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. For those of you who are counting,
this is Sermon number 49 in John's Gospel. Those of you who are
not counting, ignore that. John chapter 6. as I've said
now for several weeks, is one of the elements of John's Gospel,
some of the teaching of Jesus, that produces in us a wake-up
call. It is where we see the didactic,
the teaching of many, many, many theological principles, theological
truths. where we see the gospel and its
intricacies. I will also say that it is the
place where we find the purest truth of the gospel of Christ.
It's interesting that I've entitled every message over the last few
weeks, such and such is the gospel. Limited atonement is the gospel.
Being taught by God is the gospel. Today's sermon is titled, Theology
is the gospel. And it's a little click-baity,
you share those on the internet and people go, no it's not! And
I say, just listen to the sermon. And God is faithful to bring
people into the hearing of His Word. Because what we've done
in our culture is we've just decided that the gospel is just
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It's just Jesus. It's just 1
Corinthians 15, that Jesus died according to the Scriptures,
and He was buried according to the Scriptures, and He rose on
the third day according to the Scriptures. And that's all we
need to say, is it? I mean, isn't Paul writing to
the Corinthian church as a way of reminder, 15th chapter in
of that letter? Hasn't he already established
deep doctrine to the gospel previously? Hasn't He already been there
with them and taught them through which they were born again and
regenerated by the Holy Spirit through the hearing of the words
of Christ? And they understood the depths and the riches and
the ineffable majesty of the glory of God. And as they begin
to see, then they begin to take a blind eye to sin in their lives,
right? And not necessarily in their
lives personally, but in the lives of each other. And they
were just like, well, you know, at least we're all together.
At least we're all getting along. Let's don't worry about that
incest. It's a stinky little situation. And Paul says, no,
we deal with it. We throw that man out for the
destruction of his flesh, that his soul might be saved. For
there should not be peace and comfort and rebellion in the
life of the believer. Much less should there be peace
and comfort and rebellion and disobedience among the church.
So discipline is corrective and never punitive. But Paul, just
the same, is reminding them of this truth. Yes, the gospel is
inclusive of these truths, but what is entailed inside the fact
that Christ died? Why did He die? How did He die?
How did He come to die? These are important. God uses
not just the propositions of the fact that He died and rose
again to say, but the full and the totality of the story of
Christ. The totality of the teaching
of Christ. And at any given time, God may, through the Spirit,
give someone life by hearing those simple phrases. And He
may then also give someone life by hearing, no one comes to me
except the Father draw in. We've mistaken comprehension
with regeneration. We have a love affair with salvation
experience in the America church. We want to hold fast to the moment
we're saved, to the time we're saved, and worse, to the thing
that we did to secure our salvation, more than we hold to the Savior.
Not us, not you and I, by the Lord's grace, but America as
a whole holds to these things. One of the greatest ridicules
that I receive from many people is that when I teach, they do
not understand what I'm saying. And I'm saying greatest as in
not amazing. It's just one of the ones that
I get most often. Well, we visited, I listened
to your sermons online, I just can't follow what you're saying.
I mean, I know I'm dumb, but I don't think I'm that unintelligible. I may have a hick draw, but some
of you have worse. The highbrow of theology is necessary. And oftentimes we forget that.
We forget that the church should be the seminary. But where in
our time does a church prepare men to do what God has commanded
us to do in Scripture? Where do we see the example,
holistically, where Paul tells the elder of Ephesus, Remember
what I've taught you, Timothy. Endure with much suffering for
the sake of the gospel. Press into the pain, Timothy.
Hold fast by the grace that is yours in Christ Jesus, through
which I write to you and give you the grace of God. By the
power of Christ, you are now equipped to do the work of the
ministry. Entrust to reliable men who can teach others this
good deposit that I've given you. I'm gonna say something that's
gonna sound very ugly, but one of the devil's greatest
tools is seminaries. One of Satan's greatest instruments
is certificates of completion. Degrees, diplomas, and everything
in between. One of the most demonic devices
of the church of Jesus Christ, that has been invaded into the
church of Jesus Christ, is the letters of ordination. Of which we all deal with and
work with. I used to take pride in my lack
of education, and then when I got educated, I took pride in my
education. So which is it? The scripture
says to take pride in nothing but Christ. The Scripture says
to boast in nothing but Christ. And I have belittled people with
knowledge, and I have been belittled with knowledge. I've sat at the
table where someone would use a theological or historical theological
term, and I wasn't familiar with it, and instead of teaching me
what it was, when I say, I'm not familiar with that term,
they would scoff. And you're a pastor? Yes, and I don't know that there's
anywhere inside this text that teaches the idea. I mean, in verbatim, God is there,
the truth is there, but I don't know anywhere that we see the
division of theology known as historical theology. But yet,
when you take a course in that, you learn what it means. I don't
see anywhere where Paul caters to the Greek text and the grammar
and the syntax, and we have an English Bible, and there are
pompous people who would say that if you don't know the Greek,
you can't know Christ. Wow. And the funny thing is,
the friends of mine who are Greek scholars would say, that's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous. Why? Because the Spirit teaches
us through the Word of God. And there are some who would
say, well, that version of the Bible is poisoned. No one can come
to faith through that. Well, I guess no one was born
again in the English language until 1611. Those God-forsaken
translations they had in 1610 were just not good enough. Tell
that to Tyndale who died for it. Tell that to many men, women,
and children who were burned alive for their proclamation
of an English Bible. And finally, to settle the war,
the king goes, Enough! I'm going to make some money
on this thing! Give me, give me, give me my money! Ha, ha, ha!
