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. Some of you have inquired, well,
how much longer is it going to take us in John 8? It's going
to take a while, because there's a lot of things here that we need to
deal with, not just contextually, but also somewhat grammatically, as you'll
see as the weeks go along. But here we know the issue that's
at hand is that Jesus is what? Jesus is talking with the Jews,
with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Scribes, the chief priests,
etc. He's talking with them, and He has just told them that
He is the Light of the world, and then they argue with Him,
and then they reject Him, And then people start to argue, well
maybe this is Messiah. Then they get upset with each
other and they send someone to arrest Him and they won't arrest
Him because His words are too powerful and they're afraid to
put hands on Him. So in this thing now, Jesus is still in
this same conversation. And then we get through to the
end of His, you know, just speaking with the crowd. Then He tells
the Pharisees, you're going to die in your sins. Now I want you to think about
your own life for a minute. I want you to think about where you are
in your own faith. Now most of us are very self-deprecating
when it comes to our faith. That comes with the nature of
true gospel repentance. What is repentance? A transformation
of the mind. Repentance always and has always
and only always meant a transformation of the mind. So God grants the
transformation of the mind, which is regeneration, which is the
new birth in John 3, and then because of that, we then in our
mind see that we must have Christ or we die in our sins. So we
look at sin differently in repentance that's granted to us by the Father
because we realize that our good works are sin before God. You see that. so that any measure
of righteous good deeds that we try to accomplish, God's not
up there going, oh, I'm so happy for them, oh! You know, He's
not giving the golf clap, He's not giving the thumbs up, He's
not giving the smiley face, He's not tagging us on the social
media of heaven and saying, oh, glory, hallelujah, James Tippins
is walking in a manner worthy of my righteousness. Nope. But
He does call us to walk in a manner worthy of the call that He's
given us. And there's a huge difference in the two. And that's
what Jesus is dealing with. He's dealing with these Jews
who think they're walking in a manner of righteousness. And He says, you're going to
die in your sins. I can entitle this message to
believe or not to believe. I can entitle this message all
sorts of things. I don't really title messages. I don't have
a hard time. I spend more time thinking about what I'm going
to title it when I put the sermon up than I do studying and preparing
for the sermon. I don't know what to do. That's
why sometimes it's Friday before they go up. Message number seven. I mean, that's the best thing
to do. I don't know. What's the title
of the message going to be for you today? If Jesus were to come
and to talk to us and think about our Christian faith, imagine
if Jesus said to you, you are going to die on your sins. I
believe most of us would be horrified. We'd be struck to the core. We
would do one and only one thing, which would be cry out for mercy.
Oh God, please have mercy on me. Hallelujah. That's what a
justified man does. That's what a justified woman
does. That's what a justified child does. That's what a regenerate
heart cries. Have mercy. Not, look at me,
Lord. I'm not drinking anymore. I'm
not cussing anymore. I'm not doing this. I'm not following
after this person. I'm not mean. I'm not ugly. I
help my neighbors. You see the excuses that would
go on and on and on. You've heard them, haven't you? You've heard
them from the mouths of professing Christians. You've heard them
from the mouths of atheists. You've heard these things. You've
heard these claims of goodness that come from... Friends, we
as the church, as we gather together, church, as the body of Christ
that gathers together, we know where we are in sight of God. And we know that if it were not
for the righteousness of Jesus Christ and His obedience, we
would justly be condemned. But because of the work of Christ,
there is no condemnation for those who are in Him. It is impossible. It is impossible. And that is
the joy of the Lord. That is the perfection of God's
love in us. that no matter what hell we go
through on earth, we have Christ as our righteousness, so that
even in our failings and even in the faithlessness of our worries,
we are not failing before our Father, because Christ has never
failed us. Beloved, hear these words. So
many of us stay in the bondage of how we're going to straighten
our lives out. Not trusting in this straightening,
but we stay in the, but when am I going to stop feeling this
way? When am I going to stop thinking this way? Oh Lord, I
dishonor You. We do not dishonor our Father
when we are broken before Him. We dishonor our Father when we
stand strong in our flesh. God is pleased with you, beloved,
because Christ never failed. That's why it's called the Gospel.
If you can't find joy in that, I pray God would grant you repentance.
There is joy in that. I pray God would help you see.
Because there is joy in that. These Jews could not see that
joy. And Jesus says that you are refusing the Father's work,
and you are going to die in your sins. And it says there, look
at verse 29 of chapter 8. I'm going to read down through
verse 38. And He who sent Me is with Me,
He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are
pleasing to Him." I should have just preached that today. As
He was saying these things, many believed in Him. So, because
many believed in Him, 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.'
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. And I know that you are offspring
of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place
in you. I speak of what I have seen with
my father, and you do what you have heard from your father." And this text goes on. This conversation
goes on to the end of chapter 8. Many believed, and then Jesus
turns to those who believe, and He says, you do not believe. What is it that has happened
there? Many believe that Jesus is Messiah. I mean, is that not
obvious with Jesus' teaching? Some of the crowd there were
enamored by his teaching. The guards, the chief priests
were scared to touch him because he had such power in his presentation.
