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. I'm not sure how much each of
you engage every single day and every single week in the community
in which you live, whether you see people at the store, your
place of business, at your place of employment, school, or just
walking down the street. But I'd ask the question, I want
you to ask yourself the question, do I engage with the world around
me concerning the Gospel? Am I always aware of the Word
of God in my mouth, in my mind, in my heart? Am I concerned with
the fact that God has put me in this earth and saved me by
His great power and mercy so that I might also be a light
and a beacon to those around me? Now none of us should say,
oh yes, I do that as much as I should. Or if we do, we have
a different sermon on the table. One on humility. But none of
us should feel pleased with the measure in which we live out
our faith. None of us should be confident in the measure in
which we express the gospel in that we do it enough. But we
should be confident in the fact that what we are and who we are
is all consumed with whose we are. We belong to the Lord Jesus
Christ. He has purchased us by His blood.
We have no fear of condemnation. And therefore, we, even in our
failings, do not have to trust in ourselves, but trust in the
faithfulness of He who cannot fail. At the same time, we need
to recognize that the reason we gather here each week is not
that we can get our Bible fixed, it's that we can get further
instruction, further extrapolation, further exposition of what the
Bible teaches and more clearly how it applies to our life, not
pragmatically, but purposefully. Because there's a lot of practical
things that we could do. wearing our seatbelts, keeping
our fingernails clean, etc. But when it comes to living out
our faith, friends, even the practical things have a spiritual
essence. Why do we put on our shoes every
day? For the glory of God. Why do we put on our socks? Why
do we brush our teeth? Why do we do what we do every
single moment of our lives? It should be so prevalent, the
gospel that is, It should be such an enriched part of our
lives, the Word of God that is, is that everything we do, we
need to consciously be aware that we are doing this prayerfully
by the grace of God and for the glory of God. Now a very dear
mentor, and he and I spoke a few months ago, a very dear mentor
argued that fact with me back in 2005 and says, there's no
way you can put on your socks for the glory of God, I don't
get it. And I said, well, when I put
on my socks, it is for a reason. Because I am putting myself together
in such a way that I will put shoes on afterward that I might
go do something. Is what my plan, is what my plans
are for that day glorifying to God? Is my project, can I do
it with a heart of gratitude? You might say, well, what does
raking leaves have to do with the glory of God? Oh, a lot of
things. And you don't have to be a poet What's the first thing
that we do in our lives when we see things that aren't the
way we think they should be or the way we think we want it?
We complain. The Bible commands us to do all
things without complaining. It means we don't complain about
the yard work. We don't complain about having to get up and go
to work. We don't complain about the fact that we can't find our
shoes. No, I'm not peeking into your
lives. That's just a very common occurrence. It's right here. Somebody move my shoes. Single
people that live alone say that. Somebody. But you get the point. There's
a spiritual reality in the life of the believer whereby the Spirit
of God is always teaching and instructing through the remembrance
of what we read in the Holy Writ. If our Word, if God's Word is
in us, it abides in us, and He abides in us, and we abide in
Him, and today that is what I want to talk about. What does it mean
to truly abide in Christ? The fruitfulness of that abiding
in one of the things that takes place is that we are mindful
of the fact that Christ is with us. Back in the days of behavioral
modification ministry, student ministry, children's ministry. You teach kids and students how
to act and behave and then call them Christians. Nothing wrong
with being taught how to act and behave, but you get the point.
I remember several skits that I've seen performed in front
of thousands of students, 9th, 10th, 11th graders, where you'd
see these teenagers playing out this party scene and then Jesus
walks up. Of course, we know it's Jesus
because he's got long hair and wearing a bed sheet. Uncle Billy,
as we call him. And Jesus walks up and this Christian
guy in the midst of this party scene goes, oh no, there's Jesus.
And he pushes him out the door, you know, that kind of thing.
I don't want Jesus to see us here. I don't want Jesus to come
here. I don't want Jesus to hear me
say these things or watch me do these things or to know the
thoughts that I have about these things. Well, friends, guess
what? You can't push him out the door. And that's supposed
to scare people into thinking, oh, we need to be a good witness.
No, that's not the point at all. The point is, is that we are
in Christ. First and foremost. Christ is
in us. That's what we see here in chapter
6 where Jesus says the words there, my flesh is true food.
Verse 55. And my blood is true drink. Verse
56 is where we'll be all day today. Whoever feeds on my flesh
and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. We forget that it's not about
how we do and what we do and how we stay in Christ. It's about
Christ and what He's done to keep us in Himself. Friends,
this could open a door for you. of frustration. Remember what
I said when we started, John? I went back and listened, May
the 7th, 2017. I listened to the first sermon
yesterday, and I thought, wow, I just preached like seven chapters
of John in that first message. I'm sorry. It was a lot. I said to you that John's Gospel
and its doctrine, its teaching, and what it tells us about God,
theology, is going to wreck your belief systems. And I remember,
and I have not went back and listened to it, but in the beginning
of John 6, I reminded us that this passage of Scripture, this
discourse, would be one of the most critical things in your
spiritual life, that you would come to be arrested by the truth
of Scripture. And as a believer, you would
hold fast to its truth, but it doesn't make it always palatable. That means it doesn't always
taste good in the mouth, it doesn't always go down as easily. Like
Mary Poppins would say, a spoonful of sugar. All the kids are going, Sometimes it's difficult to swallow
the truth, but as believers, the Spirit of God that indwells
us, God is with us, the fullness of the Godhead is there. In Ephesians
3, Paul says, I pray you may be filled with all the fullness
of God. And here, Jesus is talking about abiding. We hear other
places in the Word where if my Word abides in you and you in
me, etc. This abiding, this enduring is
the actual translation. If we were to translate that
word there, that whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood
endures in me, stays, holds in me. And we've already learned
what this is. When we see these teachings,
it will, just as this will show you this morning, it will violate
the very nature of what you think it means to stay in Christ. Because
beloved, I think one of the greatest disasters of contemporary evangelicalism,
contemporary Protestantism, is that we have become, we have
become Roman while trying to say we hold fast
to sola fide, faith alone. We have become nothing more but
warmed over Roman Catholicism. Will we put works at the precipice,
the center of our evidence? Will we put works at the heart
of our assurance? What kind of garbage is that?
