Thank you, church. You may be
seated. Turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 5. We most likely
finish this chapter today. And I don't know if it's because
I've done enough in there or if I'm just so excited to get
into chapter 6. Either way, it's going to be good for us. Having come up in the early days
of my adulting career, as the millennials call it now, I'm
adulting. into the church growth movement
and the mega church mindset and things of that nature. It's amazing
what you learn, not directly, but through observation. And
one thing that I learned early in my ministry is that you have
to put the part in front of people in ministry. What does that mean? That means that you have to act
ministerially. You have to act, in some sense,
pastoral. There's a cultural expectation of people who are
in ministry by the constituents of that ministry or the congregants. And sadly, with no exception,
no exception at all, those particular ideals are unbiblical. They're unbiblical because they're
not found in scripture. Now, I'm not talking about the
scriptural expectations. that are required of each one of you.
There is no requirement for an elder of the church that is not
also a requirement for every Christian who confesses the name
of Christ. Paul, when he teaches Timothy
about this is what an elder should be, is the measuring rod through
which every member of every local congregation is measured. And
if we fail in those areas, we see discipline that oftentimes
just goes unnoticed by the rest of us. We are corrected, as we
sang, corrects us, our father, our daddy, Abba, means Papa.
He corrects us. Because it's not in us to surrender
our lives and our flesh, it is for the Spirit of God to cause
us to continue to strive and walk in His statutes and even
so it is imperfect. The ministry is one of these
things where when you learn wrongly, they oftentimes take root in
such a way that it's hard to get it out. I know for me, It
was very difficult to lose the act. It was very difficult for
me to set aside the visible representation of me as a rock solid, never
failing, always rejoicing person. Many of you have shared your
experience with me to know that you appreciate my candor and
my honesty. For I'm not going to put a front
on to make you think Jesus is awesome when I don't feel like
Jesus is awesome, though He is. We don't always feel that way.
Ministry's great! Woo-hoo! That's a lie. Ministry's
not great. Ministry's the hardest thing
we'll ever do. I would be surprised if any of you here said that
Sunday is the easiest day of the week for you in your house.
It's probably the hardest. Why? Because the enemy that hates
us so and hates our Father and hates our Lord Jesus Christ loves
to cause us strife. It is a guarantee It is a suffering,
we are a suffering people. And we've come to a place in
this text where the greatest actors of them all put together
a ministry and a religion of Judaism that the entire world
saw them as these holy and pious people and Jesus has begun to
interact with them in John's gospel. And we see that Jesus
himself, I know that's redundant and improper, but Jesus, out
of His own mouth, has said they do not have the love of God in
them, will soon call them a brood of vipers. He will soon call
them whitewashed tombs. He will soon call them dogs.
And He will encapsulate all of this in the phrase, your Father
is not God, your Father is not Abraham, but you are the children
of Satan. And these expressions are difficult
because we live in a day and age when polemics rule. Fussing and fighting rules. People's
bad-mouthing each other because I'm just speaking the truth or
I'm keeping it real, as we like to say. Rules. Let the world
be that way, but let not the assembly of God ever be like
the world. We do not look for assurance
in our salvation based on our own outcome and our inward ability
or anything of that nature, but there is a litmus test that Jesus
actually tells us to look for as one of the primary guarantees
for a true believer, and that is that they will love the Lord
their God with all their heart by the power of the Spirit because
God is love and in us dwells the Holy Spirit, which is an
imperfect issue. We love Him temporally. We love
Him fully for a few minutes, but our soul rejoices. Our soul
loves the Lord, even when our flesh doubts Him. So no one would
ever say, oh yes, I don't love God. I don't love Jesus, out
of their mouths. The Pharisees would never have
said publicly, I hate God. For they thought that their honor
and reverence to God was seen in their obedience, which is
not a bad thing. Jesus even says, if you love
me, you will obey me. But what we see in the New Testament
is that the obedience of faith is a matter of the doings of
God and it is a gift, it is a regenerative power, which is salvation. The
Spirit blows where it wishes and He brings to life dead people
that they might believe as an outcome of them being justified
through the work of Jesus. But very few people in our day
would say they hate God. Very few professing Christians
would ever say that they do not love God. But yet they evidence
the fact they do not love God by their lack of love for one
another. They evidence that they do not
have the love of God by their lack of love for their enemies.