I'm not talking about how he spoke and what he said. No one
has ever spoken like this before. No one has ever taught with this
authority before. This man, we can't touch him. It's almost
as if they just wanted to continue to have him teach, but they didn't
know why. Well, Paul answers that very
clearly, that all mouths are shut in the presence of the Word
of God. And here the Word of God speaks,
and it was not God's timing for Jesus to be arrested, it was
not God's timing for Jesus to die, and yet no one could touch
Him, for it was not permitted to them by the Father. They had
the free will to do so, but God would not permit it. God would
not allow it, God would not condone it, because only when God the
Father was ready for Jesus to be arrested would Jesus be arrested. But Jesus says to these people
who believed, they believed He was Messiah, they believed That
He was the One come from God. They believed that He had power.
They believed a lot of things. So they began to, in their own
mind, illustrate how this Messiah would work. We see that in John
6, what happened? They believed in Christ and that
He was Messiah. They believed that they should
make Him king and thus have the redemption that they were looking
for. Not much different than our current
political culture. Or we could just have this person
in office here, then things would change for the better of our
nation. It may be, but listen to what the better of our nation
is. Whatever it is that God has established and ordained for
us. But guess what happened? God was not going to permit Jesus
to be a king. Because why would He step out of the kingship of
sovereignty into the kingship of stupidity? The kings and the leaders of
the sovereign nations of this world are nothing but stupid
puppets. And they're in the hands of a Creator who does with them
as He sees fit. and He will place them in high
places. And we, as the church, ought to pray for them. Whether
we agree with them or not, we ought to care for them. We ought
to pray that God would bring salvation to them, and that God
would be merciful in bringing redemption to His people, and
that God would bring revival to the people that He has saved
so that we might proclaim the gospel. But friends, listen. It's never happened in the history
of the world where God would rise up politically a people
who would believe in Christ. The Great Awakening was like
a flash in the pan. It had such insignificant footprint
on the nation that we now live, it's as if it didn't even happen. And the Second Great Awakening
was a farce of the enemy to begin with. It was a false gospel of
free will in Armenian theology that placated to the masses who
wanted liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the
birthplace of Second Thessalonians where God says He will bring
a strong dilution. It is where it took place, and
it is what happens this very day with many who claim to be
in Christ, beloved. They are lost because they do
not believe. But they believe, as these Jews
believe, that the person of Jesus really is a true person, that
the person of Jesus really died for some sins, and the person
of Jesus really is Messiah. The devil believes that same
thing. And all the fallen angels believe that same thing. Many
people believe that same thing. But see, some of us are sitting
here a little bit confused going, well, isn't that not what we're
supposed to do? No, it isn't what we're supposed
to do. It's not about the precepts and the propositions of the historicity
of Jesus. It's about the efficacy of Jesus.
Now, what do I mean by that? We don't just believe that Jesus
lived and died and did some stuff. We have to put our faith in what
He accomplished. and what He proclaimed that He
did and what He was going to do, and for whom He did it. Some people think it is a secondary
issue when so many professing so-called Christians come and
say, you know, did Jesus pay for the sins of everybody? Well,
if He did, there's no condemnation for anybody. And we have to take
John's Gospel out. We have to take Romans out. We
have to take Ephesians out. We have to take 1st and 2nd Thessalonians
away. We have to take Titus. We have
to take Timothy's letters out. We have to take all that out.
Jesus did not pay for the sins of every human being. He paid
for the sins of only those who were given to Him by the Father
before the foundation of the world. Church, that's the Gospel. Well, I believe that God loves
people this way. God says how He loves. We don't
get to decide. God said He loved in the giving
of His Son to pay for the sins of His people. That is where
love is perfected. It's what I shared with you in
the first few minutes of this sermon. That is where our hope
rests. That Christ atoned for His people. We proclaim the Gospel. Jesus
proclaimed the gospel. And many in some fleshly way
believed, just like at the end of John 2. Nicodemus was part
of that number. These Jews were part of that
number. Jesus says that this type of faith... He goes on to
say, I mean, Abraham is our father. Jesus says in verse 39, if you
were Abraham's children, you will be doing the works that
Abraham did. Now what works are those? Cheating
on your wife? Sleeping with another woman to
make God's promises work? Lying? Running, lying again,
deceiving the kings to get money. Failing, failing, failing, failing.
That's not the works we're talking about. He believed. He believed
in God. He believed in the promises of
God. Not that just God exists. Everybody believed that God exists
according to Romans 1. Whether they admit it or not,
everybody believes it. And everybody who will stand
in the judgment of God for all of eternity has believed that
God exists for the entirety of their humanity. You see, to kill me, the work
that Abraham did was that he what? He rejoiced in my day. He believed in the promises of
God. And here I am, the promise of
God fulfilled. They were going to kill him on
the spot, and just a couple of verses later, when he talks about
Abraham rejoicing in his day. Many believed, and many believe
for whatever reason they want to believe. I don't believe in
Jesus. I'm going to believe in Jesus. I have faith. Jesus is
going to take me out of this circumstance. I heard this yesterday.
I know the Lord wants me to be happy. No, He doesn't. That's
not true. God doesn't want us to be happy.
Because what would happiness in this world do? Well, number one, it would make
God a liar. Who says, don't love the world and everything in the
world is passing away, and everything in the world is corrupt, everything
in the world is against me. Friendship, James says, hostility
with God is friendship with the world. You're not like that. We're not like that, beloved.
