest. Here's your ticket for not reading
your Bible. They were enslaved. They could
not see their need for salvation. See, an enslaved person who's
unregenerate, that's really what this boils down to. I'll give
you the punchline. These guys were unregenerate, though they
professed to believe that Christ was Messiah. They were never
born again, just like John 3 tells us. Nicodemus is in this party,
by the way. He's hearing it again. You're a slave to sin. And you're not free. You need
salvation. And Jesus has been teaching them
what salvation looked like. It's Him. He's salvation. His
life is salvation. His death is salvation. He is
salvation. He is doing the work of the one
who sent Him. He is teaching the words of the one who sent
Him. He is proclaiming to God, from God, what salvation is. And they couldn't see it. Why?
Because they were blind. An unregenerate person cannot see God. An unregenerate
person cannot see truth. An unregenerate person can understand
the prepositions of Scripture academically and cognitively,
and come to a conclusion based on their understanding and what
they know in their mind, but they're not born again because
they know these things in their mind. Because knowing what is
true according to the narrative of the New Testament is not salvation. You must be born again. Thus
you will know the trueness of who God is through the person
of Jesus Christ and you'll know the reality of salvation which
is His body and His blood shed for you and His sacrifice is
worthy because He's a righteous human being who never disobeyed
in thought, word, or deed, or desire. That's how you have life. And there's nothing you can do
to get it except believe in Jesus Christ. And then what the Scripture
teaches is that when you have it, it's because God gave it
to you as a gift, you see. So that we don't look and go,
wow, look at, I came to the right place. I received the right understanding. I did the right thing. No, Christ
did the right thing. God has saved us by His grace.
People who are unregenerate, even if they believe that Jesus
paid for their sin, they still don't see the need for salvation. They don't see that Christ is
really still effectually atoning for their sins, do they? These Jews could not see the
living Word of God. They could not see the Scripture. They could
not see the truth. They are not free. And you must
be free before you can see. They were not free, and they
had not been freed from their own view of sin, what it really
is. They could not comprehend sin as the Word of God, as Christ
understood it, as God taught it. I want you to think about
that for a second. What is the smallest, most benign
sin that you can think of that besets you? I mean, is it frustration? Is it fear? Is it doubt? What
is it? The smallest thing, nobody would
ever know. You could smile, you could pretend, but you're just,
I don't know, what is it? Do you understand that even that
small, insignificant, benign, and I'm using those terms the
way we would look at it, not the way God looks at it, are
significant enough to warrant eternal damnation? Unregenerate people can't see
it. It's how Paul, before he was born again, was blameless
according to the law in his own eyes, in the eyes of the world,
And then when the law came to life, he died on the road to
Damascus. He died in his flesh because
the law brings death. It brought death to Paul and
it will bring death to you. And it brought death to Paul
as he obeyed it perfectly. It brought death because he was
guilty of disobeying that which he actually obeyed because even
in his obedience it was not sufficient for perfection and impeccability
and righteousness. These Jews couldn't comprehend
that. They couldn't see sin because they'd not been born again. They'd
not been made alive. They did not have the eyes to
see. Jesus uses that same illustration later in the Gospel of John. They could not see their own
view of sin was not the way God understood it. They could not
see the reality of their own sin. Therefore, they could not
see the need for a Savior so that they then, in turn, could
not see that they were in bondage to the law of God. They were a slave. to sin in
their obedience to the law. And they said they followed the
law perfectly, yet it was not warranted for righteousness,
and Jesus proved it to them by what He says to them next. He
says, you want to murder me. But do you know, in their own
view of righteousness, they were justified in the murdering of
Jesus because He blasphemed God. According to the law that they
kept, the very law that gave them the authority to kill Jesus,
Jesus says they were a slave to sin. So that's what I want
to see next, the sin of the Jews. All of the works of the law continue
to keep the Jews under the slavery of moral failure. Jesus expressly
says they're a slave to sin because they are morally wicked. But Jesus will also say to the
crowd, unless your righteous works, unless your good deeds
are greater than the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom
of heaven. Now that's a hard thing to swallow when you see
someone who seems to be absolutely perfect in their way of life. And you tell that person that
they need to stop this and change the way they think here, that's
called repent. And they need to act a little bit different
here, and they need to love somebody over here. And they say to you,
I don't send that way. Children do that, right? We tell
our children something, they go, I know, and I don't do that.