It is the garbage of the enemy that comes in and says, just
like Satan said in the garden, you shall surely not die. It's a lie. It's the very lie
that the devil propagated with Jesus Himself, the God of creation,
who created Lucifer. Here is a creation saying to
its creator, oh, just command these stones to become bread,
for you're hungry. And Jesus says, man does not
live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth
of God. And now Jesus says, I am the
bread of life. See, we don't live. We don't
live on what we get. We don't live on what we do.
We live on that which has been given to us, which is secure
for us, and He is Jesus. Jesus has been given to us by
God the Father for us through the plan of redemption that is
eternal. It did not begin. When God said us, why John uses
the allusion to, in the beginning, when he starts his gospel, is
he wants you to see the eternal, plan of redemption that when
God said, let there be light, it was so that He would start
in the linear abstract of time, His redemption of His people. So that the fall of Adam and
the fall of Eve, the first humans, was a planned, purposed, decreed,
divine event. of eternity. If I have an eternal
plan, guess what that means? That it never had a beginning.
It did not come to me one day. And then I decide how I'm going
to do it. An eternal plan. We can't even fathom that. Much
less an eternal being. Jesus is the God of eternity. Eternally the Son in His person. Eternally the one and only true
God in His essence. enduring, abiding, persevering. We've already talked about perseverance. We've already been shown here
in John 6 that Christ will never cast out His people. And everyone
that comes to Him only do so because God the Father has brought
them to Him. Friends, let me remind you, that
is the only gospel. That is the only gospel. There
is no universalistic, weird, feel-good gospel that says God
is just love and if we just love, oh glory, how the world will
be the world will bust hell wide open and stand in the judgment
of the holy God and every ounce of love it can muster. There
is no love in the hearts of humanity that can stay the judgment of
God's justice. So don't tell me the Episcopal
Church teaches the gospel. It's not the gospel. It's blasphemous. It's evil. And it leads even
evangelical professing Christians to say, oh, this is great. Let's
let people hear it. If you don't know what I'm talking
about, good. If you do, goodness. It's all over the news. Abiding in Christ is because
God's Gospel is true and He has finished the work. It is okay
to say to the lost generations of this world, you can only be
saved if God the Father has satisfied His wrath through Jesus Christ
the Son, who died on the cross as propitiation, and if God does
not give you the mercy of spiritual regeneration, you will perish
in your sins. It is okay to preach that gospel,
because that is the gospel of Jesus. It is not a soteriological
debate when it comes to the table of understanding interpretation
of Scripture. It is the only truth. When Jesus
says, I am the way, the truth, the life, and the way, I am the
truth, the life, and the way, it includes what He's taught
us here in John 6. So while we may not understand
it, while we may not grasp it, while we may not have a full
and exhaustive comprehension, when the Scripture teaches those
who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we agree with it even while we
learn it. When we reject the gospel of
sovereign grace, we have spat in the face of the work of God,
and we are not debating interpretation. We are rejecting the gospel. Beloved, listen to me. We who
have friends and family who continually reject sovereign grace are rejecting
Jesus Christ over and over again when they're shown perfectly
in the Scripture that it's there. Now, what are we going to do
with that? Because sometimes we might ourselves
say, well, I just don't, I don't, I don't really have a full handle.
Does Jesus say you have to have a handle? No. But just like we would not call
those of the cults and world religions, our brothers and sisters,
we cannot call those who reject the gospel our brothers and sisters
either. Is it loving to call someone safe when we know they're
dying? No. Maybe if you're going down on
an airplane. Alright kids, isn't this a fun ride? Yay! When someone is dying and you
tell them they're not, it's not loving. When someone needs the
truth and you think that the frustration and the fear and
the consequence of proclaiming that truth is going to be So
much worse than proclaiming the truth, the cost is not worth
it. You're saying that the cost of that division is not worth
the soul of the person you say you love. The same is true when those who
reject faith alone as the assurance of their salvation. Friends,
you cannot come to the table of grace and feast upon the bread
of life, and then turn around and say, but I must do this to
be sure. What laundry list of must-I-dos
has been given us in Scripture? Look, believe, eat, drink. That's it. And they all have
one meaning. Faith. Faith. Faith. Verse 55, John 6. For my flesh
is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on
my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. This eating, this drinking, this
believing is all faith. This is not the Lord's table
in view here. that we can surely look to this
now as we understand the Lord's table. This is not about physically
eating or drinking anything. This is about spiritually seeing
by the grace and mercy of God that Jesus Christ, listen to
me, Jesus Christ alone is sufficient for salvation. It's not even our faith that's
sufficient. Listen to me. It's not even our
faith that's sufficient for salvation. It's Christ who is sufficient
for salvation. Oh, did I exercise my faith rightly?