So happiness is fleeting. I could be happy right now because
I'm doing something that I enjoy. I love teaching the Scriptures
to you. I love to see God open your eyes and to see the product
and the fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit working through the teaching
of the Scripture that you may be fulfilled. I love it. But
then I may talk with some of you later, and you may tell me
the most horrendous thing that has taken place in your life
that we need to labor together on, and I'm not going to be happy
about that. I could be happy about this, but I'm not going
to be happy about that. But has my joy changed? No. For my joy
is rocked and embedded in the bedrock of Christ. Christ is
my joy. Christ, beloved, is your joy
in the midst of all sorts of pain. Happiness comes and goes,
just like beauty comes and goes. Age comes. It doesn't go. Youthfulness goes. I mean, you
know, our bodies decay around us. And Paul says, in the destruction
of the body, I'm alive in the spirit. Many people will believe in Christ
for any reason they want. I believe, yeah, Christ wants
me to be happy. He doesn't want you to be happy. He wants you
to be gloriously joyful. And the true happiness that will
never fade is after we see Him put all things under His feet
and finish the work of judgment. So we look to that which is unseen.
For who hopes with what he can see? Because if we see something,
we're not hoping in it, we've gotten it. But we do so and we
hope. We hope and it's not a hope where
we're kicking up our heels like we had a V8 or we have bought
a Toyota or whatever else marketing wants to show us is what hope
looks like. We hope sometimes with words
and joy, as Peter would say, that is inexpressible. But yet
we'll measure it, don't we? The world measures, I want to
believe in Christ because He's going to give me happiness. Some people
say, I want to believe in Christ because He'll answer my prayers. Well,
the book of James chapter 4 says that, you know, we don't get
the answer to our prayers when they're for our own selfish ambition.
So if we see our prayers being answered selfishly, it's not
the Lord of heaven answering those prayers directly as a blessing,
it's the Lord of heaven giving the enemy the ability to answer
those prayers in judgment. Because what we desire with our
heart, if it not be the will of God, God help, please don't
give it to me. I don't want a king. But oh, they did want a king.
Didn't Israel want a king? And God gave them a king, and another
king, and another king, and another king, and they failed every single
time, and it destroyed them. And that was the intention of
God all along. If we have the desires of our
heart, and the desire of our heart is not the joy of Christ,
we're going to get everything that leads to death. But beloved, because we are in
Christ, we will not die. Our bodies will die, our minds
will die, our relationships will die, our finances will die, everything
will pass away, but we will live forever in Christ. Many people
believe, but just because they exercise some sense of belief
in the flesh, does not make them born again. See, God is not beholden
to the creation. God is not beholden to the creature.
God is not on the hook to save anybody who says the magic principles,
the magic words, the magic recipe. Just because we say the words
doesn't make us a believer. Oh, I believe in Jesus. He's
so awesome. He saved me from a sin. What does that mean? Ask
people what that means. Because there are many people
who can say those words who do not understand that they have
been redeemed by the very God who created them, who took on
flesh in their place. And what Jesus does here, many
believed, what He does in verse 31 through the end is He tears
apart their confession. He shows them that their confession
is not a real confession of faith. It's not a transformative reality. It's not the reality of the transformed
heart of regeneration. It's just a cognitive ascent
to some kind of thing that they developed in their own mind.
They ignore the teaching of Christ about who He is and they accept
Him on their own terms. Don't you understand that this
was the majority of the evangelism of the apostles and of Jesus?
Hear this, church. When Jesus went to Sychar and
told a woman who was shacking up with every Tom, Dick, and
Harry in the world and ashamed, when He regenerated her, she
says, Behold, I met a man who told me everything I've ever
done. When He goes into the temple
and said, I will tear this temple down and rebuild it in three
days. When He tells Nicodemus, as Moses
lifted the serpent of the wilderness so much, I, the Son of Man, must
be crucified. He understood what it meant to
be lifted up. It's the only point of that term. To be crucified
on the cross, which is redundant. and all who believe in Me will
be saved." Nicodemus is like, what the world? I can't figure this
out. What are you talking about? The evangelism of Jesus was predominantly
for the religious of His day, for those who weren't just religious.
We're not talking about the cults and the world religions and the
weird. They received the Gospel with power. But the self-righteous,
those who had the oracles of God for millennia, who had the
Word of God before them, who memorized it, who wore it, for
Pete's sake, in front of their faces. What are the phylacteries of
today, you reckon? Bumper stickers? I don't know. T-shirts? That's
all in good humor. But we think too jadedly when
we think about people who are unbelievers. We think about those people who
are just living really awful, sinful, wicked lifestyles. And
it's true. They could be unbelievers. But
the majority of true unbelievers are in the midst of the fellowship
of some group that they call the body of Christ today. The majority of unbelievers are
in an assembly this morning, claiming to be in Christ. And Jesus is tearing apart there
these same people. He breaks apart their faith.
