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. There's very little burden in
the world that rivals the burden of people's spiritual well-being. I mean, think about that in your
own life. Even as a pastor, you may think, well, he's talking
about pastoral. Yeah, I mean, there's a different element to it, but
each of you think about what is most difficult in your life.
Yeah, you have hard times, you have hard circumstances, you
have frustrating events, you have fearful events, you have
horrifying events, you have relational issues, financial issues, mental
issues. I mean, sometimes we're just
down, we don't know why. The world is good, but we hate
ourselves and hate life. And so all of these things are
conflicts and stress trauma But yet none of them measure to the
burden of trying to walk by faith None of them because in our flesh
it's easy for us to just go. I'm done. I Believe that Christ,
but I just don't feel it in my heart. I don't feel it in my
life. I don't see it in my mind I don't have it to touch with
my hands. And so I just I can't do this anymore. You ever been
there You just give up You just give up and you don't, it's not
that you don't care, it's just that you don't know how to care.
You don't know how to carry the burden. The burden of walking
by faith in Christ is one of the most difficult things that
will ever befall us. But friends, it is the only thing
that we're guaranteed not to fail in because our Christ, our
Savior, our Lord is faithful. We will work to try to use our
own wisdom and the world's wisdom and the world's methods to try
to manipulate the circumstances where they appear to be great,
but under the surface, if not for the glory of God, they are
worthless. So in the hardest of days, in the worst of circumstances,
in the most difficult times of our lives, when we suffer for
the glory of God, we suffer with the most absolute, amazing promise. That it is not for nothing, but
it is for the most amazing purpose under the cosmos. That God would
be glorified in our sufferings, that God would be glorified in
our failings, that God would be glorified in His faithfulness
to continue to preserve us in the faith. It is the Lord, and it is the
Lord alone who keeps His people. Beloved, we have bought the lie
of the enemy as a culture that says, if you follow and have
the faith, then nothing bad will ever come. No conflict will ever
arise. That is a lie, and it is straight
from Satan. As believers who hold the foundation
of the truth of the gospel of grace, by the word of God alone,
we will feel the pains of life. And it is in these times that
we have been given the opportunity for our own physical eyes, but
more importantly, our own spiritual eyes to see, listen to this,
to see the proof of our own faith, not the sufficiency of our faithfulness,
but the proof of our faith in the faithful one. You see, there's
a difference. We know that Jesus Christ is the faithful one and
He will not deny Himself and He will not deny us. So no matter
how weak our faith is, God pushes us and presses us into a place
where we no longer can trust in our senses, we no longer can
trust in our wisdom, we no longer can trust in our health, we no
longer can trust in our knowledge and the ability of our bodies,
but we can trust in the certainty of Christ. And beloved, there's no greater
burden than that one. So if you're going to fight,
if you're going to fight to overcome something, fight to stay in the
faith. Don't fight to fix your marriage.
Don't fight to make your kids obey. Don't fight to make sure
that you get a good job. Don't fight to see where you're
going to get your next meal. Don't fight to overcome depression.
Fight to stay in the faith. And we do so by trusting fully
in the finished work of Jesus Christ. It's the most ridiculous
thing that we could ever consider in our natural minds. But by
the grace of God, we've been given the discernment to see
it supernaturally. How so? Through the Word of God. Through the Word of God, we can
come here. Burdened beloved. I know your
lives. I know what you were dealing
with Even those of you who think you're hiding from me what you
don't want me to know I may not know the details, but I can tell
by your face that there's something wrong Not because I have this
supernatural gift of poking in your face and saying ooh, there's
something wrong because I look at it two hours a week I don't do what they teach us
in public speaking to look above the crowd, in a blur. No, I look
at your face. I want to see the smile. I want
to see the scowl. I want to see the anger. You know in big churches when
you have thousands of people and the people in the back need
to scream to see the teacher? If we had that, I would want to
scream in the back so I can look at you. I want somebody to have
a camera on all of you. Just scan the aisles. I can tell. I can see because I look at you. I pray for you. I study for you. I teach for you. I live for you. That's what I'm here for. That's
why I exist. That's the reason why we are
a body. It's so that we would benefit
from each other's lives and each other's gifts. So that we would
not have to suffer in this burden of walking by faith alone. But
we can then rejoice knowing that no matter how difficult it is,
not only are we together, but we have a Christ. We have the
Christ. We have our Savior who keeps
us together. Beloved, this is the circumstances
in which we find ourselves this day. And if everyone were honest,
we all in the entirety of the human race, in the world that
we live in this very moment, we are all in the same environment. We're all in the same world.
We're all in the same circumstances. Though our sufferings may be
different in the details, the reaction and the relationship
to our mind and body, to the suffering of this world is the
same. We have fear. We have doubt. We mourn. We worry. We feel hopeless. And 20 years ago, I might have
preached this a little bit different to you. I might have said, but
you got to stand up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and where
there's a will, there's a way. That's garbage. You can have
all the will you want. There will not be a way unless
the Lord opens it to you. If the Lord wills, we'll go here
and do this. If the Lord wills, you know what the Lord has willed?
Your joy. It is the will of the Lord for
you to have joy in Jesus. And not only is it the will of
the Lord, it is the sovereign divine command of God. When we
don't rejoice, we sin against the grace of God. Because we're
saying in our spirits, no, my circumstances are too bad for
me to have joy. That's saying that Christ is
not powerful enough to overcome. That's saying that what God has
given me as a divine gift, as the wicked, evil things that
I think has come upon me, as this world is swallowing me up,
I don't see it as a gift from God, I see it as a curse. Now,
doesn't our world do that? They want to give Satan, the
enemy, the credit for every bad thing that takes place? Beloved,
If we are in Christ, there is no such thing as a bad thing
that takes place eternally, for even the worst of things are
for our good and for the glory of God to our joy. To our joy. And that's what John's Gospel
seeks to teach us. That's what's wrong with the
leaders of the Jews here in John 7. That's why they seek to kill
Christ. Because everything that they
were, and every element of their being, and all the sufficiency
of their own self-righteousness was wrapped up in their authority,
and in their ministry, and in the people who submitted to them.