And that's the 1611, which is a beautiful text, and I would
suggest you all read it instead of fighting over it. If you have a version of the
Bible that says yo and yay and stuff like that, you'll probably
find you a better quality translation. What's the point? Theology is
the gospel. The knowledge of God is the gospel.
Jesus says in John 17 verse 3, this is eternal life. So we best listen. That you,
that they know you, the one true God. He's praying to God the
Father. Know you, the one true God, and the Son whom you have
sent. This is eternal life, that they
know you. Theology is understanding God. That's the word that we use to
express that That course of action of learning, that area of discipline
of learning. It is not learning systematic
theology. It is learning God through the
Scripture. It is learning God through the teachings of Jesus.
Through whom and whom alone that we can know God. Through whom
alone that we can have eternal life. No man can bring us to
faith. No woman can encourage us to
believe. No child can rebuke us into salvation. Only God Himself, Jesus Christ
the righteous, can bring us to life. Only Jesus and what He
teaches through His Word can have a spiritual effect. Only
Jesus can bring understanding. The highbrow theology is a necessary
instrument of God. the weightier things, the grave
things, the deeper things. And here's what's amazing, beloved.
Many people are in the pursuit of knowledge, but not in the
pursuit of Christ, whereby they have great understanding of the
disciplines of doctrine, the disciplines of theology, the
experts of Scripture. I've always been amazed at people
who have memorized the Book of Romans or memorized the Gospel
of John. There was a day when I could
spit out 90% of it from memory, but then God took that because
I don't need it in my memory anymore. Not only do I just have
it here, but friends, when I had it here, I didn't need it here. And it was a little bit of a
boast. Especially when I'd come up with no Bible to teach. And the only thing you realize
is, wow, that man doesn't even have a Bible. That should scare
you. It shouldn't impress you. Because
that means he's dependent upon his brain. The older I get, the
worse my brain works. So I might need two Bibles next
week. One here and one lost that I might not remember where it
is. But this highbrow theology is a necessary instrument of
God. We need to understand the deeper things. Growing in our
knowledge of grace is learning Christ. It's learning what the
Scripture teaches, not what man has extrapolated. Not the divisions
of philosophy or what we like to call around here theological
philosophy. We don't need our commentary
and our posits and our wisdom. God doesn't need the wisdom of
man. God doesn't need the strengths of man. God does not need our
gifts, beloved. He gives them and uses them,
and He can take them away just as quickly. God does not need
a well-educated man. God just takes what He needs
and uses every man for His glory. Man, woman, child, human. I'm not being gender-specific.
God doesn't need us. God doesn't need seminaries.
Thank God for them. God doesn't need classes or books.
Praise the Lord. I love books. I read books. I've learned to quit being an
idolater of books and have gotten rid of a lot of books. But there's
some that are non-negotiable. They will not leave my office
unless God burns down my house. If you see smoke, you know what
happened. Sola Dei, Gloria. But high theology is taught not
just by the apostles, but it's taught specifically by Jesus.
The gospel is not this pitter-patter, puffy, pretty little envelope
with a good aroma to it that says, oh, that's so nice. Let's
look at the gospel like a little powder-puff gospel. The gospel
is deep. The gospel is massive. The gospel
is powerful. Paul says he's not ashamed of
it, for it is the power of God unto salvation. so that the teaching
of Scripture in its totality, everything that we learn from
the apostles, everything that we learn from Jesus, everything
that we learn from the prophets, it is all for the sake of the
good news of God, which is the gospel of Christ, so that we
might grow deeper in our understanding of it. Why do we need it? Because
it all results in the praise of the glory of God. That's what
it results in. We worship God with fullness
when we see Him more deeply, when we see Christ more perfectly,
when we understand the gospel clearer, more clearly. We worship more deeply. We worship
intimately. We worship and we can't get over
it. So this highbrow of theology,
these deep doctrines that we like to say are just an academic
adventure. I've been rebuked just in the
last few weeks publicly by a family member who's not here today. They're not a part of our fellowship.
Who said, while you are all arguing these interesting classroom things,
the world's going to hell. We appreciate your time. Glad
y'all got it all together. Arguing classroom things. Non-essentials
they call the gospel of grace. Non-essentials they call the
vicarious atonement of Christ. Non-essential they call the imputed
righteousness of Jesus. It don't matter, just believe
in Jesus. What Jesus, pray tell, should
we believe in if we don't learn Him? The Jesus of the Kingdom
Hall? The Jesus of Mormonism? The Jesus
of Islam? What Jesus shall we know if it's
not the one of Scripture? How do we know that when someone
rings our doorbell and they say, hey, you know what? Jesus is
the answer to it all. And we go, yeah, I can see that.
We should say, Jesus who? Oh, you know, Jesus Christ. Really? You believe in Jesus, the Christ?
It's not His last name. Jesus bar what? Joseph of Nazareth. That's His name. The Christ. That's His office. That's where
He sits. The Righteous One of God, the
Holy, Anointed One of God. The Hebrew transliteration for
that would be Messiah. He takes away the sins of the
world. He is the Lamb of God. He is
the Creator of all things. He is the One who is the Alpha
and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the
Last. He's the King of all kings in Him, and by the Word of His
power does He hold up all the cosmos, every molecule that keeps
our hair on our head, or makes it fall away. Everybody's out
there grinning. There you go, testify, there
we are. It's held up by Christ. The very nature that the bricks
and mortar of this building have been together for almost a hundred
years is held up by the Word of Christ. who holds the bonds
and the molecular intimacy and the structures to make brick. It's His. He holds it together. Is this the Christ you're talking
about? Oh no, I'm talking about Jesus, the One that was created.