He was saying these things, many believed in Him. So Jesus said
to the Jews who believed in 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. That's all I'm going to have
time to deal with today. I'm going to peek into some of the
further verses to make sense of this, but for the most part,
this is all we're going to have time for. So if you abide, now
let me ask you this question. Here's Hermeneutics 101. Who's
saying the words? Well first, who's writing the
words? John. He's quoting Jesus under the inspiration of the
direct penmanship of God Himself, the Holy Spirit. So we don't
have to worry about whether John got it wrong. Jesus says, I will
send the Spirit and you will remember all things. That's how
we can understand the authenticity of Scripture, is that itself,
in its writing, God says that it is authentic in His Word.
So Jesus is speaking through the pen of John correctly. It's a majestic miracle. If you abide, who's He talking
to? The most religious, most zealot,
zealous, most pious, group of individuals that existed in the
world in history. Let's say that again. The most zealous, most pious,
most religious individuals that had ever existed in the world
in history. Now what's that look like? I've met a lot of people in my
day in the work of ministry. church work, evangelism. I've met a lot of good Bible
teachers. I've met a lot of pious men and women who have influenced
my life through the years. But I've never met one that I
looked at and thought, that person just breeds the Lord everywhere
they go. Because even the most faithful
sit down in a restaurant and complain about the waitress.
They go, oh, there's a little bit of flesh right there. Look
at that wickedness. God deserves to condemn us to complain about
a waitress. So let's not think ourselves righteous in our flesh. Jesus was accused, tried, beaten,
and never said a word. These people who are hearing
the words of Jesus are told, if you abide in my word, Now,
he's already established in chapters 4, 5, 6, and so on, and John,
of course, in his prologue, that Jesus is the Word of God, who
is God. Jesus is the living Word, so
all that Jesus is, is God. Jesus in His humanity, in His
flesh, is the fullness of the reflection of the revelation
of God in His fullness. Listen to this, everything that
God is and has to reveal about Himself is seen in the humanity
of Jesus. Jesus in His body is glorified
to the name that is above all names. He was already God. Now is the
eternal God-man who is above all things. So we have seen the
face of God in the fullness, in the humanity of Jesus Christ. Let that sink in for a second.
The Jews thought that their lives revealed the glory of God. And
it didn't. It revealed the glory of Satan.
It's not my words, it's what Jesus says. He said, you are
Satan's children. You are the anathema of God. You are the reprobate. the objects
of wrath, the vessels created for destruction by the pleasure
of the righteous wrath of God. And I'm revealing to you that
I am that God as a man, and you reject it. If you do not abide
in My Word, you will die in your sins. That's what Jesus says
to them. Everybody in the earshot, no
one in the world has ever lived a moral life greater than a Pharisee,
ever, ever, ever, ever. So what is abiding in the Word
of Christ? It ain't got nothing to do, I might as well put double
negative, it has nothing to do with morality. Paul cleaned nothing out of his
life. There was not an action that
Paul did in his following the law of God that needed to be
reversed. But yet he threw it all away.
You know what dead works are? Works that either try to establish
righteousness or prove that we are established in Christ. dead
works." Jesus says, if you abide in Me,
if you abide in My Word, why is it that I literally just about
clawed my spiritual eyes out? Well, I don't know why I do this
to myself, but I read seven different commentaries on this text yesterday
like an idiot. And I thought, well, surely somebody,
somebody. Oh, Jesus, help me. Lord, please
help me. Next, next, next, next, next,
next. And every single one of them
150 years ago, 450 years ago, and so on. Abiding in the Word
of God, they say, is obeying the commandments. Strike me dead, Father. if I
ever teach your sheep that." Hey, you who obey all the commandments,
you better keep obeying all the commandments. That would be what
Jesus is saying right there. If you keep on obeying, and that's
what they thought He was saying. We're the sons of Abraham, it's
not even about what we do, but look at us, we're good. Jesus is saying, you're evil.
He called the work of Nicodemus. I mean, people are esteemed. Bible teachers are esteemed.
Me, not so much as I used to be. Back when I didn't teach
the Bible holistically, I was 22, 23, 24, you know, I was esteemed
a lot more. Oh, you're a Bible teacher. It
doesn't matter what came out of my mouth. Oh, you're a pastor. Oh, my golly.
Let's stop cussing in front of the pastor. I roll my eyes in my mind and
I'm like, whatever. I mean, you're esteemed. Nicodemus was esteemed. He was
rabbi. You don't give the name rabbi
to anybody. You have to earn it. You have
to study hard. You have to memorize things.
You have to walk in a manner that proves to people that they
know that you're walking with God because of how you act and
how you breathe and what you say. Some of you are asking,
how do you breathe for the glory of God? Do you ever sigh? I found myself sighing. I caught
myself sighing recently. Are we rejoicing when we do that?
God is so good. The Lord is so faithful. No,
we're usually irritated, right? About something. Maybe we're
tired. We're complaining in our spirit and it comes out as a
breath. Jesus never did that. He never sighed in discontentment.
He never sighed a breath of frustration when his body was being ripped
from its bones. He never sighed when he gasped
for breath to breathe and pulled himself up through the nails
of his wrist, exposing his back to that lumber so that he could
take a breath and fall back down. He never sighed a breath of complaint. He said, Jesus is not telling these people
to walk in obedience, because they already were. But yet, they
weren't obedient. They weren't obedient at all.