I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I heard I know and
I don't do that, I mean, we'd put a second story on this with
balconies. I mean, we could just, we could load it up with some
reclining seats with the little massage thing in them. And nobody
would pay attention. I hear that. That's what children
say because children are always on the defensive. They're always
ready to give an answer for what they aren't and how they're doing.
And so everybody will look good and look proud of the child and
everything like that. And we as parents, we get frustrated
with it, but then we start to realize it's just immaturity.
It's just blindness to the reality of the wisdom of the world that
they, when you teach someone something, you're not really
saying that they're not that way. But the sad thing is I know
a lot of us older people who think the same way. When the
Word of God says, this is what I need from you, we go, well
that's not me, I'm not like that. If someone were to call you a
liar on something that you were telling the truth on, would it
offend you or would you be convicted to the reality that you indeed
are a liar? Maybe not this moment, but you are a liar because you
have lied. And the glorious, awesome joy that comes with knowing
that Christ has never lied, but He took the guilt of liars on
His body. And not just liars, plural, but
His people who were liars. And that's the sin of the Jews.
They not only could not see and did not see themselves in sin,
they saw themselves as righteous in their long eyes, but moreover,
they refused the Son of God, therefore their guilt remains. It proves that they are slaves
to sin. They refused the gospel of Christ. They refused that
Jesus is the only means of salvation. And refusing the Son means that
we refuse freedom. That's what our flesh does. Our
flesh says, well, I've got to get past this, I've got to do
this, I've got to do that, I've got to do this, and that's not
freedom, that's bondage. It's different than, I want to
do this, I want to do that, I want to do this. I have to do this. That's bondage. For the sake
of Christ, I desire this. Oh, why is it, verse 18 of chapter
7 of Romans, chapter 8 of Romans, With my body I'm a slave, sold
under sin, verse 25, but with my mind I'm a slave to righteousness. Oh, what wretched man am I who
is to rescue me from this body of death? It is God through Christ
Jesus. That is the answer. So the Jews
were refusing the freedom that was only in Christ. They refused
and they could not see their need for freedom. because they
were not born again. The Jews in their mind needed
no rebirth. They had a good birth from the
beginning. They were Abraham's children. They were Abraham's
children. They didn't need some new lineage,
some new heritage. They didn't need a new seed.
They were Abraham's children. They were fine before God. So
in their Righteousness, they continued to what? Work before
God's eyes and have confidence in who they were and what they
did. And Jesus says they were slaves to immorality, slaves
to sin, slaves to unbelief. That means there was no escape.
Because a slave can run from captivity, but they're still
a slave, beloved. We can walk in a moral line,
but we're still a slave to sin. If Christ hasn't set us free.
And that's where Jesus goes with this. I want to be free of sin. I do. I want to be free of the
flesh that continues to fight the fight against the Spirit.
And one day I've been promised to have that freedom. But today,
it's as good as done because Christ has set me free. Christ
has set you free. Because in our battle over sin,
none of us has been tempted to the point of shedding blood.
Christ not only shed His blood, He died. as a guilty lamb who had no guilt. The guilt bearer. So the Jews here continued to
practice sin over and over again. Every effort they do is evil
before the eyes of God. They made every effort to do
evil. Jesus calls this the practice of sin. That's what Paul calls
it, the practice of sin. Continuing in self-righteousness
includes the practice of sin. Feeling confident in self-righteousness,
feeling confident in monergistic personal holiness. Our confidence can't be there,
beloved, and if you don't know how the Father will work in that,
the minute we feel confident that God has set us free from
some of these things, you know what my story is? It's like God
says, whoops, and he pulls a rug out from under me. Then I wake
up in sin. You ever woke up in sin? In your
heart? I'm sure you have. And you think,
whoa, this is gonna be a good day. I'm mad when a foot hit
the floor. I'm frustrated when my foot hit
the floor. I'm defeated when my foot hit the floor. Take an
angry shower. Angry brush teeth brushing. What
is it for you? What's to rescue us from that?
Christ. Christ. Socially, Christ took
injustice. And if Christ's death didn't
do something, it was unjust. For an innocent man to die and
to suffer the way He did is unjust. But Christ's death did something,
beloved. It paid for your sins, beloved. It satisfied the judgment of
God. Therefore, there is no condemnation for we who are in Christ Jesus.