Oh no. Oh no. That's not the Jesus I
know. I think the Jesus that you're
talking about lives down the street. The one that I'm talking
about lives in heaven, to the right side of the Father. And
He has revealed Himself fully here. This high theology, this
doctrine, these intimate things are taught by Jesus as the masses
continue here in John 6 to come back with the, yeah, but I'm
the bread of life. Yeah, but prove it. I'm the one
who's come down from heaven. Oh, yeah, but our fathers were
fed the bread in the wilderness. I am from the Father, hear my
words and live." Well, we hear what you're saying, but you see
how that works? And it's easy to say, wow, these
masses are so dumb that they're blind. They're not dumb. Matter of fact, the Pharisees
and the Sadducees and the Scribes and the religious leaders, the
Jews that were standing there from Galilee who oversaw the
worship of the Jews in that day, were standing there, and they're
the ones that we started with last week in verse 43, I believe,
that started to grumble about Jesus, where He said, I'm the
bread that came down from heaven. And they grumbled about Him.
Look at that, verse 41. So the Jews grumbled. They grumbled
about Him. Because he said, I'm the brother.
So they're grumbling, they're murmuring, they're talking amongst
themselves, they're saying, isn't this Jesus that we know whose father
is Joseph from Nazareth? Isn't this the guy that we know?
See, the theology that is taught by Jesus here in this text is
a pure doctrine. It's pure truth. It's not the
peripheral truth of 1 Corinthians 15, which is still pure truth,
but it's not full. What Jesus says here is full.
And the Bible says in John, John wrote under the umption of the
Holy Spirit by his command in verse 31 of chapter 20 after
what? It's that season where Thomas,
like I absolutely will not believe if I stick my hands in his side
and I see the scars, I'm not going to believe. Maybe that'll
help me believe. That's the attitude that Thomas had. And he says,
"...the Lord of me and the God of me." And he falls before Christ
because God gave him sight to see. Thomas didn't figure it out.
He didn't prove himself wrong. In fact, Thomas didn't even stand
there to open the door. If Jesus not, they barred the
walls. And Jesus had to walk through them to save His people. But in 2031, it says, these things
are written that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, and
by believing in His name, you have eternal life. So if Jesus
teaches limited atonement, particular redemption, and total depravity,
and sovereign election in John chapter 6, we best pay attention
to those doctrines. And we best call them the gospel.
No, I don't want to join the pity-pat club and say Calvinism
is the gospel. But by golly, if Calvinism points
to John 6, it is the gospel. And this gospel, this high-brow
theology, this perfect deep truth is for the children sitting here,
it's for the infants sitting here, it's for the toddlers sitting
here, it's for those who are in older years and those who
are in younger years and all of us in between. It's for the
rich, the poor, the intelligent and the not-so-intelligent, those
who can think and learn easily and those who have a hard time
paying attention. This is for all of us. And the
Bible says that no man seeks after God, so guess what, beloved?
We're all in the same bag. We're all in the same bag, no
matter our giftedness or our intelligence, no matter our net
worth or our abilities, our strength or our weakness, we're all in
the same bag. We're all desperately in need of God to do a miraculous
work where He reaches into that bag, and not at random, but in
particular, focused, object, affection, He pulls His people
from them. and none of us can boast. And
I don't want to revisit all this text, but I'm going to re-teach
all this text from the position of these deep doctrines, from
these doctrines that we see so clearly. The Grus jumbled. The Jews grumbled. Isn't that
the perfect pun? Anyway, all right. What is a
Grus? I think that's a character on
a kid's show lately. All right, the Jews grumbled.
They decided that they would work out in their own mind this
decision of what Jesus was saying versus what they understood in
their own thinking. And they're like, what is this
man doing? We've got to figure out how he's coming to these
conclusions. Who does he think he is? Why can't they just listen
and believe? Because they are depraved to
the core of their being. Depravity. Jesus says, don't grumble among
yourself. Verse 44 teaches total depravity, radical corruption. That means that sin and the fall
has affected the totality of the human condition. That means
that every thought that we have is tainted by some way, the fall. Every piece of comprehension
that we have in our mind, every effort. What does Paul say? Anything
that does not proceed from faith is sin. So if I can dance and
I dance without faith, how do I dance with faith? We recognize
that it is by God's grace that we dance. How do I do math by faith? Recognize
that if it weren't the grace of God, we wouldn't have a mind
to do math. And we do so gratefully. God can take in a second everything
we are and move it to nothing. God can take in a second the
comprehension of all these. How many of you just by a show
of hands learned a language in high school or college? Do you
speak that language fluently? Maybe one or two. The rest of us? And then in our
best attempts to pronounce it, we still sound like Hicks, don't
we? Yeah, they do. The Hicks. But I mean, this is
what we have. We learn something and it can
just disappear naturally. How much more can God take what
we have supernaturally? Friends, we are depraved. We
cannot see, we cannot believe, we cannot understand, we cannot
grasp, we cannot comprehend. In verse 44, Jesus teaches this. No one can come to Me unless
the Father who sent Me draws him. Now last week we understood
that this text showed that all that are drawn by the Spirit
are saved. The drawing is not general. It
is not a pervenient grace that goes before for all men. The
drawing is a calling that is effectual, that is absolute,
and is always salvific. If God calls, Jesus will raise
any and all that are called to Christ. That was week before
last sermon. All. Those who are all are all
those who are called, are all those who are raised, are all
those who are Christ's, are all those who Paul calls the elect.