And Jesus came along and said, it is all about the Christ, the
one whom God has sent, so that I can be the bread that gives
you eternal life. And they looked at Him, because
what does that do? That takes everything we've worked
so hard to accomplish in our, quote, religion, and it flushes
it down the toilet. It takes every amount of suffering
that we've experienced in life, when we've persevered to do the
right stuff in the suffering, And then we get a little bit
of a, wow, I made it, I made it, I did it, look what I can
do. That's not the point. It's not look what I can do.
It's look what Christ has done. It's look what God has done.
And it's all for naught if it is not for the glory of God.
In John 14 there, excuse me, John 7. Boy, I jumped around
then, didn't I? In John 7. We just we just wasted two years
just jumping right out and John 7 As you heard there about the
middle of the feast in the temple Jesus went into the temple verse
14 and he began to teach now keep in mind for those of you
who haven't been with us every week They were seeking to kill him.
This is the last time he would leave The region of Galilee and
the last time he would enter in to the region of Judea because
he would be arrested this week and the next part The next part,
if you will, of John's gospel is one week. We've just done
three and a half years, and now we're about to do one week when
we get to John 8. Jesus went into the temple to
be seen to preach the glory of God through the gospel as the
Christ, as the Lamb of God, so that they would kill Him. You
see that. But yet he hesitated to go into
Jerusalem because it was not the time for him to go, because
his brothers wanted him to go and display. His brothers wanted
him to go into a place where he would be, what? Noticed. And the Jews would see him, and
see the people loved him, and see that he would teach some
things, and he could placate to them. He could teach them
what they wanted to hear, rather than what he had already taught
them. so that then they would possibly not want to kill him
anymore. It's sort of like people would tell us when we share the
gospel, the true gospel, the only gospel, there's only one,
and people say, well, if you would just tone down this sovereignty
thing, if you would just stop talking about the sovereignty
of God. If we don't talk about the sovereignty of God, there's
no good news. Because we're back on what? We're back in the control
panel. We're back with the steering
wheel. We're back with the accelerator and all the switches and devices. We're back in the control seat
of our own salvation and it is impossible for us to do. So therefore
we must teach the sovereignty of God. People tell me that all
the time. If you just back up on this exposition,
if you just back up on this sovereignty of God, if you would just hold
away from this atonement thing, would you stop teaching all these
deep things? But the deep things of Christ
is the simple gospel, and the simple things of the gospel are
the deep things of Christ. We can't have one without the
other. We cannot teach a half-truth, a partial thing. We cannot make
Jesus palatable to the lost so that they would enjoy the caricature
that they see in their minds, so that they would become a part
of the assembly while they're comfortable not hearing the truth. We're not about trying to get
people in the church. We're trying to call them to
be the church. And that is by the divine work of God whereby
we, through which we teach the gospel and God saves sovereignly. His brothers wanted him to do
the same thing. Jesus just calmed down about being the Son of God
and coming from heaven and all this cool stuff. Just simmer
down now, you don't have to be so over the top with all this
stuff. Just be Jesus from Nazareth,
you know. Joseph ain't a bad guy. Let him
be your daddy. See how that looks? And the world
embraces that. The religious of the world embrace
that. The ecumenism of the world embraces that. Oh, it's all faith,
it's all one God, it's all one, no matter what you call Him.
You call Him Allah, you call Him God, you call Him Jesus. No. The God
of Islam is not the God of the Bible. The God of Judaism is not the
God of the Bible. Aggravates us, doesn't it? The God of the Kingdom Hall is
not the God of the Bible. The God of Latter-day Saints
is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is Jesus
Christ. He is the only one true God. There is he and no other. You cannot have it any other
way. But he went to the temple by
himself. He moved into the area of Judea so that he would not
be part of another crowd, so that he would do the will of
the Father who sent him. But in verse 15, the Jews marveled.
Remember this is a repeat from last week, saying, how is it
this man has learning when he's never been studied? Remember
that? They were irritated. Who is this
guy? See, I know some people who get
irritated because there are brothers, some of which are in this fellowship,
who are well knowledgeable by the grace of God in Scripture.
And when they teach, and when they share the faith, and when
they engage people in truth, people who are well studied with
a lot of initials behind their names, they get really irritated
with it. And the only thing they can do, thus saith the Lord in
the Word of God, the only thing they can do to refute that is
like, you don't even have a degree. You know what? Degrees are important.
Licensure is important for some things. Neurosurgeon? You don't want him having printed
that doctorate out on a printer. You know. Aircraft engineer? You look over there and there's
duct tape holding the wing on you going, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know
Gorilla Glue's strong, but this is not, I'm not getting in this.
But for the word of God, what is the licensure of true knowledge? the Word of God through the Holy
Spirit. Now, I'm not refuting learning.
We learn. I teach. By all means, we are
a teaching ministry. But I'm saying to you that over,
we'll see, what do we see over in Acts? That these unlearned
men were preaching with such boldness and authority and such
perfection that the Jews were amazed that these unlearned men
spoke with such wisdom. And what did they say? Look what
being with Jesus has done for them. So what do we need? We need to
be with Jesus. We need to be in the Word of
God. We need. to understand what the Lord is
saying. Jesus is the voice of God. He
is God. He says the words of God. He
does the work of God. He fulfills the will of God. And Jesus does not need to be
taught by rabbis. He is the Word. He doesn't need
it. Jesus answers in verse 16, we'll
pick up from here from last week. So Jesus says, my teaching is
not my own. He knew what they were saying.