They followed every rule. They followed every letter. They
followed every practice. They did things perfectly. Nicodemus
was an esteemed teacher. Imagine having the theologian
of theologians of our day. I can't even think of who that
would be, who I could even esteem, step up to the line of that mantle
to be observed in that manner. And they teach the Bible, and
they pray for people. And Nicodemus, I have a feeling
he was a loving man, just generally. He had concern for... he didn't
have the disdain, as we see in the narrative, that most of the
Jews had. And usually teachers are not
necessarily... they don't really have disdain. They come across
arrogant if they do. They don't love who they're teaching,
they just love the fact that they're teaching it. There's
a difference. Pastors must love the audience
of their teaching more than themselves. And so Nicodemus, as a teacher,
he's praying, he does the work of the ministry for Israel, and
he comes to Jesus because I believe he's the only one that would.
because nobody else came, and I think he really wanted to know,
is this man from God? Is this the prophet? Is this
Messiah? Is this Elisha? Who is this? And Jesus calls
all the works of Nicodemus darkness and says, you love the darkness,
Nicodemus, because the works that you do are evil. I said,
we've said that, adults, we've said that to our children. The
works you do are evil. Because they are. We never really
apply that to ourselves. The works that we do in our religiosity,
if that's such a use of that term, the works that we do to
apply some type of righteousness to our life, these things are
not good. They are evil when they seek
to establish or to affirm righteousness. There were no pimps in the audience
here. And Jesus saying, you know, you've
got to stop pimping and you're abiding in My Word. No, you're
not if you stop pimping. You stop stealing. There were
no bank robbers there. There were some thieves though.
I mean, does Jesus not call the Pharisees robbers and thieves
in John 10? Y'all, it's about to wind up. Soft, mealy-mouthed Jesus that
everybody thinks exists is not found in the pages of Scripture.
And He's about to get really terse with these religious fanatics,
with these self-righteous people. And He does so righteously. You abide in Me, in My Word.
You are truly My disciples. Think of who He's talking to.
He says, then if you are My disciples, if you are abiding in My Word,
you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. What
is He saying there? You want to know what it literally
means? Let me give you the literal translation
of that. If you hold tightly on to Me, you are My disciples. See how much simpler that is? Why don't we translate it that
way? If you hold to My Word, if you hold to My teaching, hold
tightly to that that I teach you. He is the Word, so therefore
we can say, hold tightly to Me, right? This isn't a stretch,
it's just using the application of what we've already learned
in the Scripture. Hold to Me. Hold on to Me, who I say that
I am. Hold on to what I'm doing for
your sake. Hold on to the redemption that
is complete in My actions, in My work that the Father sent
Me to accomplish, that I will do." You see all this? It wasn't
that they had a problem with Jesus being Messiah. They just
could not see the point of Messiah when it came to their spiritual
redemption. You're not abiding in a me if
you don't believe. Well, that's a stretch, that's
a stretch. Well, let's just go to John 1
and remember, who is it that believes? Those who by the will
of God have been called the sons of God, the children of God,
the daughters of God. No one can believe by the will
of the mind or the decision of the flesh or of blood. No Jew
just because you're a Jew doesn't make you God's people. It doesn't. And we may be descendants of
Abraham, Jesus says, but you're going to kill me. That's what
you want to do. Abraham's children wouldn't do that. They would
believe in Me. You see. John 6, what must we
do to be doing the work of God? What is it that God requires
of us? What's the action that God requires of us? And Jesus
says, this is the work of God. This is what He wants from you,
to believe in the Son. As they're dressed in all of
their fine garments to come to the Passover feast. Yes. to come and celebrate Christ
and not be able to see Him. Isn't that weird? I am not just your Messiah as
you want Me to be, Jesus could say. I am who I say that I am.
And if you abide in who I say that I am, which includes doing
what I say that I am going to do, if you believe in that, you
are My disciple. And when you believe in that,
John 17, 3, this is eternal life, that they know you the one true
Father and know the Son whom you have sent. Do you know the
true God of Scripture? Do you know the Jesus of the
Bible? The Jesus who is God? The Jesus
who is man? The Jesus who obeyed in His humanity
even in His very eye, the way He looked, what He listened to?
Jesus is impeccable even in His humanity. I'm going to talk about
that tonight at 8 o'clock for those of you who will follow
in with that. He could not sin. It was impossible. Because He's
impeccable. Jesus obeyed and obeyed and obeyed
actively in every decision that He did, every action that He
had, every thought that He did, every obedient act that He did,
even the cross. And on the cross is called passive
obedience. Why? Because that is a judicial
term that talks about one surrendering themselves to a government that's
not over them. That's what it means. It doesn't
mean Jesus wasn't actively involved in obeying. These are judicial
terms. Jesus obeyed fully, never sinning,
never sinning. He obeyed fully. And only those
who trust in this Jesus, who went to the cross, and God the
Father's justice and wrath are satisfied in Him, only those
will live. If Jesus is not your righteousness,
you don't believe in the Christ of Scripture. You do not have
the Gospel. Friends, abide in the Word of
God. Hold fast to Christ. This is
not a work, but this is faith alone. This is faith alone. You will know life. He says,
you will know the truth. Jesus says, I am the way and
the truth and the life. He is the truth. The truth that
matters. He's not all truth. Jesus isn't
the sum of all of the algebraic equations that we could consider,
although Trey might argue differently. Jesus isn't, you know, the measurement
of the sun between the universes. Jesus, though He knows the circumference
of the round earth, That's not Jesus. It's not the
truth. Let's not talk about that. Jesus isn't all truths. It's
colder today than it was yesterday. It's truth. That's not Jesus.