The elect, the chosen, the church, the beloved, the saints. Holistically, throughout the
New Testament, all the epistles call the church those things.
All of the elect of God will be saved. All of them will come,
despite the fact that they grumble trying to figure out amongst
themselves how it is that they are to come. What must we do
to be doing the works of God? How will you give me water? You
have no pail. How am I to go into my mother's
womb and be reborn, Nicodemus says. How are you to rebuild
this temple in three days when it took 48 years to get it this
far? And you know it wasn't finished. They grumble. This depravity
causes the grumbling, the murmuring, the figuring out, this logic.
God is sovereign over logic. This isn't new. John 1, "...He came to His own, and His own
did not..." What? "...receive Him. But all who did receive
Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become the
children of God." Not by the will of the mind or the decision
of the flesh or of blood, but by the will of God. This is just
another point in that outline. Let's don't forget what we've
learned, beloved. This is just showing depravity disables a
man from seeing. For what good is there inside
of us that would make us able? Well, I don't know. Let's ask
Paul. Paul says in Romans 14, Whatever does not proceed from
faith is sin. Whatever a man thinks and whatever a man does,
no matter his motivation or its goodness in the sense of morality,
it is sin if at the core of this man's belief, at the core of
his soul, he's not relying on the grace of God to do it. You
see the attitude? You see the mindset of Christians? The mindset of a believer is
that there is no boasting in anything in our lives. And yes,
that stuff works itself out, doesn't it? You ever been confronted
by the Holy Spirit about our boasting? It's not a pleasant
day, but it's a glorious day. It's not a pleasant day because
what we want to do is go look in the mirror and go, woe is me. And
that is not by faith. when we should rejoice and say,
praise the Lord, He's shown us this. Praise the Lord that He's
shown me that all these good efforts, I must trust in Him
and they are not effectual to begin with. It is the work of
God. I'm a masterpiece of Christ. Romans 3 would say, as Paul says,
I've already charged that all men, both Jew and Greek, are
under the power of sin. As it is written, no one is righteous.
No, not one. No one seeks after God. And he
goes on to say about how we have poison and we're like snakes
and all this stuff. And then he says, and there is
no fear of God before their eyes. Who is he talking to? He's talking
to everybody. Well, talking about everybody.
He's talking to the Roman church. He's talking about all of us,
Himself included. He does not seek after God. Now,
that's ironic that Paul, the Jew of all Jews, in his spiritual
resume, as we see in the letter to the Philippians, would look
like a very spiritual man who'd been seeking after God his whole
life. And so would Nicodemus in John 3, as we see that he
is the teacher of all Israel. But yet, Paul says that neither
of them had sought after God. They sought after knowledge.
They sought after righteousness. What does that mean? To stand
before God in a right manner. And they sought after righteousness
through works and through knowledge, not by grace. By grace you have
been saved. By grace you have been saved.
That's the parenthetical that Paul explodes on the scene. I would
love to see how Timothy would have read that to the other elders
of his day, and as they were copying down that, how other
elders would read that to the church. Much, I believe, in the
same way I would read it. The parenthetical there in Ephesians
chapter 2 where Paul is talking about this gift and he goes,
by grace you've been saved. Everybody sort of jumps. Because
that's what Paul wrote. I'm going to tear the podium
up. That's what Paul wrote. To remind his readers, wait a
minute, I'm going to talk about it in a minute, but I want to
get it in your head right now. Don't you think for a moment
that grace is not the only thing that saves you. Because you are totally depraved.
Total depravity. It is true, or God is a liar. Which is it? It is true. Well, pastor, that's just one
of those theological things we can talk about in quiet circles
in the corner where nobody can hear us. We don't want to confuse
the sheep. No, we want to call the sheep. Christ will call His
sheep through the teaching of that doctrine. Christ will call His sheep, that
the Father will call His sheep, the Spirit will call His sheep
through the teaching of that doctrine. Don't ever fall into
the place to believe the lie of the enemy of God that these
things are not essential. Now, the question is probably
on some of your minds, well, what about those that I love
who don't want to believe these things? Let me tell you something.
What we learned last week is that they will all be taught
by God. When God saves a man supernaturally, woman, child,
when I say man, I'm talking about mankind. Trying to be politically
correct? Not. When God calls one to salvation
and then the Word of God teaches them the depths of these things,
they do not reject them. And they who are filled with
the Spirit of God do not set them aside and go, those aren't
as important, let me just believe in this for now, at least I'm
safe. You're not safe when you reject doctrine. You are utterly
in danger. Why? Because it goes to show
that people who reject the plain teaching of Scripture are not
regenerate. I'm not talking about confused
or have to work through it. Lord have mercy, we've all worked
through it. None of us were born Calvinists, but we were born
again Calvinists. There's a joke. We weren't born
knowing all the details of these things, but we are learning them
and the Word of God is clear. Traditionists will argue continually,
but that's just not how you exegete that. Yes, it is. How about we
just read it simply? Some people argue, all these
dumb, silly country preachers that don't have an education,
how can they possibly know the depths of that? Because God,
the Holy Spirit, teaches us. And the cool thing is, is that
He gives us a mind to understand the written text that we're seeing,
and more importantly, to believe it, to trust in it, and to trust
in Him who teaches it. All men are on the same plane.