See, that's where a lot of people go, no, it's faith alone. Now
I'm showing it. Jane says that faith without
works is dead. Come on, read the Bible. Take
the verse letter numbers out of it. Of course, if I'm alive, won't you
see me breathing? If I have no pulse and rigor mortis is set
in, of course I'm not alive. In the context of what we see,
the love for the brethren is the primary litmus test. But
even then, pagans can love each other. Jesus uses that example.
Does not the world love each other? Would a worldly, would
a pagan father give his child a snake when he asked for a piece
of bread? No. So then the world would love
each other. Shouldn't we as the church love each other also? Even more
so? As Paul would tell the church of Thessalonica, I pray that
you may love each other more and more and more as you are
already doing. Your love for one another is so prevalent that
it's gone all the way over the regions of Macedonia. It has
reached all the regions around you. People are looking for us
to come. When are the apostles coming to our town? We want to
see what's happening there. And I'll close with that verse
in 1 Thessalonians today. I want to close with that verse. Faith is faith. It's faith. It's
nothing else. There is no proving your faith.
There is no proving to God or to me that you have faith. Because
if you have faith, God will do the work that's necessary outwardly
so that we might live in unity. And when our flesh begins to
set a table for itself, church discipline and the mutual interest
of each other in our lives, when we see things that are out of
line, we help each other walk back into the center. not so
that we may have eternal life, so that Christ may be glorified
and honored in His work in us, because He loves us and we love
Him. And those who refuse to walk,
those who refuse to say that they have repentance, those who
refuse to walk away from their sin, those are the ones who are
removed from our fellowship. And what do we want from them?
We want them to come back. We want them to walk back into
this building and be embraced by all. As they say, oh, I was
walking in my flesh and I thought the world would give me the joy
that I so desired, but Christ has shown me He is the only hope. That's what we want. Faith is
abiding. Believing is abiding. Faith alone
is perseverance. There is no other way to abide
in Christ, and I will prove that to you through what Jesus has
said right here. "'Cause He then what? Whoever feeds on My flesh and
drinks My blood abides in Me.'" We know that that's belief, faith
alone. It's not a physical action there.
"'And I abide in Him.'" So I could just stop right now.
We can just go home. That's it. Christ, if this were one-sided,
we might have a philosophical argument, even logically, to
expand this and start developing a list of disciplines that might
prove our abiding. But it would only be a few hours
before we began to put hope in those things. It would only just
be a few days of us really not using foul language, or really
studying our Bible every morning at 5.53 a.m., to go, man, I really
am a Christian. Look at me. I'm reading my Bible
every day. I'm in church every Sunday. I'm
tithing, I'm giving, I'm serving. I rake my neighbor's yard, and
I hate raking. Praise the Lord. Remember what
I talked about in the beginning? I love raking now, because I'm raking
as if I were raking the yard of Jesus. won't be any leaves
a rake in heaven. Don't know how that works. But then on the flip side of
that, Well, when we fail those things, oh, I'm not a Christian.
I'm not in Christ. Oh, woe is me. Look at my life.
Well, friends, if you evaluate your life deeply every day, you
will see just the utter despair you would be in if it were up
to you to manifest the appropriate amount and measurable works that
are required for holiness, which are absolute perfection. And
there is no measure in which you are less of a murderer than
you were yesterday if you've already been a murderer. Some of us would go, well, I've
never taken a life. Well, the Bible says that the
murder of another man or woman is in the heart, not with a knife. Murder is when you speak ill
of people, when you gossip, when you think ill thoughts, when
you have anger in your heart toward a person. The Bible says
you're guilty of violating the command not to murder. And once we've been a murderer,
we're never not a murderer, are we? Once we've been a thief,
we're never not a thief. Once we've been a liar, we're
never not a liar. Once we've been an idolater or
an adulterer, we're never not an adulterer. But in Christ,
all things are new. We are a new creation. We no
longer testify as that, as who we are in our flesh, but we are
in Christ, the Beloved of God, the Son of God, the Holy and
the Righteous One. And His perfection and His glory and His beauty
and His purity and His righteousness is gifted to us and put on us
that the Father sees us as perfect as He sees Jesus Christ. And
that is only because we believe that that is true, that it is
effectual in our lives. That is the assurance we have
in His faith alone. He abides in us also. This is
not dependent upon us. What does we have to do to keep
Jesus here? What do we have to do to keep
Jesus' sufficient sacrifice applicable to us? What do we have to do
in our lives that Christ abides with us? It's sort of like that
manipulation skit that I was talking about earlier. We've
got to quit pushing Him out the door. That's what He means in
Revelation 3, right? We've shoved Him out there. We
just open it. No, that's not it at all. It's a picture. By
the way, that's never been written to a lost person as long as it's
been written. It's always to the church. who had forsaken
their first love. And the picture is Jesus saying,
listen, I'm outside. Just open yourself to me intimately. It's not about salvation. That's
not an evangelistic message. So anytime anybody's ever used
that as an evangelist, if you want to be saved, Jesus says,
open the door. He's knocking. That's a lie. It's not true.
It's twisting scripture. That's what the devil does best.
Little side note. This is not dependent upon us.