Jesus is the only truth that matters. Jesus is the truth. The definite article, the. He's
the truth. The truth that matters to you
in life. The truth that has all authority. The truth that is going to determine
the outcome of everything is Jesus Christ. He is the truth. You will know the truth. You
will know Christ. You will know God. You will know
the truth. Do we know the truth? Jesus says that He is life. Jesus says that He is light.
Jesus is the bread of life. This is the truth of the Word
that He teaches. all the sustenance, all the satisfaction
that we desire in this life as humans can never be found, but
the fulfillment that is found in Christ is sufficient. This
is truth. We may think we need food to
live, and it's true for our bodies, but to truly live, we need the
spiritual food who is the body of Christ. Which is the body
of Christ? Which is the blood of Christ?
We must, we must, Understand Christ as truth. You will know the truth. You will know Me. You will know
what it means to live. You won't think that life is
a big bank account and a bunch of health and a bunch of relationships
that are so fun, you don't know how you did without them. You
won't think that knowing the truth is not going to be all
that the world could provide, that we're successful and prosperous.
The truth is not that I'm a good Christian man and God's going
to bless my business. The truth is that all of this
is nothing, but I'm a steward of it, and that in Christ, what
does Paul say? To live is Christ. Now let's put that in perspective
for a second. What was the life of Paul in the midst of His ministry. Other than Jesus, and I can assert
this based on many things that we find in Scripture, other than
Jesus, no human being has ever suffered greater than Paul for
the cause of Christ. Now I like how some people say,
yeah, God had to punish him for all of his wickedness toward
the church. No, Paul wrote, there is no condemnation for those
who are in Christ. Paul said, this life I live is
not I that live, but Christ who lives within me, and I live by
faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Paul
says in Acts 20-22 that I consider this life of no account. not for myself, but for the sake
that I might proclaim the excellencies and the majesty and the glory,
and I'm going to borrow it from about six other places where
Paul put them all right here, and the power and all these things
of the gospel of the grace of God in Christ for your sake. I pray that I may fill up what
is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of the church,
that is, His body. I pray that you may have the
joy to know with all the saints the knowledge of the depth of
the love of God, how wide it is, how long it is, how deep
it is. For the love of God who loved
you and He gave His Son for you, I pray that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God. To live is Christ. To live for
Paul is to be beaten forty minus one twice. The man was disfigured
his entire life as a Christian. The Scripture reveals that in
Jesus' beating by the Romans, that it was so heinous and so
harsh that no one could identify Him as a human had He not been
standing upright. He never complained. He never
sinned. He never thought, this is so
bad. Why, Father? Am I having to deal with this?
Oh, this was just not... We should have went with plan
C. Annihilate them all. There was no plan C. There was
no plan B. It was just plan A. Paul suffered. He was wrongly
imprisoned. He appealed to Caesar two years
in house arrest. He was left for dead. He was
stoned. He was disowned by his own family, left by his own people,
hunted. We see a period of Paul when
he left, what is it, 13 years? We don't see Paul for 13 years. And then all of a sudden he shows
up. And here we have Paul suffering. He says, to live is Christ. This
is Christ. What I'm doing is Christ. This
life I live is Christ. I'm alive in Christ. This light
momentary affliction. Paul, you are insane, my friend. Light? Not a chance. Momentary? Your whole life? Read 2 Timothy,
beloved. Read it with spiritual eyes and
put yourself in the place of young Timothy who had been taken
from his family in the midst of great turmoil and given to
Paul to mentor in the faith as a young teenager. And think about this boy's spiritual
father on his deathbed in a pit prison, open to the elements, and Luke
tending to his physical problems. And he calls by letter to Timothy
and says, bring the parchment, bring the letters, bring my cloak,
I'm freezing to death. Bring these things and bring
John Mark. I've run the good race. I've
fought the good fight. I'm finished. I'm finished. I'm done. I have now about to
receive the prize that is laid up for me in glory. To see my
Savior face to face, to live as Christ, to die is far better. That's what the original says.