But the one who sent me, that's whose teaching this is. I'm not
talking about what I want. I'm not edifying myself. I'm
not glorifying myself. I'm not giving you my opinion.
I'm not coming to write my own commentary. I am speaking the
words of the one who sent me. Now they understood what that
meant. If I stood here and said, I have just come down from God,
you would all Call for help. Because you know that I'm saying
I just came out of heaven, that God sent me. So here we are,
Jesus has been saying this for three years. I have come down
from heaven. And from the very beginning when
He said that, they wanted to kill Him because they felt it
blasphemous that a mere man would take credit as God, being God,
take the claim of being divine. Jesus is doing, and as Jesus
does, God is doing. He reiterates His truth. And
this irritates the Jews. The teaching of Scripture cannot
be refused, beloved. This is where I left off last
week. Because it is the voice of God. I want you to hear that.
When someone teaches Scripture and we dismiss it, we're dismissing
the voice of God. But here is the interesting thing
about what Scripture says about that very thing. Scripture teaches,
God says through His Word, My Word, this is God speaking, will
not return to me void. What's that mean? That means
if God speaks, if His Word is proclaimed, if I read the Bible
in the middle of the mall, And people go by and they don't
listen. They plug up their ears and they say, this guy's crazy.
Like a friend of mine who open air preaches and he found a forum
dedicated to his bashing. And it hurt his feelings. Because
they ate him up. It doesn't matter. The Word of
God does not return to me void, but it does all that I sent it
to accomplish That means if someone pokes in their ears, or pokes
out their mouth, or sticks up their nose, or scoffs at Scripture,
that they're actually responding in a way that God's Word intended
for them to respond. Now I want you to be careful
with that. It doesn't mean that they're reprobate, but at that
moment, they've not been given the eyes to see. So we don't
not teach them the Word of God the next time, for it is in their
heart and in their mind, and the Holy Spirit, when He's willing,
will regenerate them with that which they've been given. So the Word of God, when we teach
it and people refuse it, we are not to take it personally. We're not to blame ourselves.
We're not to come to the place where we're mourning over the
failure of our ministry. As I started, I said the burden
of spiritual growth, faith, life. is a great burden. It's a great
burden. My heart is that you all could see what I see and
that God would give you the ability to hold fast in it and that you
would spend every day in the Word, not just on the way to
church Sunday going, oh, we better read what the pastor told us
to read. You know, which even if that's what you do, it's better
than nothing. I pray that you would be in the Word of God because
I know that the only thing that's going to sustain you in your
joy and in your faith is reading the Scripture no matter what
you do with it after you read it. The Lord will give you what
He intends for you to have. The teaching that Jesus had that
they tried to so passionately refute and to knock Him out.
You notice they did the same thing with Paul, who was a trained
part of the Sanhedrin, a Pharisee. When he taught, then they began
to deny his credentials. It's interesting, isn't it? That's
the only thing the world can do. But no matter the teacher,
when the Scripture is exposited, when the Scripture is taught,
It is truth. And one would do, as Peter says,
do well to listen. One would do well to listen.
On what? Matters of doctrine, discipline,
devotion. No man can ignore the Scripture and if he does, a believer
will hear and know they're ignoring Scripture. An unbeliever will
refuse it continually, forever, permanently. But Jesus says that thing, and
in verse 17, he says, my teaching's not my own, in 16, but he says
how someone can know the truth. How can you know that my teaching
is authoritative, Jesus says. If anyone's will is to do God's
will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether
I'm speaking on my own authority. Now think about that for a second.
If your desire, if your will is to do God's will, then you
will know whether what I teach is the word of God or what? My own agenda. What would my agenda look like?
I don't know, I don't want to contemplate it. But I can tell
you this, I could very easily have an agenda. What if, let's
just use an example, you might think, well, what are you talking
about? I'm not even talking about maniacally, I'm just talking
about selfishly. What if we needed to do the upstairs and to put
a loft in with more seats? What if we needed to buy the
building next door? What if we needed to build a building somewhere?
Because we were just so big. I could take the Bible and I
could preach and teach and preach and teach and twist just every
little, and not to say that I would use it wrongly, but I could start
to put things in place to where subtly I would leave an M&M trail
to a building program. Versus just coming out and saying,
okay church, on another note, we got a space problem. Which
we don't. If everybody shows up, we may,
but we can push it back, add some more. If we put 70 over
there, we can keep going in here. But see, that would be an agenda,
and that would be a benign agenda. Not at the cost of truth, but
it could still be an agenda. That's not how we teach. We don't
teach with an agenda. We don't teach with some type
of self-glory, some type of self-pattern, some type of self, what is it,
promotion. The Bible is not to be used that
way, but we teach Scripture and it cannot be refused because
it is the voice of God. We learn, we correct, we learn
to love. No man can ignore Scripture,
even an unbeliever is not ignoring it. But the believer knows because
he desires to do the will of God. Let's unpack that for a
minute. Jesus first here is rebuking the Jews. Remember what He said
to them? You can't hear Me because the Word of God is not in you.
You know one of the key reasons why many people who claim to
be in Christ... Listen, I'm not talking about vocabulary. I know
that I've tried to get my vocabulary a little bit different. But I
know that sometimes when you first come to Grace Truth, there
may be words that you're not familiar with. And so you hear
them and you go, well, I don't even know what he's talking about.