I in Him, I abide in the One who believes in me. Jesus says,
how can this be an action of man if Jesus is God? How can God be sovereign if Jesus'
actions are dependent upon our actions? That violates the very nature
of what we see in the prologue of this gospel. Already in six
chapters, every discourse that we've seen Jesus have, every
dialogue that we've seen, we've seen Jesus teach sovereign salvation. The abiding is the work of God.
The endurance is the work of God. Through faith, the effectual
power of God to give His people to the Son, and the Son's effectual
work to satisfy the judgment of God on their behalf. I abide
in mine whom the Father gives me. This abiding is all of faith. It's all of faith. Let that sink
in for a minute. This would be a good time for an altar call. just for us to sit and stew in
the comprehension of having faith alone in the finished work of
Jesus as our only hope. We must believe that He alone
satisfies our debt to God. It's not about what we do to
stay, because Jesus is the one who says, I will never cast them
out. Jesus is the one who says, the Father will give them to
me. Paul would say, He snatches us out of the domain of darkness.
What part of snatching resembles action on our part? I don't know
if any of you have ever witnessed children who snatch. Surely, as when we were children,
we did not snatch things from other children. Yes, we did. There is something there that
we want, and it belongs to us, or it doesn't belong to us, but
we desire it, we have a lust for that in our eyes, and children
see that thing, whether it be candy, or toy, or a book, or
just the fact some pile of hog manure that the other kid has,
and we don't want them to have fun. It doesn't belong to us. We do not have it in our possession.
And the reason it has to be snatched is because it starts out with
what? They put their hand on it. Then what does the child
who has it do? Mine! I mean, you know. And they snatch,
and then the other child grabs and tugs, and it doesn't come
away, because they're tugging, equal force. And what the snatch
does is it creates a velocity that loosens the hands of its
original bearer. It's sort of off guard. It's
like a real quick pop to the face or something, you know.
Snap! Now, all of a sudden, that which
was tightly grasped by the child, by one child, is now in the hands
of the other, because it has been ripped from its place. That's
what snatching is. The way some people preach the
gospel is that we're standing underneath the floorboards of
heaven going, help me God, oh God, help me, and he saws open
the floor and goes, I was coming. God doesn't saw open the floor.
He rips open the bowels of Hades, of the grave, and finds us unable
to see, not seeking, It's when we speak, it's like the poison
of venom of snakes, asps, Romans 3. We're dead and decrepit and
decaying and foul and worthless. And He digs through the mire
of all of the carcasses of humanity and He takes us and He grabs
us and He snatches us out and gives us to Jesus. That'd be a good title for a
sermon. God snatching bodies out of a dead, decaying pile
and giving them to Jesus is the gospel. That'd be some troll
bait right there. 20,000 downloads an hour. The actions then of security,
of abiding, of assurance, of enduring, of perseverance, is in God's hands. The actions of security and abiding
and perseverance and endurance by faith alone is in God's hands. Christ alone is the one who is
connected to God the Father and then we who are in Christ are
connected to Him. John does a very good job with
this when he says in his first epistle that this is the message
we have gotten from Him that He is light and in Him there
is no darkness. Previously, before that, we have seen, touched,
heard the eternal life. And indeed, we have what? Intimacy,
relationship. We have a relationship with Him. We are found in Him. And indeed, when our relationship
with you, then if you are with us in our Gospel, if you have
faith in our message, then indeed you also have what? Intimacy
with God and Christ. The Father gives us to the Son,
and the Son atones and purchases us with His blood. We belong
to Him. He paid for us, and He will find
us, and He will snatch us out of darkness. See, can you believe that message
today as your only hope? See how backward we put it? The
question is begged in our culture, then what must I do to be saved?
Believe in that message. Trust in the message of the cross.
Trust in the message of God. Trust in the good news of Jesus
Christ and His atoning sacrifice. Trust in the good news of God
through the revelation of Scripture that He has saved you and He
has snatched you out. or to be more precise, He snatches
His own out. And when we go, wow, that's what
God has done. My hope is in Christ. This is
saving faith. It is the result of the work
of God the Holy Spirit to bring you to life. You see how our
evangelism must be articulate, it must be precise, it must not
be debated, it must not be philosophical, we must not use the arguments
of our own logic to come to the table of salvation because it
is ill-effectual. We are united to Christ. How
is that so? How are we in Christ? How is
He in us? We are united to Christ in His
death. Those of you who were with us
on midweek in Romans, go and re-listen to Romans 6. We have been buried with Christ.
We have been crucified with Christ. We are no longer alive. Christ's
death is our death. Our sins have been buried with
Christ. We have been united to Christ
in His death. That is that what Christ did
when He died was accomplished. What Christ intended was a success. So Christ's death is not symbolic
of, listen, Christ's death is not a symbol of justice, it is
justice. Paul argues in Romans 3 that
justice is given and displayed in the killing of Jesus Christ
by God the Father who put forth Christ as propitiation, satisfaction
of His wrath. This is our only hope that we
are dead in Christ. That Christ's death did what
it was supposed to do. It paid for our sins and God
is satisfied so that for all whom Christ died, they will never
see the judgment of God. Faith is the gift of God, and in some sense it is the revelation
of our regeneration. Because we can believe, it proves
we are alive. Your believing does not make
you alive, beloved. Faith does not regenerate you. is a gift of God that comes because
you are regenerated. How amazing is that? How much more glorious can anything
be? It cannot be. Faith is the outward fruit of
the one who is in Christ. It is the fruit of endurance.