Because if Christ died, our sins are paid. And that's just because God has
forgiven us. If Christ didn't die, God would
be unjust. So the death of Christ is just
and that we are forgiven, beloved. These people could not see this.
Why? Because they were wholly self-centered.
My worship service, I know how I want it to be. I know what
it's supposed to be like. This is how God's called us to
worship, and it's supposed to have this incense over here,
and have this flower over here, and have this candle over here,
and this is part of the experience of worshiping God. This is sort
of how the Jews were. We know what it's supposed to be like,
and anybody who doesn't agree with us is not holy. And they hated the people who
came to worship with them. They hated them because they didn't
speak the way they spoke and act the way they spoke and dress
the way they spoke. Can you imagine standing in a
crowd of a social religion and not having the right attire on? I've gone to a place before that
I was supposed to wear a suit and I didn't have a suit. I had
an outfit sort of like this. I did have a tie on underneath
it. And it's like I walked in there with horns and fire coming
out of my butt. I mean, you just would think, and it was uncomfortable
for me. I didn't have the right clothes.
I didn't look the right way. I didn't fit in. Everybody was
dressed to the nines and I was dressed to the sevens. Perfection. Imagine the Jews who didn't have
the money to buy or didn't know or didn't have the authority
to wear phylacteries. headpieces and all these things.
And we look at that and we can't really relate to it unless we've
come out of Romanism or Orthodoxy or something of that nature.
But there is this esteem that people had spiritually toward
the Jews and Jesus is calling them publicly in the front of
everybody, slaves to sin, because they thought they knew what was
right. And they worshipped the way that
they knew was right. And they had the Scripture and
they knew what it said. We've been studying Scripture
our entire lives. We're millennia of Bible scholars. Jesus calls Nicodemus and John
3 the teacher of all Israel all Israel He is law and definite
article the definite article the teacher of all Israel Jesus
esteems Nicodemus as one of the premier teachers of the entire
nation of Israel and yet Nicodemus was as dumb as a bag of rocks
and a camel's butt That's for the kids you paying attention We know how to live, we know
how to dress, we know how to act, we know how to speak, we know the
Word of God, we worship the way we ought to worship, and the
people that come with us, they don't even know. They don't know the law. They're
accursed. That's what they said. Remember, a couple of weeks ago,
they've already said that. They're accursed. So these people did
not need Jesus to show them the truth of worship. Oh, the irony
behind John 4. It shall come a day, and the
day is now. The time is now when no one will worship. on Mount
Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim, which was a carbon copy of Solomon's
temple. No one will worship but true
worshipers. Those that the Father is seeking
will worship in spirit and in truth. And God makes this woman
alive right then. And she says, oh, I guess Messiah
is my only hope. Messiah is the only thing that
I can look to. The Christ is my life. And Jesus says, the one to whom
you speak, I am He. And she runs and goes and tells
the people of Sychar, a hated, lost, accursed, pagan, dog-like
people according to Israel, according to the Jews, according to this
audience, and salvation comes to Sychar. Just days after the
Jews kicked him out of the temple because he cleansed it and said
he'd rebuild it in three days. We only worship by the grace
of God in Christ. We worship Christ, we worship
God. We worship in intimacy, beloved. Right here, we worship
in intimacy and forgiveness. We worship Christ in truth. Jesus' presence with these Jews,
they wanted Him to come to a place of, and I'm going to use some
modern vernacular, and then I'm going to soapbox it for a few
minutes, then I'm going to get back to the point. I told you
I was going to do this before the service. Jesus' presence had no bearing
on their social place. And I'm going to say this, and
this is dogmatic, and people will argue with me, and I will
take correction if it's due, because I haven't given it much
thought. This phrase. Jesus could care less about the
social injustice toward the Jews of His day. He had no desire
nor was it the will of God to establish freedom from Rome. As a matter of fact, it was the
will of God that in 70 AD that Rome fall in Jerusalem and that
the temple was destroyed. It's the will of God. So all
the hopes after Jesus' ascension, and the persecution of the church,
and all of this, and all of those other things. I mean, imagine.
Oh, you know what? We'll get our country back. This
has already been stirred. We have the power of execution.