That's okay. It's customary. Just if I were to sit with some
of you who have certain jobs in certain fields that I don't
know a thing about, you may use vernacular or initials. I really
love it when people talk to me and they'll use initials. And
I'm like, what does that mean? So you're Googling it real quick
on your phone under the table. And you get like 65 different
variations. Well, is he talking about Band-Aids
or is he talking about microchips? You know. We don't know. I'm
not talking about that. I'm not talking about the idea
that you have to learn to get a palate to hear exposition,
learn to sit still when there's not a picture moving in front
of you with some action, something blowing up or some drama or something
scary. If we want to act that out, if you want somebody to
act out behind me to help you pay attention, that's fine. No, it's not. RPW. Anyway. That was perfect. Some initials. But here, I'm talking, the Bible
was talking about those who have no spiritual discernment. Those
who do not have the Spirit of God, who they hear what Jesus
says, they hear what the Bible teaches, and then they just go,
how am I supposed to apply that in my life? What's that supposed
to, what's that supposed to mean? What's this gospel thing? I don't understand
how Jesus, okay, I believe all that's true, so what? No spiritual
discernment, I just don't see what you're saying, some people
tell me. Well, let me read it to you again. If you believe
on Jesus Christ, the one who God has sent, you can have eternal
life. If you're not believing, you are condemned already, for
you are not trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ. I just
don't understand. Have you ever had anybody say
that? I hear it all the time. Every
week I hear it. I just don't get it. Hear people
say, well, I believe in Christ, I'm a Christian, but I don't
believe that Christ substituted for me. That makes no sense.
What is He substituting for? Because you deserve the wrath
of God, my friend. You're a sinner, you're wicked.
I'm not that sinful. I didn't steal but a hundred
dollars. I didn't stab him but once. I didn't curse my mama
except under my breath. Doesn't matter, does it? I don't ever think about myself
except ten hours a day. Those who can hear the Word of
God are filled with the Spirit of God. Jesus rebukes them. They cannot hear because the
Word of God is not in them. Jesus reminds them that they
don't have the love of God in them. Jesus removes the argument. He withdraws the opportunity
for them to come back and say, well, you know, we are the Jews. We are the arbiter of truth. We are the ones who have the
oracles of God. We are the ones who have Moses. You know, if
you see the end of this in verse 18, verse 19, that's where Jesus
goes. He just throws it right out there
at them. Very difficult thing for him to swallow. Many people profess like this
today. They argue, Jesus is not doing the will of God. The Jesus
that you teach, this isn't the will of God. It isn't the will
of God that He judged sinners. Really? Jesus says in John 5
that all who are in the graves will hear the voice of the Son
of Man. And all of them will be raised up in their lives,
in the flesh. Some unto eternal life, some
unto eternal judgment. Jesus is going to judge. He's going to judge. Some people say, well, doing
the will of God then. We're doing the will of God.
You see how that works? Jesus telling the Jews that only
those who do the will of God or desire to do the will of God
can understand that His teaching is true. They think His teaching
is garbage, and yet they say that they're doing the will of
God. This is the point. Oh, we're doing the will of God, but we
don't believe your teaching. So Jesus is almost in their mind.
Can you imagine them setting themselves up in their hearts
going, you know what? He's about to prove that we're
right. We do the will of God. And everybody around them going,
the Pharisees, they're doing the will of God? Jesus is confirming
what they're saying. But Jesus is about to show them
they're not doing the will of God. What is the will of God? Well,
some people would say, well, the will of God is obey everything.
Well, it was for Jews to obey the ceremonial law. Every human
being is commanded to what? Follow the Ten Commandments.
Every human being in the world is commanded to love the Lord
with all of their heart, soul, and mind, and to love everybody
else, even their enemies, equally as much as they love themselves. How are we doing? We're not.
But Jesus came to fulfill all of that. Jesus came and perfectly obeyed. Jesus is fully righteous as a
human being so that he could substitute for us. The perfect
man substituting for the wicked men, mankind. And those whom
he substituted for are what? The elect of God. People will say, well, doing
the will of God, that's the perfect moral life. That's following
all the rules. Well, the Jews were doing that. The rich young
ruler professed that he did that. Paul even said he did that, didn't
he? According to the standard of the law of Israel, the law
of Moses, what is it? Paul says, I was perfect. I followed
all the rules. So it's not that. They follow
the Mosaic moral law very well. Some people say, well, doing
the will of God is the fruitfulness of the Christian life, is loving
your neighbor, is giving cold water, is visiting the sick,
is doing that, is having niceties, being sweet. Well, of course,
I mean, Christians are going to be sweet and they're going
to love each other. If we have a need in here, we're going to help
each other as much as we can. Why? Because we have love for one
another, not because we want to do it to gain favor with God.
There's a big difference. Not that we want to do it. That's
why Jesus says to do things in privately. We pray in private.
We give in private. We do things like that so that
nobody can look at us and go, woo, look at Mr. So-and-so, so Christian. Because what does that do for
the ones who can't do as much as Sister So-and-so? Makes us feel like we're a little
bit less. So it's not the fruit of faith,
it's not the fruitfulness of the Christian lives that Jesus
is talking about here. Doing the will of God, be fruitful.
He's already said it. Six months before this very conversation,
He said what? When they said, what must we
be doing to do the will of God? He said, this is the will of
God that you believe on the Son whom He has sent. This is what
God commands of you. See, people don't put together
the command of God and the will of God in that sense as it is
commanded or equivocal. We try to subject God to this
mind like a human being whereby He desires one thing and does
another. No, God does all that He's going to do, and He does
all that He desires, and He fulfills everything He wants perfectly.
He's never not gotten everything exactly how He wants it. And
He never not will... I don't know how to put that
in the right negative. He will never fail in that. He will always
get it. I need a grammatician to outline
that for me real quick. So in this context, Jesus is
saying, it's not about how you live, leaders. It's not about
what you're doing. It's not about all the good teaching
that you do because you're wrong. You're not obeying God because
you're not believing on me. And they would argue, but we
are obeying God everywhere else. And Jesus is going to show them
they're not. They're saying, Jesus, you're
not doing the will of God. You're not teaching the Word of God.