We are equally unable. This total depravity. We cannot
please God. We cannot know God. The mind
of the flesh that is set on the flesh, rather, is hostile to
God. The mind that is unregenerate does not submit to God's law.
The mind cannot. And those who are in the flesh
cannot please God. We are unable to come, no matter
our intellect, no matter how much we study. We cannot come
to the knowledge of salvation, no matter how much schooling
we have, no matter how many sermons we've preached or taught. A young man asked me Friday, if
I'm unregenerate and I teach someone else the gospel. He says,
if I'm unregenerate and I teach someone else the gospel, will
God prohibit that person from being saved because I'm lost?
What if I give them a Bible? Would God, like, restrict?" I
said, brother, no. I said, when Paul was in prison,
many unbelievers preached correctly. God will use an unbeliever to
bring people to faith in a minute. I mean, how many of us have, you
know, we've seen people in our lives who have come and brought
us to a place in our spiritual growth to only see them just
walk away from Christ. And you think, no, no, no, they're
saved. No, they're not. We don't look and gain salvation
based on what someone has done, and what their life used to look
like, or how spiritual they used to be, or how amazing they used
to preach, or how much knowledge they used to have. When they
said out of their mouth, I do not believe in the God of heaven,
I will not submit to the gospel of grace, they never were reborn. God can use an unbeliever to
bring someone to faith. He does it every day. Armchair theologians, doctorate
of ministry pastors and pulpits, He will use them as He sees fit,
as long as they're teaching or reading the Scripture. God's sovereign over the will
of man. As we've seen, they are taught
by God. How is it that we can then believe? We've looked at this, but let's
look at it more in detail there. It's called irresistible grace. Effectual grace. Now, let's already
just cut to the chase. God is gracious in His actions
toward all people. There's a difference in God's
kindness and patience. Paul says, what if God, in His
patience, in His divine forbearance, puts up with, that's what he
says, that's what he came in, tolerates, what if He puts up
with objects destined for destruction in order to show His power and
mercy with objects destined for mercy? Is God to be blamed? Who can
resist His will? No, God's not to be blamed. It's
our fault. And as you notice here, when
Jesus teaches the gospel, when Jesus... What am I doing? I'm
just mixing up... I'm dyslexic verbally here. When
Jesus begins to teach limited atonement and total depravity
and irresistible grace, He's teaching these principles. He's
not coming to a place of showing a parallel, you know, I've done
something, the Father's going to do something, now you've got
to do something. It's not there. As a matter of fact, it's nowhere.
There's nowhere ever does it show a synergistic moving together
with God unto salvation. Nowhere. As a matter of fact,
the command to believe is always given as Jesus says, whoever
believes has life, whoever believes does not have life. It's just
a recapitulation of what He told Nicodemus. You can't believe unless the
Father does a work, and all that the Father draws, all that the
Father loves, all that the Father will get into that later in the
other text, but it's there, will come, they will be saved through
the hearing and they'll be taught by God. How are we to overcome
total depravity? And the answer is effectual,
irresistible grace. It is irresistible because we
cannot throw it away. It is irresistible because it
overcomes our deadness. A dead man cannot stop the paramedic
from... No, no, no, no, no. Don't bring
me back. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. That doesn't work. We
spiritually who are dead cannot stop God from effectively bringing
us to life. That is grace and it is irresistible.
It cannot be stopped. It will have effect. We will
come to faith. It's not to awaken us to the
possibility of faith. It is to give us faith. Regeneration, by definition,
is that we were dead and now we're alive, and if we're alive,
we believe. He does this according to His
will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the
earth, and none can stay His hand. And that was written by
God through Daniel. Chapter 4, verse 35. Oh, this
is the New Testament! Beloved, particular redemption
started in the Garden. Limited atonement started in
Genesis 3. No, it didn't. It started before
God said, let there be light. I'm a superlapsarian. Go look
that up. Hard determinist. Because that's what God is. Sovereign. It started there. He picked a
pagan out of Ur and He called him Israel. My chosen. They had a child, they had two
children, both of Chaldean descent, pagan descent, but He called
them Israel. They had no Israeli blood in
their bodies. The descendants of Israel are
pagan. It was just because they were the sons of promise that
mattered. We who are the elect, we who are saved, we who are
believing, we who are growing, we who are Christ have been given
to Him because God in His love and mercy has chosen to allow
us to see because it's what He determined before the world began.
Beloved, why do we fight that so hard? Because we don't like
it. In our flesh, we are utterly disposed to depravity and we
cannot comprehend how God can force us to believe. That's like having someone in
your life who is dying of cancer, and they come up to you, and
you touch them with the gift of healing like the apostles
had, and they go, why did you take my cancer? How dare you
heal my body? I was looking forward not to
dying, but not to dying. I mean, it's just, nobody would
say that. Praise the Lord. Why don't we do the same thing
when it's spiritual healing? Why don't we do the same thing
when it's supernatural life, eternal life? given to us. Why is it? Because the way of
men is foolishness. And thank God that we are not
able to move Him to do what we want to do. They wanted to make
Jesus king because that was the Messiah that they felt was most
necessary. They wanted to kill Jesus because
that would be a better use for Jesus rather than have Him stir
this up and mess up what little bit of order they had left in
Rome. Roman-occupied Jerusalem. This irresistible grace, what
does it look like? Verse 45, they're taught by God. That's what it looks like. How
do we get grace? The wind blows where it wishes,
remember John 3, and they're taught by God. So verse 45 there,
it is written in the Prophets, and they will all be taught by
God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes
to Me. They're taught by God. See, seminary cannot teach eternal
life. It can teach the doctrine. It
can teach the teaching of. It can make us understand and
comprehend the details of it from an intellectual point of
view. But it doesn't mean that we're saved. It's because we have the details
of it intellectually. We must be born again. Now some
of us are going, well, how do I know if I'm born again? It's
by faith. And it's trusting that God the
Father births His people anew and that your hope and your place
in eternity is secured by the finished work of Jesus Christ
through whom God reveals Himself in His gospel so that you may
know Him. As long as our logic is trying
to pave the calendar of our eternal existence, we are never truly,
by faith, holding fast to the cross. There are men who are unlearned
who know the truth of the gospel, and there are learned men who
are blinded to them. One true mark of an arrogant
man is to hear him brag of his learning while setting fire to
the straw men of his opponents by barking at their lack of education.