They evidence they do not love God by the lack of love they
have for His Word. And that's what Jesus is going
to show us here about the Pharisees today. In John chapter 5, we
see, let us read together and starting in verse 37. And the Father who sent me has
Himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard,
His form you have never seen, and you do not have His word
abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom He has sent. You search the Scriptures because
you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they
that bear witness about Me. Yet you refuse to come to Me
that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people,
but I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I
have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me. If
another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can
you believe when you receive glory from one another and do
not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think
that I will accuse you to the Father. There is One who accuses
you now, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believe
Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me. But if you
do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?
Let's pray. Father, I pray with all the earnestness
within Me that You would help us to see this truth this morning.
Father, that You would take this text of Scripture and that through
my mere human mouth you would preach the truth that is contained
therein, Lord, to help us to see, knowing that it is not what
I say that causes us to see, but it is You, it is Your Spirit,
it is Your Son that gives us ears to hear. Father, may our
children pay close attention to the words today. May we hold
them dearly. May we meditate on them tonight
and tomorrow and Tuesday. Father, we rejoice in You. We
rejoice in Your promises. We rejoice in Your perfection.
We rejoice, Father, in Your power. Because without the cross of
Christ, we would stand deceived, unable to believe. So we praise
You for this. In Jesus' name, Amen. As I do each week, I try to back
up just a little bit, do a review, and then move forward. In verses
37, we see that the Father has made clear the testimony of the
Son. The Father here, as we see where
it says, the Father who sent me is born witness about me.
He has, from the beginning, given revelation of the Son, Jesus. so that the Pharisees, the people
who were entrusted with the oracles of God, the Word of God, the
promises of the faith, the gospel of grace, that they would easily
be able to recognize in their mere minds as human beings, oh,
here is the one whom God has sent. You see, that's what's
so strange about unbelief, is that unbelief, according to Jesus
here, is a desperate choice, coupled with a judicial blindness. It's a desperate choice because
in the freedom of the mind and the will of man, without the
work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, we always choose to not
believe, even when it is obvious to our minds that we should believe. You see that? I've had many conversations
over the last few months in relation to this very thing. specifically saying that the
Bible and its teaching is not necessary, exposition is not
necessarily helpful or healthy for the church. You need to do
more. We've got to provide more. We've got to establish more for
the church. Well, let me ask you, beloved,
what will help you when the day comes, when tragedy sets upon
your heart? Cleaning the restrooms? Keeping
the children? Photocopying the bulletin? Picking,
singing, playing the songs? What will help you? The hammer
that you build the house with for the neighbor? The mower that
you tear down the weeds of the yard for your enemy? No. What will help you is Christ. And He is found only in His Word. Nowhere else. Christ is not seen
in the service of God's people. Christ is seen in the Scripture
that He's given us. The Father has made clear the
testimony of the Son. From the beginning, the promise
of salvation given to the first couple. The seed of the woman
shall crush the head of the serpent. The establishing of Israel through
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The promise of salvation through
the one Son. The whole world will be blessed.
Therefore, because they reject, the Pharisees here reject the
grace of God, because anyone who rejects the grace of God,
rejects Jesus the Christ, the perfect salvation, the perfect
righteousness, they have in turn then rejected the very law that
they so firmly hold, that they so firmly follow, as if they
were God's people having been taught by Him. See, that's what
Jesus is teaching. And for us as the saints this
day, we see just what type of blindness could befall us if
we were not in the love of God. If we were not in the blessing
of God the Father. If we were not in the grace and
the mercy of Christ. We would be just like the Pharisees.