Who do you think you are?" And Jesus says, I am the one that
came from God the Father. I don't know who you are, but
you are not believing on the perfect righteousness of the
Son of Man, so therefore you are not desiring to do the will
of God. And it also then includes for
the believer, doesn't it, we do want to obey our Lord. We do want to honor the Lord.
And what does that look like? Giving glory to God. Soli Deo
Gloria. It's plastered on our wall there
in a five-foot banner. We do want to give glory to God.
Why? Because of His love for us and
His redemption through Jesus Christ the Son. We want to obey.
We want to walk. We want to walk perfectly. And
we'll strive to that end. But it has no bearing on how
we are seen by our Father. Because we are seen by our Father
in the perfect, finished righteousness of Jesus Christ. And our righteousness
is not worked a little bit on our own and then a little bit
for Jesus. It's all of Christ. Because even the greatest work
of man and the most awesome benevolence of man and the greatest worship
of man is nothing if it is not by faith in Jesus Christ alone. It is not righteous if it is
not by faith. That means it's not good. But
because we are in Christ, because Christ's righteousness is given
to us, is credited to our account, it's not our own. We don't become,
in a sense, righteous internally. We will. Glorification. But right now, we just live by
faith in Christ, the One who loved us and gave Himself for
us, so that all that we do for the glory of God and not for
ourselves is good in the eyes of God, because it is done by
faith in Christ. So yes, we want to do the will
of God, but the Jews could not do the will of God, even in their
strict obedience, because they did not have faith in Christ.
They were doing nothing but sinning. You see that? This is the will of God, that
you believe on the one He has sent. It means we cannot believe
in ourself. We cannot believe in each other.
We cannot trust in our own faith. We cannot trust in our own actions
of obedience. We cannot find assurance in how
good we do in the Christian life. We have to have assurance in
the finished work of Jesus. We can't have it. We can't trust
in the evidence of our salvation. We can't trust in our flesh.
We can't trust in our thoughts and our mind. John started this
gospel out that we cannot even come to the knowledge of Christ.
We can't even come to salvation. We cannot be born of God through
the will of our mind, through the decision of our mind, through
our bloodline. But by the will of God alone
can we come to faith. We are not able, but Christ is
able. So therefore, only a believer can discern spiritual things.
Last week, I closed the service out with these three things.
Some of you may say, well, what happens? Because I don't feel
like I have spiritual discernment. I don't feel like I can stay
in the Word. I don't feel like I'm walking rightly. There's
several reasons why. Let me just repeat them. Number
one is that we're probably missing fellowship too much. When we
forsake the gathering together, Friends, we are asking to be
smashed. You hear me? And when we forsake the gathering
together, what happens? We forsake the Word of God. We're
not getting the Bible. We're not being fed. You ever
gone to the mall to pick up some socks or something and have no
intentions of eating, but somebody's standing out there with a plate
of chicken? Or Sam's Club? You go in there to buy groceries
so you can go home and cook, and when you leave, you're full.
You didn't go in there to eat, but somebody has that aroma,
that smell, that good... What is that? Oh, there's a plate
of chicken that everybody with all the flus in the world have
walked by? I'll take two. You won't do it anymore, will
you? Anyway. Sure. Some pizzas, some pastries, some
cakes, and you go in there and you eat all that. Why? Because
it's appetizing. It causes you to think about
food and your brain and all the chemicals there that works biologically. It causes your stomach to feel
like you could eat. And so you go and you eat. You
satisfy the desire of your flesh to fill your stomach with that
which you did not long for before you got there because it was
presented to you. And that's what it's like to
be in the fellowship of the church. We're not hungry. We don't have
enough energy to eat. We're really frustrated, etc.
But man, when we get here all of a sudden now, We're getting
a sample here, now we're getting a meal here, now I gotta go home
and eat some more. I gotta get the grill out. People in other parts of the
world, they're like, what are y'all talking about? What's a grill? But that's why we're not having
spiritual discernment, that's why we feel weak in the faith,
because we forsake the gathering and we forsake the word of God.
And most importantly, Don't put off the possibility that some
people who just continue to hate being in the body are unregenerate. You know what I'm talking about.
Sometimes in your lives it could have been you. But what brings
us back to the faith? It is our determination, it is
our decisions. No, it's the Word of God that brings us back. So
at the minimum, when we're in the weak, we need to be in the
Word so that we can be spiritually discerning, so that we can have,
when everything crashes down around us, when the boss comes
and gets in our face, or when the child knocks over the antique
lamp, or whatever it may be, or our spouse just Our resolve is to trust in the
finished work of Christ and realize that the gospel is the power
of God under salvation, is the power of God under perseverance.
The gospel is all we need. That is all that matters. Doing the will of God is the
will of the one who believes. We desire to believe on Christ.
We desire. See, false teachers will test
the church. They will offer options. Well, what about this? Or what
about this? Or what about this? People get paid billions. When I say
billions, I'm serious. Billions of dollars to motivate
people to make different choices in their lives. And I am a student of that type
of teaching. And I know a few of you are too. I ate it up as a teenager. I
read every book I could get my hands on about psychology and
the freedom of thought and the will and determination. And you
know what I did? I faked it and never made it. I never made it because it's garbage. It's garbage. It's a delusion.
Friends, pulpits across America, pulpits across the world have
come in and added to the gospel, and it is no gospel. Now, you
still have the comedian that I heard years ago, I don't even
know who did it, but, you know, they wanted to get kids to eat granola.