And yes, I have someone in mind when I said that. Not in here. It's interesting. You ever been
there? You ever been around people that
look down at you because you're not educated, but you do know
something? Happens all the time in medicine. This freshman doctor who comes
to the office of all these other seasoned doctors who've been
doctoring for 30 years, and they always, I hear my friends who
are physicians and surgeons for 30 years, and they'll always
say, that young guy, man, he comes in here like he knows everything
because he just got through with college. He ain't seen nothing. And sure
enough, 20 years later, that guy's going, man, I didn't know
a thing. I didn't know a thing. You know, just enough to get
the certificate to go, yay, I know nothing. Yeah, I'm ready to get
started. It's like in our Kung Fu system, when I got my first
rank, and my Sifu said, now, this means that you barely meet
the minimum qualifications to be called a student. Not that you've mastered anything.
Well, thanks for the confidence. That's what they should do to
seminarians. They should say, OK, here, Dr. So-and-so, you
are a nothing, a nobody, you are ignorant, stupid, blind,
and unable to do anything effectually. You better trust in Jesus. Here's
your $100,000 diploma. We appreciate it. But that's not the way the world
looks at it. The world looks at it as, well, I can be taught.
I'll teach you. You ever had someone tell you
they didn't need you to talk to them or teach you anything?
Teach them anything? Was it your child? Oh, yeah. You want to see where murder
sits? Let some kid tell you that. It sits right here. Doesn't come
out, but it's right there. I personally, in my experience,
and this doesn't make it the rule, but it's just my experience,
I personally think the more educated people that I know as a whole
are the ones who lack regeneration. The ones who are extremely devoted
students of learning oftentimes are the ones who are not saved. But I'm also not saying that
we shouldn't learn, because isn't that what we're talking about? But
we should put our learning in the right place. Is it Christ
teaching? Is it God teaching? Is it the
Spirit teaching? Is it the Word of God? I read
a lot, and I see a lot of different types of books on theological
things. And you know what's amazing to me? I was reading a book this
week about the doctrine of justification, and there was not in 72 pages
that I read in that 20 minutes, there was not one scriptural
reference. And I'm going... I look in the back, and there's
about 30 appendices with a whole list of Scripture in it. And
I'm thinking to myself, what am I learning? I'm just learning
a man's opinion. Some of it's right, some of it's
wrong. I'd like to see where the argument comes from. Where is the Scripture?
It's not there. The Lord teaches through the
Word. We cannot divorce pragmatism from Scripture. If we want to
learn how to practically live out our faith, we do so by learning
the Word of God, not by getting a book that tells us how to be
devoted to Jesus or how to hear Jesus. He's calling. Can you hear Him? He calls through
His Word, not in a closet and certainly not through the pages
of that book. He lives in the heavens, not
in a shack. He speaks through the Scriptures,
not in our dreams. We who hear, hear because the
Spirit renews our ears. Wakes them up, they are alive,
they hear. Spiritually. Wakes up our mind that what we
cannot comprehend now, we can comprehend. This is the rebirth.
Wakes up our eyes that that which we could not see, we now see. wakes up our senses to that which
we were ignorant of and not discerning. We are now discerning. I always
found it interesting to see people teach philosophy in Christian
schools, and they do so to try to teach worldviews from a philosophical
point of view. And I love that stuff. It's great.
I love those classes. But it's so ridiculous when these
people stand there and they say, we've got to have a biblical
worldview, and the Bible comes out in week 12. But we read Kent and all these
other philosophers and how they view the ontology of man, our
existence as beings, but not what God says about our existence
as beings. What Paul says in Romans 3 about our existence
as beings. We're utterly disposed to the fallenness of our nature.
Therefore, we can only do that which is conducive to our nature.
We can only do that because of what we are. A bird flies because
that's what he was created to do. A bird flies and eats the
way he does and nests the way he does because it's in his DNA.
We, because we are sinners, we nest in a wicked way. We eat
in a wicked way. We fly and tune our lives and set our calendars
in a wicked way for it's not by faith. Only by the mercy of
God through the regeneration of the Spirit do we see that
and have a worldview that works. What does John say? The darkness
shall not overcome the light. That's our hope. What is the
light? The life of men. The light. We do not lose heart. We do not
lose hope. We renounce underhanded and deceitful
ways. We do not twist the Scriptures,
Paul says, but we boldly proclaim the truth. And if people can't
see that, if people can't understand that, we don't use flanagraphs
and stories to try to illustrate things. We don't use parodies
as we've seen, some of us, in the last few weeks. to try to
illustrate a truth that's more palatable to the human condition.