We have the power of our judicial powers back, thanks to Saul. Now he's gone crazy. We're going
to kill him. And we're going to do this, and
God destroys the center of their power. Because it's not the point. Jesus was not here. The reason He came had nothing
to do with social justice. So let's pause. Soapbox. Beloved, as human beings who
are born again, we should care about people who are afflicted.
We should care about people who are hurt. We should care about
people who are hungry. We should care and have concern
and burden for people who are less fortunate than we. But it
is not the ultimate reason we're here, and it is not to usurp
the reality that God causes His people to suffer, because we
are the body of Christ and He suffered, so we too shall suffer.
But if we are able and we have the ability to eliminate the
hunger for our neighbor, then by all means, feed them. How
horrible would it be for my neighbor to not have groceries and I'm
grilling steak? How evil is it for us or how
selfish or how blind it is for us as a church to see people
in need within the church and go, well, you know, I was really
wanting to buy that new boat motor. I know so-and-so's in
the dark because they can't pay the electric bill, but I got
to get that new motor. You see how silly that sounds?
And somebody will accuse me, oh, that's holding burdens over
the... No, that's a command of the apostles
to the church, John and Paul specifically. Peter, that the
Jews have dispersed to take care of one another, beloved. Take
care of one another. Listen, we're not to be guilty
in that. We're to be free in that. When
it comes to social issues, there are systemic injustices that
just are constantly among us. And as they come into our congregation,
if racism comes into our congregation, we will call it out publicly
by name. They will stand here, they will repent, we will pray
for them, we will love them. But if they do not, we will excommunicate
them. And the world will know, all
of county will know that Mr. X is a racist and he was kicked
out of the church because he's a racist. You see? Politics. Politics cannot be
divisive. Politics are a matter of conscience.
There is no such thing as a godly vote. People, do not be one-pointed
myopic in your constitutional issues. Do not be myopic to say
that if someone votes for anybody who's not a pro-lifer, they've
sinned against God. That is evil to say. Now, I personally
have that as one of my floating issues that bother me. But are we pro-life and we hate
our neighbor? You see how weird politics is?
Let's don't put Jesus in the midst of it because he's going
to destroy it all. Every political system in the
world is Babylon according to the label that God gives it in
the scripture. I received in the mail this week 300 flyers
to be put into the bulletins of our church services for the
next two weeks. by some coalition of righteous
voters incorporated, or something like that. And it showed all
the evil people in the left column, and all the saints in the right
column, and yes, no, yes, no, and yes, no, how they're supposed
to vote. Burn me at this pulpit on live
television if I ever bring that junk into your presence. Should
we understand the issues? Yes. Should we vote our conscience?
Yes. But friends, just as if we're fighting over whose lawnmower
it is, or whose seat it is, or what somebody said to us, we
resolve those issues. It's just as sinful when we cause
division amongst each other on politics. Vote your conscience. Do so by faith. And keep it to
yourself. Keep to yourself. It's not worth
dividing over. And do you want to be known?
Do you want to be known from your political point of view?
Or do you want to be known from your spiritual birth? See, the
Jews were known for their political point of view, not their spiritual
birth. And that is included of what
Jesus says here. That's why I felt the freedom
to bring it up. Good timing, Lord. Thank you. Exposition rules. Exposition rules. So Jesus' presence
there had no bearing on the social issues of their day. He wasn't
concerned about their political slavery. He did not come to bring
them out of bondage of Rome, because God had enslaved them
to Rome for His purposes, so that in their governing, God
would crucify His Son. It's not about you or for you
that I'm about to act, God says through Ezekiel, but for my name's
sake. But now let's look at how Jesus
closes this dialogue. He talks about the sonship of
the Jews and their sinister heart. He goes in verse 35, First, he says, everyone who
practices sin is a slave to sin. And then he says, the slave does
not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So,
see, slaves do not remain in the house forever. What slave
in this economy in this day remained in the house? The ones who were
owned by the household. The ones who had a job in the
household. Those people were in the house, they were part
of the house, they seemed like part of the family. People looking
in, they go, oh, look at there, they got a bunch of people in there.