Nobody'd eat granola, so they put chocolate in it. Chocolate
chips, so they're picking out the chocolate chips. Those just
covered in chocolate, they're licking the chocolate off. Let's just
take out the granola and give them chocolate. That's what's happened in the
church. All the kids are like, yeah, it gives chocolate. We have the gospel, nobody wants
it, we add a little bit of sweetener to the gospel, add a little bit
of humanism in the gospel, add a little bit of opportunity for
wealth in the gospel, add some prosperity in the gospel, add
some of this in the gospel, add some of that in the gospel, woo!
We got a lot more people, and then I'm saying, we're tired
of hearing this, and we just take all that out, and after
a while, it's just a carnival. It's not church. Got that song, Bring in the Clowns.
It's about a failed marriage. I think what Spurgeon said something
about the time will come when people will entertain the church. Clowns will entertain the church
rather than pastors, shepherding sheep. And we've never been more there
than we are in our culture today. Jesus has taught what He's teaching
clearly is the teaching of God. Thus, desiring to remain in the
truth of Christ, beloved, we can see the truth of Christ.
Desiring to believe in Christ, desiring to know more of Christ,
to know the will of God in our lives through Christ, we desire
the Word of God. And when we hear it, oh, when
we hear it, Have you ever been submerged in a culture or a neighborhood
or a country where you could not speak the language? I mean,
none, none. And it's really interesting,
when I first moved to the Bay and we would have associational meetings
and meetings at the seminary, and I was given the responsibility
of sort of giving oversight to some of the programs there for
the Spanish-speaking pastors, and I would sit in rooms of 60,
70 pastors, and not one lick of English would come. I remember
the first day I'm sitting there and my friend who was with me,
he would look over and he would just sort of laugh and he'd write
down, we're talking about this. I remember after several months
of that, I'd picked up some stuff and all of a sudden I heard a
man stand up and he said something, wait a minute, I heard a word
I knew. Oh, what was that? And I wrote it down. A couple of weeks later, I heard
another few words and I could hear, then by the end of the time I
was there, I could follow the conversation but couldn't speak
a lick of it. because they're familiar with
it. The same thing when you're in the middle of a bunch of people
speaking Cantonese, and they're speaking Cantonese. It sounds
like Chinese to me. And you can't make out anything,
and all of a sudden there's a word that they don't have, and they
speak it in English. You're like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Wait a minute. He said James. I heard that. You talking about
me? Friends, for the church, when
we hear the truth, We recognize it. And it's like ding, ding,
ding, ding. I'm like, well, I hear that.
I know this. In the same way when someone says, I'm speaking
the Word of God, and they get up there and they talk about
everything but the glory of God, we go, where is it? What in the
world? Have I been baited and swindled?
Did they tell me I could have a free gallon of milk and there ain't
no milk? I guess I'll buy 300 more dollars worth of groceries
while I'm here. You see? Call within the next
10 minutes, you get free shipping. Or we'll double your order. That's the way it works. We get
called up sometimes with these other options, these other ways.
And it's not just about truth and doctrine either. The teaching
of Scripture, doctrine. Sometimes it's about how we handle life.
Like Jesus' brothers. Hey dude, just come with us.
Simmer down, let them see you in your goodness. Let them see
how the people love you. Let them hear you teach the truth
of Scripture. They'll love you. And Jesus is like, it's not my
time to go with you. You go by yourself because the
world does not hate you, but it does hate me. Why? Because
I call out the darkness of the world. So, other ways, new views. How
do we deal with this? Oh, we need to talk about this.
We need to do that. You need to act this way. You need to buy this.
You need to go here. You need to have this. You need
to think this. It's always before us. How do we discern? We stay
in the Word of God. We stay together and we pray
for one another and we act by faith that what God has promised,
though it may seem too simple or too weak, it will come to
pass in His time. We obey the Lord. and that we
believe and we trust and we follow the teaching of Scripture, especially
in the teaching of salvation. We trust. We can trust the teaching
of God, and many who supposedly teach from God can be tested
by looking at the teaching of Christ. And in these verses here,
verse 17 and also verse 18, we can see, what does he say now,
whether I am speaking in my own authority. If you desire to do
the will of God, you can know whether I speak in my own authority. And in verse 18, he gives us
another way of testing that, doesn't he? The one who speaks
on his own authority seeks his own glory. Remember when I was
talking about the building programs or something else? If I am wanting
to manipulate you into doing some good stuff in the community,
I can make that happen. Oh, we need to start a soup kitchen?
I can make that happen. We'll call it the James Tippin
Soup Kitchen. I want people to know who got
it going, you know? Even if it's not, that's what we do, we put
our name on the side of it. We're going to start the Grace
Truth Scholarship, Emeritus Tippins. I mean, you know, that's what
happens in a world, you've seen it. So we preach in that sense,
but Jesus did not come doing His own will, He came to do the
will of the one who sent Him, who is the Father, who is God,
and Jesus is also God. So that he's saying, you can
know that what I say has authority because you desire to do the
will of God. And he's saying there that he
is not to be judged by what he says. And everything that he
teaches is not to be received, listen, suspect, but it's supposed
to be received authoritatively and listened to and believed. We don't have to decide that
what we hear from exposition is true, or correct, or authentic,
or authoritative. If it is the words of Christ,
if it is the word of God and is taught rightly, we don't have
to decide whether or not we're going to listen to it. We do. It is truth, period. Therefore,
because it is truth, we submit to the teaching of Jesus as His
church. And we're not burdened by the
options that I talked about earlier, the wisdom of our own meddling. We're not consumed with, okay,
I hear the truth, now what? Now what do I do? Well, I prayed
and God's Word says this, but now what? Do I do this? Do I
do what I just read in the Bible? Do I believe just what I read
in the Bible? Do I hope for what I just read in the Bible? Or
what else? God, what's your will? Your will, the will of God for
His church, is to believe in the Son whom He has sent, inclusive
of salvation, but also in everything else that Jesus ever taught,
which is everything else that's ever been written in the Bible.