Far better. For your sake, he tells the church,
for your sake, I will stay for your sake, that you may understand
the joy of God in Christ Jesus that is yours, that you may have
the mind which is yours in Christ, that though He was God, He did
not stand, as the King James says, thought it not robbery
to take equality and make it something. But He made Himself
a slave, obedient unto death on a cross, that at the name
of Jesus, God exalted Him because of this, to be above every name,
to be above everything in His humanity. Christ rules sovereignly
as God. And you will know this truth. And in this truth, as Paul speaks
of it, this life is freedom. Now I give you all those illustrations
so that you can see that the absurdity of someone saying to... If I shared, I said, this is
my experience. If I came up here all malformed, and I was in my
80s, and I showed you scars, and I told you the story, and
I shared with you the testimony as if I were the apostle Paul,
and I told you that that was freedom. Many of you would rejoice,
oh, praise the Lord that, you know, Brother James got out of
all that turmoil for the last ten years. He's just been sharing
his testimony around the air-conditioned churches of Georgia. God is so
good to rescue you from that. It's not good of God to rescue
us from glory. What are you talking about? Read
the Scripture, beloved. In Romans 8, We cry, Father. We're led by the Spirit. We say,
Papa. And the Spirit bears witness, verse 16 of 8, that we are God's
children. And if children, then heirs,
and then heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we
suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with
Him. Suffering in Christ is life. because it results in glory. 2 Corinthians 4, that's the whole
point of that beginning of that letter as he teaches his church
that these light momentary afflictions prepare us for an eternal weight
of glory beyond all comparison as we look to the things that
are unseen. Not to the reality of our mire and destruction as
our bodies are dying, as we're every day being given over to
death for the sake of the body of Christ. We are alive in Christ. This is life. This is freedom. It doesn't sound like freedom,
though. It is so antithetical to the American way of living
that it's preposterous. Jesus is very good in the Gospels,
in the Synoptics specifically, of sharing the reality that when
you take up the cross to believe in Him, and you know, these are
all imagery, this is not literal, that the cost is going to be
Unbelievable. And so He warns people who come
with a frivolous faith, with a spurious faith, with this antelitical
faith. He says, but be careful. You
don't know what this is going to cost you. And what happens?
What do we see and teach in the parable of the sower, in the
parable of the seeds? Many just walk away because their suffering
is too much for them. Friends, we do not walk away because Christ
has not walked away from us. And then we're in John 8, where
we are today. He just said that. And He who
sent Me, verse 29, is with Me. He has not left Me alone, for
I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. Where is your assurance? Where
is your hope? You heard Trey preach about the
assurance of the work of Christ. It is guaranteed, for we have
not only been died for, but we have been raised for. We have not been left alone.
Our Savior has not left us alone. So when we are with Him, imagine
Jesus being with us today in person, and the world hating
Jesus as it did in the first century, and then all of a sudden
we have this constant flow of persecution. Oh, those are the
people of Jesus. Those are the people with Jesus.
Oh, He's in there. Let's burn down their building. And then
we run to the next town and, oh, let's take their livestock
away. And then we're hungry. Let's
take their children from them. And people go, well, I just can't.
I can't take this anymore. Jesus, I love You, but I'm leaving.
This isn't working out. A believer doesn't do that. A
believer may want to do that, but a believer doesn't do that.
Why? Because Christ is in them. Christ does not abandon Himself.
Christ does not desever Himself from His own body. And in the
same way, if people were to hate Christ and He were to suffer
on this life, when we are in Him today, presently, even though
in spirit, we also will suffer with Christ. And in order for the Jews, to
be in Christ. No, that's a bad way of putting
it. If the Jews were in Christ, they would lose all things. They'd lose all things. First,
they'd lose their own self-glory. I was wrong. I'm a heretic. I taught you wrongly. Paul had to say that. I was an evil imposter, an enemy
of God, a son of the devil. You've been my preacher for 35
years, what are you talking about? I taught you a lie. You see? But no, we double down when our
ego is ready. We double down when our reputation
is on the line. We double down and we make the
lie work. by manipulating, and managing,
and pretexting, and massaging, and twisting, and demonically
refusing the gospel of grace, so that people will go, oh, well
done, theologian. Well done, O sir. Well done,
anathema. To hell with all false teachers,
God says. They shall suffer My wrath and
the fury, no matter how much they were loving, no matter how
glorious their ministry, no matter how dynamic their pulpit. You
teach falsely, My son, you die, for you are unbeliever. You see? Be careful, beloved. Who are
these people? We don't know. Some of them are
very obvious. And some we may pass judgment
on are not necessarily anathema at all. They may just be really
ignorant. As a student my whole life, it's
very easy to get plugged into one area of something that we
enjoy, isn't it? Very easy. You go, oh, I love
John. I do. I love John's writing. It's good. It's been good for
me to go through Romans again with you all in the last few
months, because it parallels, it reinforces the teaching of
Christ through the apostles. It reinforces the gospel. It
reinforces our identity with Christ and not the law of God.
the beauty of God's grace and mercy, and it's been good, but
it's not my forte. It's not my thing. I'm a John
guy. And so it would be very easy for me
to misunderstand Luke. I just sort of hear somebody
talk about, oh yeah, I understand that in light of John, I understand.
And I may be wrong, I may be a little out of skew, but friends,
those who have the Spirit of God, when they are shown the
truth of Scripture, they do not come and double down and say,
yeah, but the Jews doubled down. Okay, we believe. We believe. And Jesus says, you don't believe
because you don't abide in My Word. You don't abide in My Word. The truth is not in you. You
are not free. Look at your life. It's not free.
You're a slave. Freedom then implies something,
doesn't it? If I say to you, you need to be set free, what
does that imply? That you're in bondage. If I
tell you that you need freedom, it implies that you're in bondage
right now. How can you be free from freedom? You'd be put back
in bondage. So the Jews would say, they would
say to the Jews, You will know the Word. You will know the truth.
You will abide in My teaching. And in that, you will know freedom. You will be set free." But what
were the Jews thinking? They said it right there. We'll
get into this next week. They said, to whom are we enslaved? Whom have we ever been enslaved?
And they're not being coy. They know they've been enslaved
to probably, what, 14 different nations through the centuries.