It is the fruit of assurance. It is the fruitfulness, if I
can. I don't even know if I'm saying
that correctly. A perseverance. All of its outcomes, no matter
how firm or frail, are secure in Jesus Christ because He is
God and His divine power is sufficient to save His people. Verse 57. How can this be? Jesus just repeats
Himself. Over and over and over and over
again. So when these sermons sound similar, it's because that's
the way Jesus spoke. In Romans, the sermon sounds
similar. Oh wait a minute, didn't we learn that? Yes, but it's
been reiterated, so we must reiterate it. It's been recapitulated,
so we must recapitulate it. As the Living Father sent Me,
I and I live because of Him." You see the onus here. See what
Jesus is doing. Because they would say, Oh, who
are you, O man of Joseph? That we know. To say, You will
give us Your flesh to eat. and that you are the bread of
heaven, that you can give life. Who are you, old man?" And he's
already told them who he was, but they've forgotten in just
a few quick seconds. Why? Because they're blind. But
he tells them anyway, and he says, it's not about me and what
I can do, though it is about what Jesus can do, but it's about
the Father in whom I am in. I know that's not grammatically
correct, but you get the point. I'm in the Father. He is the
Living Father. He has life in Himself, chapter
5. We've already seen that, verse 24. I'll quote it in a minute. And I live because of the Father,
so whoever believes on Me, feeds, he also will live because of
Me. So I live because I'm in the Father. The Father is the
one who is the life giver. I am from the Father, and I am
the life giver. And you are in Me, so you have
My life I give to you. And the life I give to you is
My flesh. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever
hears my word, John 5, 24, and believes in Him who sent me has
eternal life. It's the same thing. Believe
in God who sent me. He does not come into judgment,
but He has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say
to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will
hear the voice of the Son of God. The dead will hear the voice
of the Son of God. And those who hear will live.
For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted also
the Son to have life in Himself, and He has given Him authority
to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. And I encourage
you, if you're confused by that, to go back and listen to chapter
5, verse 24 on Gracetruth.org. The same argument then as he
did in John 5 is given here in John 6. I am the one who has
come from God. And now notice that this is almost
the exact same essence of what Nicodemus confessed in John 3.
It's almost the exact same essence.
We know that you are from God. For no one can do what you do
except that God be with him. The irony behind it. Nicodemus,
the teacher of all Israel, understood in his own studies from childhood,
as we'll see, and I'll use that text in Timothy, that salvation
is only from God and the one whom He will send, the Messiah. And now Nicodemus confesses that
this is one that comes from God, knowing full well his inquiry
was, could this be Messiah? That's why he met with it, they
didn't care otherwise. And Jesus says you cannot see
the kingdom Himself, and you cannot enter into the kingdom,
into Him, into Me, Jesus speaking, except that you're born again
from above. As the wind blows, so does the
Spirit of God, and it blows where it wishes to birth those whom
it wishes, as He wishes, when He wishes, and that is how you
have eternal life. For you have the oracles of old,
Nicodemus, you have the teaching from your childhood, you have
the very thing that you teach the Israelites this very day,
that as Moses lifted up the serpent in Deuteronomy 6 and says that
all who look and believe on God will live, so in the same manner
I will be lifted up, as the serpent was, and whoever believes on
me, they look at me, they will not perish." I have come from the Father. I am of the Father. I am God. Because I have authority
to give life and judgment. God is the one who sent me. The
living Father has life in Himself. He is living. He is the author
and the finisher and the judge and the merciful. Everything
lives at the will of God. And this God sent me, Jesus says. This is how you know you can
abide in me and trust in me for your perseverance, for the endurance
of your faith and your everlasting soul. You can trust because I
come from God. I have life in me because I am
from the Father. Life is in me, John 1. All things were made through
Christ. And without Christ was not anything
made that was made. In Christ was life. And the life
was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. I am the light. that is from
the Father. I am the Creator. I am God. I am the One who was there in
the beginning, from the beginning, forever. I am the Eternal One. Jesus would say in John's Apocalypse,
I am the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the Alpha
and the Omega. And in Me is the life of men. As determined by God to give
life, I give. He gives. As Jesus will say soon,
I and the Father are one. So, as the living Father sent
me, and I live because of the Father, I have life. So whoever feeds, believes on
me, he also will live because of me. What does this do here? Why not just point to God the
Father? Because God the Father cannot
save anyone except through God the Son. There's a dangerous element of
the tongue of our culture. I want you to hear this. And
I know that you don't believe this way, but I want you to change
your vernacular. There's a dangerous element in
the way we speak. when we're always using the abstract God. God, by a term, just means high
one. Hebrew, Elohim, the highest of
all ones. Oh, God did this, or God did
that, or praise be to God. There's nothing wrong with these
phrases, but listen to your neighbors. Listen to many who profess to
be in the faith at how little they ever mention Christ, Jesus,
the Lord. How little. How easy it is to
come to an ambiguous God of our grandparents, or to the caricature
God of our culture. How easy it is to approach the
God of our own understanding in such a benign way that we
just say, oh, praise the Lord. Praise God. Praise be to God. God is good all the time. Christ is the only way to life.