But by bold proclamation of the truth, we entrust ourselves to
you and to God. And if our gospel is veiled,
if people can't see it, it's because the God of this world
has blinded the eyes of unbelievers to keep them from seeing and
believing and being saved. Somebody's going, what in the
world are you talking about? 2 Corinthians chapter 4. the
first four verses. That's a verbatim, in different
order, quotation. It is only veiled to unbelievers
who are blinded by the God of this world. But the hope is,
the hope is irresistible grace. But God But God has shown in
our hearts, He who said, let light shine out of darkness,
He who said, let there be light, and there was light, can say
the same thing in the heart of man, let light shine out of darkness,
and He's shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Boom! Rebirth. We see. We believe.
We know. People say, well that's just
a New Testament thing. No it's not. Jeremiah. A new law in their
hearts and minds I will put. Ezekiel, a new spirit I will
put within them. I will cause them to walk in
my statutes. Did God say I will encourage them? I will offer
them a spirit? I will offer them a law? I will
offer them salvation? No, I will put. My salvation
I will put in Zion. It is mine and I give it to them.
They don't deserve it. I will do it for my name's sake.
That's the crux of Ezekiel's message. Joel. Joel. See, the Jews and Acts who were
saved by the mercy of God rejoiced in the fulfillment of Joel's
prophecy, where it says that God would pour His Spirit into
the Gentiles. And then Jesus, in the 16th chapter
of this Gospel, says that the Spirit will come and will teach. We cannot make people see nor
hear, no matter how hard we pound the
pulpit. No matter how belligerent we might get, no matter how desperate
we may seem, no matter how many tears are shed or how many teeth
are gritted, no one can do it. No one can argue one into eternal
life. No one can logically reason another
into eternal life. No one can do it. Paul tells
us as pastors, he says that the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome.
You know what that means by definition? We should not argue with people
who say no. I just don't believe that. We
should not argue with them. What should we do? Just keep
teaching the truth. And there's a manner in which we teach. It
might be quarrelsome, but kind. Kind to everyone. Kindness results
in you being a doormat publicly. I don't like being a doormat.
I don't even like my fingers to be dirty, much less people
walking on me. But it is the call. must be able
to teach, must forbear with others, must correct their opponents
with gentleness, gentleness, that God may perhaps, if He chooses,
grant them repentance and come to know the knowledge of the
truth. Gentleness and respect. Peter
would say the same thing. Always be ready to give a reason
for the hope that you have with gentleness and respect. Why?
Because it doesn't matter how they mock us. Look how you're
suffering for Jesus. This is so stupid. Why don't
you just quit this stuff? Come over here and do the religion
thing. Just come over here and do this religion. It's okay.
You don't have to... No. It's the same thing that
Peter did. That Satan spoke to Peter and
said, no, no, no, Jesus, come here a minute. I know you just said you got
to go down there and die, It doesn't have to happen like that.
Get behind me, Satan. Do not tempt me. Excuse me? What was Peter thinking? Jesus called him Satan, the enemy.
Because he was speaking as Satan would speak. He was being tempted
by the enemy of God to say that. Gentle. We should not grumble
at the blindness of other people. We should not grumble and talk
and murmur and wonder, well, they just can't get their life
together. Well, they just can't get it. They just can't believe. We should
teach with this attitude that if it were not for the mercy
of God, we would be just as dumb and just as blind and just as
lost. You see? One of the worst things that
I ever say in my head, I used to say it in my mouth, but I
say it a lot in my head now, is, what is wrong with these people?
What is wrong with that person? Why can't they just get their
act together? You ever say that? Yes, we do. Let's just be honest.
Confession time. What's wrong with those people
is that God has not moved yet in His mercy in them. That's
what's wrong with these people. And we should look at that and
go, oh, thank you, God, that you moved in me. For I would
be just like them. You must be enabled by the one
who has seen the Father. You must say, well, then what
do we teach? Verse 46 is the last thing we'll talk about today.
You must be enabled to hear by the one who has seen the Father.
See, no one can hear the Father except the one who has seen the
Father, and the only one who has seen the Father is me. It's
me. I'm the one. So I've been teaching
you all, and you're ignoring me. Why? Because the Father hasn't
given you to me. He taught them this. 20,000 people
heard this deep, high theology right at the Passover. Imagine
how wrecked the temple worship was that week. I mean to tell you, it's like
when that fool Preterist came into our conference in California
and was passing out literature about eat, drink, and be merry
for tomorrow we die. Let's live like the Corinthians,
because grace abounds." That was his message. And we put hands
on that man and moved him out. It wrecked that evening. It wrecked it. And we put hands
on him. We didn't hit him, but we grabbed
him tightly and escorted him out after telling him twice to
stop. You see, what Jesus says here
wrecks our lives. From a religious standpoint,
from a theological standpoint, it wrecks us. It wrecks us completely.
And it wrecks the religious lovers of our day who are settled in
their non-gospel liturgy, in their non-gospel traditions.
We have traditions. This is one. This is another.
How we do these things. This is one. Light, seats, traditions. And we have ways in which we
go about that are historical. We hold to them. We don't hold
to them as absolute. But, you know, if we couldn't,
we wouldn't. And that goes with a lot of things
that we do. Future discussion. But we see the world coming to
this idea that we don't have to teach anything, but Jesus
says that we have to be taught everything by the Father. And
then the next question is, how is it that we are to teach? How
am I, your pastor, how are you, a Christian, supposed to teach
others effectually? Well, Jesus is the teacher. How
is Jesus taught to the world? Through the Word of God. Not
our precious pet doctrines. Not our vitamin box theology
where we got our pill for depression, our pill for frustration, our
pill for sadness, and our pill for loneliness. Oh, here's the
Bible verse for that. But we teach Christ. And Christ
teaches. And the Spirit of God teaches,
you can't hear because you're not listening to Me, and you're
not listening to Me because you don't have ears to hear Me, so
therefore, there's nothing I can do about it, is what Jesus says.