They live in a house together, they're a family. But slaves
weren't family in this picture. And at any given time, the slave
owner could sell the slave to another family, or could change
their venue, or could change their job. You're not going to
be in the house anymore, you're going to be in the barn. You're not
going to be here anymore, you're going to be in the farm. You're
going to go here, you're going to go there. So in these issues, the Jews
felt like they were sons of God. Well, they're not family, they
were property. And when Jesus began to say this, can you imagine
the anger and the frustration that came out of the hearts of
these people? How dare you call us slaves? And Jesus goes on
to explain His position The slave does not remain in the house
forever, the son remains forever. The son, the actual son of the
man of the house, the man who owns the property, his son stays. Slaves don't stay. They may be
a part of the house for a small moment. Who are the slaves in
this picture? The Jews. Y'all think y'all are
part of the family, but you're just slaves in the house. I'm
the son, Christ says. I'm the one who lives here before
the foundation of the world and I'm the one who's here for eternity
and you're rejecting me, buddy, and if I don't set you free,
you're not free. You think you're free because of Abraham? I set
him free. That's what Jesus is illustrating
to them. I set him free. Now if this weren't next in the
text, I made a poem. I would not preach it because
it's what? Polarizing. Especially today when tragedy
and hatred has been poured out against Jewish people in our
country. The son stays in the home, the
slave does not. The Jews saw themselves as sons
of God, but they were not, they were slaves. They were used by
God for His purposes, but they did not belong to Him spiritually. No man is a true son except the
Son. And so the Son remains in the
house forever, and if you want to be free, the Son must set
you free, because the Son has the authority to do so. And if
He doesn't, you remain under condemnation. That's John 3. So Jesus is Savior, Jesus is
God, Jesus is the Creator, Jesus is the Lawkeeper, Jesus is the
Redeemer, and so on. So the only way and the only
truth and the only life that we have hope for is in Jesus
Christ the Son. And so Jesus is saying to them,
I, the Son, can set you free from the blindness and the deceit
of sin. and had they been granted repentance,
they would have stopped thinking the way they think. That's repentance.
And they would say that we cannot count our works as anything worthy
of notice, and then we will see and trust in, that's faith, Jesus
Christ, who is the Son, who gives us His righteousness, and that
our only hope is that He satisfied the Father on our behalf. So
Jesus is teaching them through this mini little parable Liberty
from sin is the escape of the wage of sin, which is death and
dead works. But not only do you get freedom
through Christ, but here's the cool thing. The Son can set you
free, but only in this reality, only in the economy of grace
does the Son set you free and then the Father adopt you as
a son. So you may be free from sin,
but now you're a son. So now you remain in the house
forever. So Israel, Jews, you Pharisees, if you want to be
children of God, you must come to Me who is the true child of
God, and that I will set you free, and then when you're free,
My Father will adopt you as a son. See that? So they keep on. Jesus knows
what they're thinking. The Son sets you free. You are free indeed. And I know, verse 37, that you
are the offspring of Abraham. What does he mean there? Yeah,
you're descended of Abraham. But you're not his sons. You're
not the promised seeds. You're not. I am, Jesus says. And if I don't set you free and
make you a child, you won't be a seed of God. I know that you are of Abraham's
offspring, but you are seeking to kill me because my words find
no place in you." This is what I started with in the sermon
today, beloved. Are we here today together because of the love
of Christ and the love for each other and for the power of God's
Word in our lives? I've been recalled to a sermon
that I did in January of 2015 recently because it got to be
a little controversial. where I said that the world seemingly
sees the church powerless. To the world, we are seemingly
powerless. What does that mean? The world looks at us and we're
powerless in their eyes. Because the world wants to see
the church change the culture. The world wants to see the church
do some great things and be known in the world and the world would
love us. But powerful living is suffering
well with joy by the grace and mercy of God that is only given
to us through the Spirit, that is only shown to us through the
Word. That sermon was a call by Paul
to the Philippians to stay in the Word that gave him the power
to say, I have nothing and I prefer nothing and I can do all things
in Christ. That's the end of the argument for Paul. Because
the Word of God is sufficient for me. Christ is sufficient
for me. His grace is sufficient for me.