Christ is the only... THE Christ. Jesus is His name. He is the Lord. He is the only
way to eternal life. He subjects Himself to the Father. And then because of the Father,
He has all authority to grant life. Christ is the God of life,
and He has determined in Himself to save His people, and He gives
life. And those who are in Christ feed,
believe. Those who are in Christ who believe
are secure in God, Jesus the Christ. The eternal God, the
Son, who is also the Son of God. Different roles. Jesus then is the only means
of life ever. Friends, listen with a critical
ear. The world tells you to be tolerant.
Don't be tolerant, be wise. And tolerance doesn't mean cutting
your head off and pouring whatever comes down the way down your
throat. Spiritually speaking. Tolerance. May He just be kind. Tolerate. Endure. Equivocal meaning. How are we going to endure in
this world? Endure false teaching. Paul commands
that of Timothy, of pastors, of Christians. Endure wickedness. Endure those who hate you. Endure
those who persecute you. Why? Because we have a judge
in heaven. Jesus Christ the Lord will come
back and command all things. Be right. With just a word, He
will fail them. A mighty fortress is our God.
That's where that line comes from. Jesus Christ Jesus Christ is the only means
of life. His person, who He is, His work,
what He's done, His power. His authority, everything that
He is, is revealed to us through Scripture. As we learn it, we
get to learn more and more about the... We grow in what the Scripture
says, in grace. We grow in our what? Knowledge
of grace. We grow in our walking with Christ through the what?
Renewal of our mind as we have the knowledge of the Gospel supernaturally
by the Spirit through the hearing of the words of Christ. Then
we continue to grow because God is in us. Christ is in us. The Spirit of God is in us. He who is the one who grants
life, we will live because He is the one who can cause us to
live. The work of God is all of God.
Every person of the Godhead at work in salvation of His people.
I will show you that at the end. So therefore, as we think about
this and move on, Christ is the determining Factor of life. No other. Not what you and I
do. Not faith in our faith. Not the
beauty of our service. Not the feelings of our heart
and mind. Oh God, help us all if we judge our eternal hope
in the way we feel. Beloved, none of us are without
sin. And we strive to be without sin.
We want to be without sin. We hate our sin until we love
it. And then we hate ourselves because
we didn't hate our sin enough. None of us are without sin when
we see anger, bitterness, and frustration, and fear, and doubt,
and anxiety. These things that pop up into
our mind, they're elements of unbelief because our flesh is
at war with the Spirit of God inside of us. We harbor these
things, then we focus on them, and that's why Paul says not
to focus on putting these things away, just do that while we focus
on that which has already been put away through Christ Jesus.
Namely, our guilt. that God then is glorified not
only in our salvation, but in the work of our perseverance,
and the work of our maturity, and the work of our worship.
God gets the glory when we worship Him. He is glorified in the fact
that we love Him and worship Him, and He's glorified in the
fact that He gave us the heart to do so. But I thought God was glorified
in our free will. Absolutely not. As a matter of
fact, our free will, the very nature that we would think that
there is such a thing, blasphemes God. It is the artificial free
will of Lucifer who said, I'm a pretty good looking angel.
I'm shining just about as bright as God. I don't want to knock
Him off His throne, but I do want to stand there. I deserve
to be recognized for who I am. Look at me! He was nothing but
a mirror of His Creator. When we're recreated in Christ
Jesus, we're nothing but a mirror of our Creator. Every aspect. So we look into the soul of our
hope for endurance, and we see Christ. We look behind us of
where we've been, and I must not be walking, we see Christ.
We look before us of where we're going, we should see Christ.
That's all we can do. We can look to Christ or we can
live in misery. Our choice. So we abide, which means we have
union with Christ by the will and the power of God forever,
eternally. I want to say some things in closing, and I know
you may think I'm almost done, but I'm not. But this is closing. Because see, there's not a whole
lot to go here, is there? We just see the Word, abide in
me and I in Him. And we argue that, we can see the argument
there that Jesus says, because God is the giver of life, nobody
argued that in his original years, and I am from God, and God has
given me authority, I've already told y'all that, you just forgot
it, then I have life, so your hope is in me, and what I'm going
to do, the accomplishments of redemption that I'm going to
give my flesh on the cross for your sins, or for the sins of
those whom God the Father gives to me, you see. That's the articulation
of the particular redemption of Jesus in his teaching of this
high theology. This is not Calvin. Calvin wishes
he had the mind to consider this as his own and would roll over
in his grave, if he were stuck in there, to see himself get
credit for such things. Oh, it's Augustine. No, it's
not. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. Limited atonement,
particular. This is Jesus. This is not a secondary issue. I told you, John 6. Now imagine
me knowing these things and not
being able to articulate them in the middle of a megachurch,
multi-million dollar ministry. with people that would follow
me off a cliff and burn if I just walked that way. And reading
John 6 in the New Living Translation and praying God would show me
why so many Christians were so hateful towards Scripture, that
was really the catalyst that moved me to see this. And then recognize, I thought
I came up with the term particular redemption. And I began to use
it. In 2004. And then later on that
year, someone came to me and says, sounds like you've been
listening to James Boyce. Who? Sounds like you've been reading
John Owen. Sounds like you've been reading John... I've been
reading Jesus, man, what you talking about? If you know anything about the
NLT, it's a terrible translation of Scripture. It's the revised
open Bible. It's the only good thing to do
with the open Bible, just open it. Sit it over there. I'm being funny. So imagine what I had to deal
with when I started teaching this stuff and then people called
me a Calvinist. I'm like, don't you call me a bigot. I'm not
like that. Oh, you're a real Baptist now.