I'm teaching God. What I say is what God is saying. You see that? That's why Christianity
is not an inclusive religion. It's an exclusive truth. It is
very myopic, very narrow-minded, very dogmatic, very enclosed,
very secluded, particular truth set that says that no one can
come to have eternal life in any way except through the special
revelation of God through His Word, which is Jesus Christ alone
and who He is and all that He accomplished. This is theology. This is truth. And friends, when we teach it,
in John 8, Jesus will ask the question, Why do you not understand
what I say? Now see, I ask that a lot. Why can't you understand me?
Especially my children. Do you understand what I'm saying? No.
Okay. But you know what? He asks the question and answers
it. He says, why do you not understand what I say? It is because you
cannot bear to hear my word. How do we find new life in people
to bear to hear the word? Well, Jesus is the teacher, so
we proclaim Him. In Paul, 1 Corinthians 1, he
says, we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to what? The
Jews, and folly to the Gentiles, or to the Greeks. But to those
who are called both Jew and Greek, What does he call it? Life. The power of God and the wisdom
of God. See, this effectual calling,
this irresistible grace, is effectual when Jesus teaches a blind and
dead heart and mind to the world. It's stupid and foolish. It causes
them to trip over the stumbling block of offense, who is the
gospel of grace, the simplicity of irresistible grace, the simplicity
of limited atonement, the simplicity of total depravity. Next week we'll see the other
two points. But to those who are called,
effectually it is a glorious, wonderful, beautiful, fragrant,
satisfying sustenance. The calling is effectual when
Jesus teaches God. and the power of God unto salvation,
Romans 1 16, for which we are not ashamed. Jesus teaches the
called, that is the effectual call, that we know the gospel
and its true effect. We trust in Him, His finished
work, His promises. Many will hear the words of Christ
and never come to see. But those whom by the Father,
by the Spirit, who have life, are given ears to see and eyes
to see, ears to hear, that they are alive, they can and they
will see." Lydia, when she heard Paul preaching, what does the
Scripture say about Lydia? Here's a narrative example of
this doctrine that Jesus is teaching. It says very clearly, and I quote,
"...the Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was said
by Paul." If the Lord does not open the heart of an unbeliever,
they will not give heed. No matter what. Friends, there's
beauty in that. We could teach a sermon now on
evangelism. And we're going to teach a sermon on perseverance. We're going to talk about what
Jesus is teaching here in this deep theology. In the latter
part of this, verses 47 and 48, Jesus says that you must believe.
If you want to have life, I am the bread of life. What a wonderful
segue into our Lord's table today. I am the bread of life. You must
believe on the terms of Jesus. says, you can't make me your
king, you can't come to me this way, you can't argue these traditions,
you can't argue the historical way in which my father worked,
because now the father was working, now I am working. Now the father
was speaking, now I'm speaking. And I'm revealing to you God,
I'm teaching you by God, about God. God is teaching through
me. The terms of true faith are not found in what we want Jesus
to do for us. The terms of true faith are not
found in what we think Jesus will do, has done, or can do.
The terms of true faith are not found in what we have been taught
in all of these things traditionally. The terms of true faith are found
in, listen, the grace of God alone. The terms of true faith, true
life, eternally are found in grace alone. The work of God
who sovereignly saves His people through regeneration by the work
of Christ whereby He is still just to forgive and forbear sin. He grants repentance. He changes
our mind. He gives us faith. He allows
us and enables us to be different than our depraved nature. And
we once who were dead are now alive in His sight. And He is
our bread. And the bread that He gives for
His people is His body. It's His body. And that's what
this points to. That's what this little cup and
this little piece of bread points to. It's just for us to remember
that the way God can save us and be just is that He put our
sins on the body of Jesus. And when His body was broken
and when His blood flowed, justice was satisfied. We are no longer
going to be asked to give our eternal souls under condemnation
because Christ took it for us. We are never going to be asked
to do anything else in the sense whereby we would be justified
before God because Christ has taken it upon Himself. We are
free in Jesus from the wrath of God. God is the wrath bringer
and He is the refuge. Wow! I wanted to get into that
today but I don't have time. God saves His people from Himself
through Himself on the cross. That's amazing. Let's pray. Prepare your hearts. I will pray
and then play, and as I play, you can come and get the elements,
and when you have them, you can go back to your seat, and we'll
take the Lord's table together. Let's pray. We thank You, Father,
for this wonderful truth. the gospel of grace, the power
of Your sovereign election, Your sovereign work of redemption.
Through the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, You are satisfied,
Father. So we praise You for that. As
we take up this table today, Lord, let us remember that forgiveness. Let us remember that cost. Let
us be in our heart of hearts, forgiving toward others who have
offended us, repentant toward those we have offended, And be
reminded that though this is not a supernatural thing that
we do with this bread and juice, Father, it has a supernatural
essence to it because it is a focus on the Gospel, on the Person
who satisfied Your judgment, Jesus the Christ. That through
His sacrifice we live. Through His death our guilt has
been buried and now we're alive by grace. Let us never forget
it. that You did not just decree
to wipe off the record, but Father, You judicially satisfied it. We pray these things in His name.
Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
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