We would find our Americanized religion. We would find our caricature
of Jesus. We would find our cultural Christianity. And we would live it to the fullest.
and we would put faith in it, and we would have worship in
it, and we would know no different. Jesus then says, because this
is true of them by this unbelief, Jesus will judge them as guilty
by the law, and they will die forever. Those who reject grace
have rejected everything that God is. His brother Jesse taught Wednesday
night about the demonic possessed man. And it showed that even the demons
inside this man's flesh, when the demons caused him to run
to the shore to attack the disciples, and they saw Jesus, they bowed
down before Him. What have you to do with us,
O Son of God, the Most High? Holy and Anointed One, what have
You to do with us? Have You come to bring judgment
upon us before the time? Friends, there is no reverent
fear of the judgment of God that will save your soul. It is a work of God through His
grace whereby through hearing of the Gospel, you are made alive
by the Spirit. Friends, why do we teach that
to the church? Because that's what the apostles taught to the
church. Why is it necessary so that you and I will stand in
our footsteps and know that there is nothing good about us except
that God's grace has been given to us. That we would worship
with all the fullness of everything that we understand in our finite,
small, depraved little minds by the mercy of grace. That we
understand who God is and what He has done on our behalf. That
this is not an opportunity, but is an absolute certainty that
we have been saved by the grace of God. We are not to boast in
ourselves. And the Pharisees boasted in
themselves while saying they were boasting in God. Jesus then says, therefore, He
says this, therefore, because of this truth, He says to them,
His voice you have never heard. This is true in one sense. These
people have never heard the voice of God with their physical ears.
Moses heard the voice of God. The Israelites in that day heard
the voice of God and cried out, what? Oh no, please, no more
commands coming from the mountain. This is Sinai. We see that over in Hebrews. That they begged, no more commands
come. Nothing else come. They could not bear to hear the
voice of God. Jesus is saying, you have not
heard the voice of God. But they knew Moses had heard
the voice of God. And then in a real and present sense, right
there, He was saying the truth of them, that they had yet to
hear the voice of God. Even though they searched the
Scriptures, as we'll see, they had yet to hear the voice of
God. Friends, how many people live this day, this very day, professing the
gospel of grace, and they have never heard the voice of God.
Because they reject the Scripture. They reject the totality of the
teaching of the intricacies of the gospel of grace. They reject
it because they will not in their finite and fleshly minds grasp
the ineffable mercy of God and His sovereignty over salvation. They subject God to the fairness
doctrine of human logic and reason. And God by a word will fail them. F-E-L-L. A mighty fortress reference. One little word, it is done. It is finished. His voice you have never heard.
His form you have never seen. Because His Word is not in you.
Because you do not believe Me, Jesus says, His Word is not in
you. Because you do not believe in Me, you have never seen Him. Because you do not believe in
Me, you have never heard His voice. John 1. And the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God, and all things were made through Him. Without
Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and
the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. Go back and listen to that
sermon, by the way. May the 14th, 2017. And the witness of John, the
man who came, was not the light, but a witness. But the true light,
who is Jesus, who gives light to everyone, was coming into
the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through
Him. Yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own in His
own. These Jews right here did not receive Him. But to all who
did receive Him, that is those who believed in His name, He
gave the right to become the children of God, not because
of the decision of their mind. Because they were born, not of
blood, nor the will of the man, nor the will of the flesh, but
of God. And the Word then, who is God,
became flesh and dwelt among us. And friends, we have seen
the glory of God face to face. through the Scripture in the
person of Jesus Christ. And when we reject the authority
of Scripture, we reject the authority of Christ, we reject the gospel
of grace, we live in our sins. And many people say, well, this
person's gone to school, this person's got academics, this
person's been in church their whole life, this person knows
a billion Bible verses, this person knows this, this person's
been a preacher, this person's been a deacon, this person's
taught Sunday school. Whoop-de-doo! I'm glad! I had a banana last night with
some rice and chicken. What? Let's make the comparison. It's about equal. Just something
we do in this minutiae we call life. Many people can gather
pretext out of Scripture. Many people can take out of the
66 books of this composition, of this compilation rather. and
fit their own fancy to find a God for their own furious enticement.