You see that? The red letters are really misapplied. I don't
even use them. I can't stand it. Because the red letters have
no more authority than the black letters. Because everything in
here is the Word of Christ. So when the Great Commission
says to teach them to obey everything I've commanded you, we're supposed
to teach the Scripture in total. We don't say, what now? Because
we know the will of the Lord and we can follow it by His grace
and mercy, by the Spirit. We are confident with the teaching
of Jesus and we are indeed confident that it is the teaching of God. For in verse 18 he says, the
one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory. Jesus is
given the example of helping us to understand why and how
we discern. One speaks of his own authority.
It's like, look what I discovered. Let me show you what I did in
all my study this week. You take this and you turn there
and you do this. Aha, I found a mystery that you, little old
sheep, could not see. See, that's self-glorifying.
Just teach it. Don't go through all the rigmarole
because you don't have to work a nine-to-five or nine-to-nine
job and sweat your behind off every day and God gives you the
ability to go into the Bible for hours and hours and hours
on end. Don't take credit for it. Holy cow! You ever heard a pastor like
that? It might even be good stuff, but his arrogance is so thick
you can't see his face. Or worse, you can't see the face
of Christ. And beloved, if it weren't for the grace of God
and His mercy and His Word and His people and our mutual accountability,
all of us are susceptible to that, myself included. Especially
during the naysayers, you know, people that like to fight doctrine.
It's easy to just get real haughty real quickly, but we must be
humble, we must be kind, we must be gentle and speak boldly. Being
bold is not being bully. Jesus was never a bully. He laid
down His life. He gave Himself into the hands
of His enemies that He might redeem His church. Teaching that glorifies the teacher
makes them the center of the teaching, makes the ambitions
that they have the center of their teaching. One that seeks
their own authority does these things, but a true authority
points to the true authority. If my teaching is to be authoritative
for you, I must point to the glory of God. I must point to
Christ. I must never point to the end
of anything except Christ. Now yes, in correction, we may
have to make some correction. We're going to talk about some
correction after the sermon. But it still has to be pointed
to Christ. It's still about Christ. Why do we even correct so that
Christ may be glorified in it? Jesus did not seek His own glory.
Many people do. Even in His day, the Jews, they
sought their own wisdom. They sought to hear the words
of their own voice. They taught without knowledge.
They spoke not about the things of God, but the things of men.
They carried along the traditions of the Jewish teachings rather
than the Word of God. They didn't even rightly use
Scripture when they did use it, but they inundated Scripture
and overwhelmed Scripture with philosophy and commentary to
enforce their opinions and their beliefs so that the people would
be held captive under their rule, not the rule of Christ. Beloved,
you can't be captive under the elders' rule. You are captive
under the rule of Christ. There's never a time when we
should The Word of God will do that. Let the Word of God be
the blunt force that brings the sinner home. Let the Word of
God be the instrument, the sword which cuts the marrow of the
soul and regenerates the lost that they may come to see. Let
the Word of God be the healer. Don't look to me as your healer,
because when I'm having a bad day and need healing, we're both
sick. So if we're both sick, we've got the right medicine,
we can see Christ together. All teaching, in summation here,
in itself that does not seek to glorify God, even if it doesn't
seem self-seeking, is self-seeking. Any teaching that does not glorify
God in its beginning and end and middle is self-seeking. It is self-glorying. And teaching
that does not do that sees the person or the circumstance or
the doctrine as the authority or the center. And I believe
that preaching that is not contextual is self-seeking. Preaching that is not from the
text of Scripture, considering the totality of the text of Scripture,
considering the context, what the Bible is talking about there
is self-seeking. Because if I have to be honest,
it's easy for my creativity to give you good lessons. So if
I were to take a topic and teach you something, I might be, that's
pretty good. But if it's not contextual in some sense, I may, even inadvertently,
be wanting you to go, man, that was awesome. Never saw it that
way. self-seeking. So what's the antidote
to that? Point to Christ. Point to the
glory of God above all things. Continue to teach that and to
preach that and to live that and to walk in that together.
In the end, this type of stuff obscures the glory of God, as
if something else was greater. Jesus continues, "...but the
one who seeks the glory of Him who sent Him is true." So in
contrast, the one who seeks to glorify God is true. He is the one who is true. Jesus
is talking of Himself that He speaks the words of God, He speaks
the words of the Father who sent Him, and He's not speaking in
His own authority. The Word of God is the only authority,
and because we have been given life through the Spirit, we know
it, and we can believe it, and we can obey it. It is all for
the glory of God. That is the totality of all things
that the church should understand. When we live, remember what I
talked about in our sufferings? When we live in our sufferings,
it is for the glory of God. How is God going to work in us
together and individually to give glory to Him through the
midst of our pain? That's the reason the pain comes,
and that's the reason God is glorified in it. Why? Because
He never fails us. Jesus' gospel that He preached
glorified God. And what it did is it removed
all ability from man in order to enter the kingdom of heaven,
to have intimacy with God apart from His sovereign work and will.
And that stresses out the natural mind because we think we have
it right. We think we can manage our lives.
We cannot. No matter how good we are, no
matter how good things are, no matter how perfect things are,
no matter how successful things might be, friends, it is just
by the mere mercy of God that those things sustain. And when they fall away, And
when the ground underneath us seems to give loose and we're
just in a free fall, not knowing where we will land or how we
will flap the wings that we do not have that got us to some
softer spot, friends, it is then that we are still in the sovereign
hand of God. What's the application of that? We should not fear. And when we see fear, when we
see discontentment, when we see irritation, when we see hopelessness
in our heart and our mind, what are we to do with that? Put it
to death. Grab it and strangle it, throw
it away and say, this is dead. Christ is alive and I will not
think this way. Oh God, have mercy that I would
put this to death. See, oftentimes we struggle with
it and we say, God help me in my struggle. God is not gonna
help us defeat sin. Christ has already defeated it.