No, I'm not. I'd rather be biblical than Baptist, which I still stand
on. What must it be doing for us
this very day? Even in a church and a congregation who hold to
these tenets very perfectly, foundationally as, when you came
to be a part of our fellowship, this is what we believed long
before any of you ever knew my name. Jesus. But it doesn't really give us
anything else, so let's think for a moment. What does it truly
mean to be in union with Christ by the will and power of God?
Not necessarily what does it mean, but what does it do? It
gives us a true life, a sense of true life because of what
we know. We're no longer dead, but we're
alive. We're no longer guilty, but we're
forgiven. We're no longer blind, but we have awareness and faith.
We're no longer nothings to be cast away as objects of wrath,
but we are united with God. We are no longer His enemies,
but His friends and His children. We are no longer slaves to sin,
but we're slaves to Christ, our righteousness. We're no longer
ignorant of what Paul says about all spiritual blessings, but
we apprehend them fully and we enjoy them presently. We have
assurance of the promise of God's power in salvation, in security,
in reality. We have assurance of God's power
and promises in justice. We stand with Christ as our propitiation,
not our punishment. He is our propitiation, not our
punisher. We are legally different. We
are spiritually different. We are given a new mind, so we're
physically different. We belong to God and He will
never forsake us. We know about the power of God,
so therefore we are always holding fast. The words that Jesus used,
eating, drinking, looking, believing, hearing. And we're always holding fast
in Jesus, who is God eternally, the One who came from God. He
is the Lamb, satisfying fully the wrath of God. He is the Lord,
the Ruler of all things, with authority over life and death.
He is the Author, the Beginner, the Starter, the Giver, the Gifter
of our faith. And He is the One who finishes
it, as Paul would write in Hebrews. He is the Gospel of grace. God has satisfied His righteousness
and justice in the person of Jesus Christ. So therefore now
we can understand what it means to abide in Christ, to be secure
in Christ, to endure in Christ. This is faith alone in Christ
alone. His righteousness is Jesus Christ. We are His righteousness. I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me, and
I live this life now. In the flesh, I live by faith
in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." Believing
and abiding and enduring. This is not the work of staying
put in our own efforts, but it's the work of God to keep us in
His absolute certain efforts. You might think, well, how about
some proof texts? What does Jesus say when He says,
"...but the one who endures to the end will be saved," in Matthew
10? The one who stays with Him? Well, that's of course sure if
we don't stay in the faith. The Bible says we were never
in the faith, but what do we do to stay in the faith? We hold
fast. to believing on Christ, and we
hold fast to the fact that that is the work of God, so we have
faith not only in the work of redemption and its judicial work
of the sacrifice and the death of Christ, but we have faith
in the finished work of Jesus that He holds us and never lets
us go. See, the gospel is not just the
judicial work, but it's the securing work of the saints. We have so
segmented the gospel to parts and pieces that we forget it. We rejoice in our suffering.
Paul would write to the church of Rome. knowing that suffering
produces endurance. So when we suffer, we don't have
to worry we're falling away, we're going to be left behind,
we're going to be lost. No, it's part of how God produces
our understanding of endurance. Wow, I should have just thrown
away everything. I should have quit this world
and gotten off. I should have left this church
and this faith and this marriage and these children. I should
have left this job. I should have left all of this.
I'm done with it. We did not. Why? Because God
keeps us. And that's the only reason. God
keeps us. The writer of Hebrews, I believe,
is Paul. This is where Jesus, we look to Jesus. Let us run
the race with endurance, the race that is set before us. How?
Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for
the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. He abided
in the work of God and the call of God to die on a cross, despising
the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne
of God. Consider Him who endured much hostility from sinners.
against themselves, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted.
In your struggle against sin, you have not resisted to the
point of shedding your blood. Blessed is the man who remains
steadfast unto trial. For when he has stood the test,
he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who
love him. Count it all joy, brothers. For you know that the testing
of your faith produces steadfastness, endurance, abiding. And let abiding,
let steadfastness, let endurance have its full effect, that you
may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." How are we perfect
and complete, lacking in nothing? Because Christ is everything.
He's everything. Everything we need in life is
Christ. What does that mean about when
we feel like we're falling away? Well, we do so because we fall
into thinking that there must be more to do. We fall into thinking
there must be more to believe. We fight with our flesh instead
of resisting in faith. We follow the philosophies and
traditions of men instead of hearing the hard truth and holding
fast to it. We feast on the world. We feast on the flesh. We feast
on the fodder of the dead instead of the bread of life. We should
remember the rich young ruler. There was nothing left more for
him to do except take the wealth that he loved so much and give
it to the people he loved so little. But he couldn't do that. And even if he did, it wouldn't
have emerited him eternal life because it was just a test to
show that he did not love the Lord as God with all of his heart,
soul, and mind. And he certainly didn't love his neighbor as himself
on these two things which all the prophets and the laws hinge.
Somebody would ask me even this week, what about the disciplines
of the faith? Don't they give us some type of endurance? I
mean, they can help. but only if they point to Christ,
only if they point to faith alone in Jesus. Any discipline that
points us to ourselves and to our working is a false discipline.
It's a discipline. When I say discipline, I mean
the practices, the things that we do, like working out, or eating
rightly, or taking a walk, or reading our Bible at a certain
time every day, or setting aside a time for family, etc. These
are disciplines. These are constructs of our life.