But they are what? They're talking spiritually.
Who are we enslaved to? We're free. We're the children
of Abraham. We're the keepers of the law.
We're the obedient ones. No, beloved, we who believe in
Christ are the obedient ones. We're the obedient ones. God
sees you and I as perfectly obedient to His law. Because Christ is
our righteousness. What were they in bondage to?
Unbelief. They were in bondage to unbelief, to works, to obedience
to the law. The Son has set you free. But
if you want to be justified and apportioned better under obedience,
then you will be judged by the measure of that obedience. And
if you want to be judged by the measure of your obedience, you
are a lawbreaker. So we either can be obedient
to the law in Christ, or we can be a violator of the law in ourselves. Which do we want to be? Beloved,
the law is death. Because we're guilty. We're guilty. These Jews had
a superb adherence to the law, and Jesus says, unless your good
works are greater than these Pharisees, you will never see
the kingdom of heaven. How is that? Fight the law in
Christ. He's the only one who's obeyed. but they're free. They're not free. They would
have to be freed from the bondage of their own self-righteousness.
Paul would say in Romans 7, verse 4, Likewise, my brothers, you
have also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you
may belong to another, listen to this, to Him who has been
raised from the dead, in order that you may bear fruit for God.
For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused
by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
But now we are released from the law, having died to that
which held us captive, so that we serve in a new way of the
Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. See, the
law brings the prohibition of things. The law, according to
Paul in Romans 7, brings the awareness of how wicked sin really
is. Paul was never a coveter when
he was a Pharisee, but the minute he was saved, he was the worst
coveter that ever lived until his dying breath. I encourage
you to listen to Wednesday night's message. It's on the church website. The law causes our flesh to desire
that which is wrong, to desire not to do that which we are to
do. Don't you touch that, we tell the toddler. Don't you eat
your peas. Don't you do it. Eat the whole
bowl. But if we say, eat your peas, they throw them on the
floor. See, it works on children, it works on us. And so when we try to obey and
we think we're doing pretty good, if we're going to be judged by
the law, we're still disobedient in our obedience. For it is impeccability
that God requires. It is perfection that God requires. Christ is that perfection. He
obeyed in His humanity perfectly all that was required of all
humanity. And then He was judged guilty
when He was not guilty. The adherence to the law causes
our flesh to put confidence and that we are accomplishing obedience,
and we do not accomplish obedience, and in that we are condemned
by the very law that fills, gives us life, it brings us death,
and we obey weakly and incompletely, and thus we are guilty of violating
the very law that we're obeying. How are we going to become free?
Jesus says, believe in Me. I will set you free from the
death that you deserve. I will set you free from wrath. I will set you free from guilt.
I will set you free from punishment because my Father's love in and
through me drives out fear. You know how you know if you're
truly being perfected? If you recognize the love of
God. and that He will not condemn you no matter how weak your faith
is, no matter how bad your faith is, no matter how off your obedience
might be, how off He allows you to see that it truly is. You
are not condemned, you are purchased, and no one can snatch you out
of His hand. We are set free, but we are set
free to something. We are set free from the bondage
of blindness, And we are counted in Christ
because of His works. Some people think that they're
counted in Christ because of their works, and this is a lie
of the devil. The Jews, as I've already said in closing, didn't
have many behaviors to change, but they saw themselves free
before God. But they didn't understand hope.
They didn't understand what Paul talks about in Romans 8. They
didn't understand the hope that is in Christ Jesus. Therefore
there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ
Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what
the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending His
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." That means He was not
a sinner. He was in true flesh, but He
was not a sinner. "...in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
for sin." He condemned sin in the flesh. That means Jesus Christ.
"...in order that the righteous requirement of the law might
be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but
according to the Spirit." For those who live according
to the flesh..." Let me interject in closing the exposition. "...For those who walk in adherence
to the law are not in Christ. Those who
live in adherence to the law, to the flesh, set their minds
on the things of the law, of the flesh. But those who live
according to the Spirit set their mind on the things of the Spirit."
What is it that set our mind on the Spirit? It's to abide
in the words of Christ who says, I am the bread of life. I am
the Lamb of God. I am the living water. I am the
light that overcomes the darkness. Believe in me. Believe in me. Lord, a sigh of celebration. We thank You, Father, for giving us the truth, for helping
us to see, for causing us to live, for bringing us alive,
for setting in us the truth. Lord, oh, have mercy on those
who continually try to set us under the bondage of self-righteousness. Help us to see ourselves in light
of the Jews of Jesus' day and recognize that if it were not
for the mercy of God, we too would be arguing as they were
arguing. Not in the same way, Lord, because
we don't believe we're in Abraham, but Father, many of us believe
we're Baptist. Many of us believe we're evangelical. Many of us believe we're God's
people because we're in America. The heart is the same. utterly
unable to believe without the glorious work of regeneration.
Take this Gospel to our hearts and cement it there by Your Spirit. Teach our children who have listened
well this day to Your Word. Father, help us to move out of
this gathering into the world that we live and to share this
truth with others. We continue to pray. We continue
to pray that You would bring more to the truth of grace. We continue to pray that You
would bring more people to the cross, that they would be truly
free, and only free in Jesus Christ. And we pray these things
in His name. 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.