They can do whatever they want to do. We as human beings are
creative. We can come to the place where we can find whatever
God we're looking for and we can use this Bible to do it. But when we who are born of the
Spirit of God hear the truth of Scripture, we see it clearly,
we believe it fully, and we hold to it fastly so that no one can
shake us off our foundation of truth. You do not believe me. Remember what we learned last
week? Jesus speaks and works and acts and walks as God because
He is I Am. The Word became flesh and we've
seen God's glory. Glory as the only Son from the
Father, full of grace and truth. Verse 13 of the first chapter. As I say over and over again,
the namesake of our assembly. Nothing is arbitrary that we
do, by the way. It's not an act. Even the name
of our church is not arbitrary. To see Jesus is to see God. There's
no other means through which to behold God. There's no other
means through which to know God. There's no other means through
which to be intimate with God. Without the Word of God, who
is Jesus Christ, there is no intimacy with God. There is no
life with God. There is no hope. Scripture then is the full expression
of the revelation of God physically and then also supernaturally.
Because Jesus, who is the God, the one and only, who sits at
the Father's side, makes God known. Verse 39, you search the
Scriptures, Jesus says, you search the Scriptures because you think
that in them you have eternal life. See, isn't that the way
it is? But then Jesus says, And it is
they that bear witness about Me. Yet you refuse to come that you may
have life. See, the Jews decided that they
were better than everyone else because of the way they lived,
the way they believed. The Gospel says that no works
of man can satisfy God's justice, but only Christ Jesus the man
is holy. So often many confuse finding
their own way in Scripture study while ignoring the truth that's
plainly set before them. What do I mean by that? Friends,
how many books have been written on how to study the Bible? How many pamphlets have been
created about how to understand the Bible? How many curricula
have been developed and published and processed and pushed out
into the world so that we can become better Bible students?
And how many of them are just ridiculous, man-made outlines? Do we really need an educator
to teach us what Jesus just said. The love of God is not in you.
You search the Scriptures, yet you cannot find eternal life,
though you're looking for it, because the Scriptures speak
of me. We need a PhD to tell us what that means. I would beg
to say that some of our seven-year-olds could come up and explain that
very clearly. And I'm not trying to be sarcastic. I'm not trying
to be belittling. I'm not talking about people's
intelligence. I'm talking about people's everlasting life. I'm
talking about your ability to see the clear picture of who
God is through Jesus Christ. This is what we're here for,
church. To see Christ. Not to look at the world. The
church doesn't look at the world and we start bringing the world
in and say, okay, this is bad and this is bad and this is bad.
Or worse, this is okay, let's just be like this. I remember
many times, many meetings throughout the years where I've sat down
in mixed company. And the conversation would come,
well what can we do? They've got the community center,
they've got the movie theater, they've got the roller skate
rink and all. How can we as Christians compete with that? Oh, I know. Let's start a roller
skating ministry. Let's start a roll. Let's take
up some offerings for 10 million dollars and build a rock climbing
gym. That'll draw people to Jesus. I find that ironic. Where Jesus
says that those who build their house upon the rock, it shall
stand. He is the rock. You want your household to stand?
The Bible is the answer. Sorry. You want your marriage to stand?
You want your children to stand? You want your faith to stand?
It is the Bible. It is Scripture. It is Scripture. We don't search Scripture to
make it say what we want it to say. We don't have our idea over
here and go, oh, I found a paragraph. I found a word. I found a sentence.
And in the Hebrew, it means this. And if you spell it backwards,
it means that. And if you stick your tongue in the air, it does
this. If you light a match around a gas
tank, you might get burned. It's got nothing to do with the
truth of Scripture. We know the truth of God by knowing God and
the Son whom He has sent. We know because we've been born
again by the Holy Spirit of God. And the only way those who refuse
it will ever come to faith is not through debate, is not through
interaction from an academic level, but is through right teaching
of the Word of God alone. Teach it. Finding our own way in Scripture
by studying it to find the answer that we like is ignoring the
totality of Scripture. And quite honestly, I look at
people who have come to the knowledge of grace and to salvation, quote,
quote, quote, salvation, because of their academic pursuits of
the Bible, as lost. Lost. They have every answer. They have every answer. They
have every understanding. But they're not born again. They could debate the greatest
of pastors into the mud, but they don't know Jesus. Because it's foolish, isn't it?
It's foolish to say, oh, you read that story and God saved
you. Oh, you just read these stories, you read these man-made
stories, and you believe it? It's foolish. Yes, I believe
it. Oh, you're one of those South Georgia boys, those rednecks.