What about these disciplines? Well, there are some disciplines
that I think are very, very practically spiritual. The discipline to
know that you are kept, 1 Peter 1. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ according to his great mercy, his cause
you to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead and to an inheritance that is
imperishable, undefiled, unfading and kept in heaven for you, who
you, who are in by God's power being guarded through faith for
salvation. We know that we're being kept.
We know the Word of Truth. But as for you, dear Timothy,
oh, continue, continue, continue in what you have learned and
have firmly believed. Listen to this. Knowing from
whom you have learned it, and how from childhood you've been
acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise
for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The Old Testament
birthed Timothy anew. And Paul began to reveal the
mystery of it all. And then he became one of the
youngest elders that we see in the days of antiquity, the first
century Palestinian province of Ephesus. We know the Word of Truth, we
know that we are being kept, we know each other in love. We don't just love each other,
we know each other in love. 1 Thessalonians 5, So let us
not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober for
those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get
drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be
sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love. and for a
helmet of hope of salvation. For God is not destined us for
wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might
live with Him. Therefore, encourage one another
and build one another up just as you are doing." See, our endurance
is, we are reminded of it through our intimacy. And fourth and finally, I believe
that we can endure through some practical sense so that we can be aware of our
endurance through practical sense and knowing that God has chosen
us. 1 Thessalonians 1, verses 1-5.
If you want to turn there, then we'll be done. We give thanks
to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in
our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work
of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our
Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by
God, that He has chosen you. Because our gospel came to you
not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit
and with full conviction that now you know what kind of man
we prove to be among you for your sake. This is a sermon in
itself, and we did Thessalonians a couple of years ago. I would
really encourage you to go back and listen to that again, especially
that text. But as I said earlier that we're assured and we persevere
because the fullness of God is at work in us. All the persons
of the Godhead indwell us. All of God in every part of Him
works toward salvation. That is no clearer picture than
1 Thessalonians chapter 1 right there. Listen to this. Let me
pull out this. It says, "...and remembering before our God,"
verse 3, for your work of faith and labor," here it is, "...of
love and steadfastness, of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." So
our hope is in our Lord Jesus Christ, and our love and our
steadfastness with each other, the love and steadfastness of
Jesus. For we know brothers who are loved by God, and the reason
that we know we're loved is because we are chosen. We're chosen. See, oftentimes
we think in our world, when we come to the world of the watered-down
Christianity, we like to say that God loves everybody, and
it's so sad that you would break God's heart and not receive Him. And in doing so, we become Pelagian. If you don't know what that means,
you can look it up. We become Pelagian in our theology, which
basically the root of what I mean there is that we believe that
all men are good. All women are good, all children are good,
we're just good, we just have some bad things. The Bible says differently. The
Bible says that we are worthy of wrath and destruction, that
we willfully rebel against God, that we want our own way, that
the nicest person that could have ever walked this earth besides
Jesus Christ, who is God, is worthy of eternal damnation. And there's a judicial requirement
of God as a holy and righteous and good judge to look out upon
all the guilty of humanity and go, you will pay. for your crime. What kind of judge that lets
go evil people is worth worshipping? None. But when that judge sends
his son, who is innocent, to pay as the guilty party, then
the debt is paid. Then God can look down at those
He loves and say, you're forgiven. Which is a better element of
worship? Knowing we deserve death, and God in His love for us chooses
not to destroy us, but instead destroys His Son, or any other
option. I choose the latter. The Holy
Spirit, Paul says there in 1 Thessalonians 1, because our gospel came not
only in the Word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.
It's like when Jesus says in verse 58 of John 6 here, this
is the bread that came down from heaven. This is what it talks
about. Not the bread your fathers ate.
Not the false religion. Not the false hope. Not the false
providence. Not the temporary blessings. Not all the stuff
that you thought was going to happen. Not your way. Not your
will. Not your place. But in God's place, He sent me,
Jesus speaking, the only true bread that gives life. There's
no other bread that will satisfy and there's no other way to live
but me. Look what God has done for you.
Look what God has done to you. Look what God is. The fullness
of our hope of endurance is in God alone. We will last. We must have faith in the work
and the power and the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. We
must have faith in the faithfulness of the love of God who has chosen
us from the beginning. We must have faith in the knowledge
of these things, in certainty, assurance, because God the Holy
Spirit brought the gospel to you in power and He has sealed
you. You will not fail. Who will sustain you to the end
is Jesus. He will sustain you to the end,
guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful. By whom you were called into
the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. God is faithful. Believe on Christ. Let's pray. We love You and we praise You
and we worship You. And Father, there is little left
in me to consider today because I am so overwhelmed with Your
Gospel. If we would only have the structure
of our schedule that we could meet every day and learn and
pray and worship every day together. That day will come. And until
then, let us rest. Let us hope in Christ. I pray
that all who have heard this message today would be enriched
and edified and encouraged as brothers and sisters in the faith.
Those, Lord, who are Yours, that You would call through the teaching
of this message, Father, help them make it known that You have
done a work in their life to bring them to eternity, to eternal
life, to salvation, to redemption, to the knowledge of Your grace
and mercy through Christ. And Father, those who would listen
to this sermon later, those who are not here with us, I pray
for them as well, that our church would be of one mind and of one
soul and of one faith, celebrating Christ as our only hope. And
it's in His name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.