God is not going to help us defeat depression. Christ has already
defeated it. God is not going to give us the strength to be
real strong. We don't have strength. He is
our strength. We rest by the strength that
God is for us, not that He gives. What strength does God give?
A teensy-eensy-weensy tiny bit of faith to trust in the fullness
of all His glorious might. That's all we need. That's all we need. Many claim to be taught by the
Lord, but because His ambition is His true aim, those teach
doctrine of demons. Such was so of the Pharisees.
And some people even today who have a good gospel, their entire
ministry is a ministry of defense of God. Now, I'm not talking
about apologetics. I'm talking about the not-gospel
gospel. which is to make our ministry,
our banner, everything that is wrong. Friends, God doesn't need
that. His Word is enough to teach.
2 Timothy 3.16, His Word is enough to correct. His Word is enough
to save. His Word is enough to secure.
His Word is enough to heal. But Jesus says, and in him there
is no falsehood. That means the man that teaches
for the glory of God, in him there is no hypocrisy. There's
no acting. It's not for ulterior motives. He is a true minister
of the Word who trusts in the ministry of the Word, not himself. So let's rewind as we close.
We will know that the teaching of Christ is true and right because
we desire to do the will of God, thus we believe in the Word of
God. And because we see the teaching does not receive self-glory,
but gives glory to God the Father in all things. So that's a test
that we can trust Christ, it's a test we can trust our pastors,
it's a test we can trust ourselves when we give wisdom. So think for a minute. We can
know the teaching is true by doing the will of God and by
glorying in God alone. You know what I believe? I believe
if we take the totality of the New Testament and we look through
this type of thing, we will see that these are not different
compartments of our faith, but these are all in the same faith. The regenerate person knows with
his mind what is true and believes in it. The regenerate person
knows the will of God and walks in it. That's faith. We walk
by faith. And the regenerate person loves
the Lord and glories in Him. All of these are a gift of God.
They're not separate things. They're all one and the same.
This is faith alone in Jesus Christ. We know because the Spirit
has taught us. We do because the Spirit leads
us. We love because we have the Spirit in us. What must we do to be doing the
will of God? Believe on the Son. But remember what they said,
how can this man teach without education? Because he is not
seeking his own glory, because he is speaking from the source
from which he came, and because he loves the Father more than
any of us ever could. You do not receive, excuse me,
I do not receive glory from people, Jesus says, but I know that you
do not have the love of God within you. I've come in my Father's
name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name,
you receive him. How can you believe when you
receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that
comes from the only God? If we love God, we love Christ
because Christ speaks the words of God. And then Jesus asks a question
to sort of seal this and start a whole nother conversation.
And then I'll pick up from here next week. He says, has not Moses
given you the law? Because remember that's their
argument. We've got the law. We've got the word. We're doing
the will of God. Has not Moses given you the law?
And they're thinking, yes, of course. And then he says, not
one of you has kept it. He's driving the nails right
in His hands, right now. And that is the will of God the
Father. Not one of you has kept it. And then He asked, why do
you seek to kill Me? Now, why did He do that? Because
He wanted to publicly say, you're murderers. Not only do you not
keep the law in pretense or in application, you're murderers.
You're murderers. And what do they say? How do
they respond to that? They've already said, who is
he? He doesn't have education. Now when he calls them out as murderers
and they know he's right, the only defense they have is to
say, you have a demon. You're the devil. I mean, isn't
that it? You get a lot of amens when you call somebody the devil. In brief, these spiritual leaders
were going to defend themselves by saying, we uphold and follow
the law of Moses. We're the ones entrusted with
the oracles of God. And we've been taught through
many years of academic lineage, therefore we are in authority.
And Jesus says, yeah, you've got the law of Moses, but you
don't keep it, and you're murderers, and the only thing that they
knew how to do was, you're the devil. It's like saying your
mama. Somebody can't argue, just make
fun of their mom, because that's always going to provoke them.
You call somebody the devil, it'll usually provoke a righteous
person. Why would you call me a devil? But we don't have to
be provoked. Friends, if I count on hands
the number of times that I've been told, since I've been in
this city, that I teach the doctrine of demons, none of us would have
enough fingers. That's to my face. Why? People hate Christ. Because they hate God. And they
want to make their own God before them. so they can have their
own way. Christ will have His way with
His church, be encouraged by the teaching of His Word, be
filled by the fullness of God through the Holy Spirit that's
given to us through the grace of God, which is given to us
through the Word of God, and there is nothing else that can
satisfy us as Christians. And I pray that the Lord would
be merciful during this season, And I pray, church, that God
would give you just a heart to rejoice no matter how much you
weep in the finished work of Christ. Let's pray. We thank
You, Lord, that You love us. We praise You, Father, that You
are glorious. And I pray, Father, that as we
close our time today, that the teaching that we've heard was
glorifying to You. And Lord, that if it wasn't,
You would strike it from our memory. We long to be taught, we long
to know, we long to be more precise in our language and in our truth
teaching. Help us not to trust in our own
wisdom, but to trust fully in Your Word. Because when we trust
in Your Word, Lord, we are trusting in You. So God, we trust in You
for salvation. We trust in You to save those
around us. We trust in You to keep us in
the hard times. And Father, we trust in You to
keep us in the good times. For it is often in those seasons
when all seems too well that we can lose sight of where our
faith truly lies. So we thank You for testing us.
We thank You for pruning us. We thank you for holding us.
In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
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