I don't need food. That's what Paul is saying. I'll
starve a little bit. Don't worry about me. I prefer
less food, less money, less clothes, less freedom, Paul says, because
in those things nothing stands in the way of me and my joy in
Christ, which is to serve you and suffer in my body for the
sake of your joy in Christ. I do want to die and go be with
my Lord, but I love Him more than my own flesh, so my flesh
is necessary to fill up what is lacking in the suffering of
Christ, for your sake. So if I stay, I fulfill the obligation
that I have to the body of Christ for you. The Jews love themselves. The church does not love herself. We love each other. We must love each other. It's
an imperative. The Jews were not the true children
of God. Many people in this day are not the true children of
God. Friends, let me tell you something. Pray for your families. Pray for your neighbors. Pray
for your parents and grandparents and children. Just because they're
in church this day does not make them a son or daughter of God. And the way the world is going
with the lack of true teaching of Scripture, we are in a very
barren place when it comes to truth. So because of that, we
are in a place where people are not being born again. But they are coming to Judaism
all over again. adding to Christ the Law, adding
to Christ a way of life, adding to Christ and the Gospel all
sorts of conditions that are not required of us to live. The Jews were slaves, and when
their time had finished, they'd be put out of the house of God.
Freedom in the true Son not only sets us free from the bondage,
but as I've already said, it brings us in as adopted children.
Because the Jews were not the children of God, but were the
children, as we'll see next week, of Satan, they did the things
that their Father told them to do. They desired to murder Jesus.
They do what their Father whispers to them. But Jesus, in contrast,
utters the very words of His Father. Jesus was not saying
what He felt about Himself, He was proclaiming what God testified
about Him. Jesus utters the words from His
Father from all of eternity, and they should know these words,
and they should see these words, and they should believe these
words, but they could not because they were slaves to sin, they
were unregenerate, and they were immoral to the core despite the
level of outward morality that they gave. So this proves that they were
sinister, not saints. They were not good people. They
wanted Him dead. And keep in mind and remember,
this is in the same conversation where the Scripture said many
believed in Him, so Jesus turned to them and said, He's talking
to those who believed in Him, and said that they were the children
of Satan. They tout that they are indeed
the sons of Abraham, but Abraham's work was faith alone in God.
It was his faith that was credited to him as righteousness. And
if you look at the first 13 years of Abraham's life, he was a very
disobedient, unbelieving, faithless person. They believed in God, they trusted
in God, but many times over, they what? They tried to affect
God's promises on their own behalf. They were liars and deceivers.
It was only by the mercy of God that Abraham didn't lose his
wife to another man because he lied. No, this is my sister.
Well, great, she's my wife now. And God says, I kept you from
laying with this woman as a wife because had you done it, I'd
have ruined you and destroyed your nation. There's a polemic or apologetic
against free will. They refuse to trust in God by
believing on the Son. Many today refuse to trust in
God by believing on the Son and not see their need for Christ
in the first place. So a murderous heart, along with self-righteousness,
along with confidence in the law and confidence in the flesh,
equals one big end of the recipe, and that is death and destruction.
And in closing, I will say this, that many people can appear spiritual
in the face of things. They can speak the right words
and live the right lives. When it comes to the pages of
truth and trusting in Christ alone, they cannot let go of
the self-molding of their own lives. They cannot give up the
hatred of others who are not perfect. Let me say that again.
They cannot give up the hatred of others who are not perfect
as they are perfect. You ever known those people? Well, they're not like me, so
they're not as a devout Christian. And as the Jews desired to murder
Jesus, so do the false converts of today. And they murder Jesus
through the murder of the saints. Yes, martyrdom, but also in word,
the gossip, the destruction, the division. And friends, we
live in a day right now, I mean, I could talk for another two
or three hours just on the social philosophies that people are
trying to ascribe as righteous. It disturbs me, church. But as the Jews did, so do the
religious of our day, and they divorced themselves from Christ,
and they divorced themselves from the body of Christ. And
my only prayer is that the Lord would have mercy on them for
their eternity, and for the joy that the Lord have mercy on them,
that they might believe and trust in Christ fully and only for
their righteousness. Father, there is much more that
we are going to learn here, but in this day, I pray that You
would do all that Your Word intended to do. Father, that You would
correct, that You would rebuke, that You would instruct, and
that You would train in righteousness all of us who sit under this
Word. Father, that we would not relegate
the Scripture to only the good parts and only the easy parts
and only the gracious parts, but Father, that we would see
all the truth of Your Word and that we would understand the
heinousness of our sin, that we would celebrate the grace
of Your goodness and love toward us through Christ Jesus. Only
a regenerate person, Father, can see sin. The law cannot teach us to see
our guilt. in a way that causes redemption.
Only Your Spirit, only the rebirth, only the gift of spiritual eyes
can do so. God, bring to life, bring sight,
bring freedom to Your people, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
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