I knew I could hear it in your voice. Start using a British accent,
see what that's saying. They'd think I'm educated all of a sudden. Scripture speaks life, the living
word. Jesus has already taught us that. The light of the world,
the life of men is found in the creative and powerful word of
God, who is Jesus Christ. Jesus, according to all this,
has a testimony from the Father through the totality of Scripture,
through the totality of history. Jesus Christ is God and makes
God known. And in verse 40 and 41, or excuse
me, verse 40, it says, Yet you refuse to come to me, that you
may have life. You see that. The Pharisees knew who He was. The academic society expressed
that. They knew the Scriptures taught of Messiah. They knew
that the Scripture prophesied the birth of Jesus. And not only
was it just a possible fit to the prophecy, it was an exact
fit to the prophecies. Every jot and tittle of the prophecies
of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Christ. All of it. And they knew it. And they knew He was Messiah.
And they believed that He was Messiah. There's a difference
in believing Jesus is Messiah and trusting in Him as Messiah.
Because one, the mind can do. The other, God must do. God must
change our minds. God must change our minds. just
like the church of the region of Galatia. They received with
power the gospel and were saved by the Lord through the hearing
of the Word. And yet, when the Judaizers came
in there, their human understanding was conflicted and confused. And Paul says they had been bewitched.
He was angry. He didn't assign them to apostasy. He just says, no, this is not
the truth. You know what brought you to
life. You know the truth of the revelation
of God that gave you life. Hold fast to that. Because if
you want to go here, you're cut off from Christ forever. You can't go here. What's here?
Works. Will. Blood. Let's keep on going. John 1 told
us what it was. So Jesus has a testimony and
they would not receive it. Verse 41, I do not receive glory
from people. Now why would he just say that
all of a sudden? Well, because there's a little bit of a play
here with the fact that John the Baptist was a testifier of
Jesus. He was a witness to Jesus. And Jesus mentioned it. Yep,
you know John talked just like John wrote in the prologue, the
outline. There was a man who came to bear
witness about the light, but he was not the light. That's
John the Baptist. And he died, or he was in prison. We don't
know if he was dead, but we know he was at least in prison at
the time of Jesus' conversation with the Pharisees. He's gone.
He's out of the picture. And so here, Jesus could be referring
to that, but I believe that it's more in line with the context
of what he's saying right now, is that he knows their hearts.
Every time Jesus speaks, he's speaking that verbally, which
these people are thinking mentally. And Jesus knows our hearts. It's
like sometimes in my tenure of preaching, you know, after a
service, somebody will come up to me every now and then. Some
of you have even said that. I said, you were preaching, it sounded like
you were listening to my conversation on the way to church. To which
I want to go, you better watch it. You never know. I might be. Got spies everywhere. And some
people are so superstitious they think that pastors have this
channel with God that tells them information. Those pastors get
kicked out of churches and they just start new ones. And then
they still get to see visions of people doing things. Nope. But the human condition
and the human mind and the human depravity is not really multifaceted. It's not a manifold, you know,
billion different options. It's just several different options
that could happen, several different things that we could think, several
different lusts that we could attach to. And we can just hit
them on the head if we just say, I mean, a good magician could
make us all think he could read our minds. But Jesus knows our
minds. Jesus knows our hearts. Jesus
knows what we actually feel about ourselves and others even when
we don't. So when Jesus says, I don't receive
glory from people, the Pharisees in their mind said, neither do
we. I mean, think about that for
a second. Neither do we. We don't receive glory from people either.
Well, at least we got this in common. But Jesus was speaking
about them. They received glory from people.
That's the whole reason they were there to begin with, to
confront Jesus, because they received glory from people, because
He dared to violate their law and make them look foolish. Who
is this man who is coming on the scene teaching us from Scripture
with all authority, like the Pharisees are supposed to be
teaching us. He's a nobody. They're everything. We want to
be like them. Now Jesus, the very One that's
teaching, is performing miracles with great power. Now He's breaking
the law. Where are the eyes of the common
man? Looking at the Pharisees. Alright,
now what are y'all going to do? Because what happens? You've
got a hundred Pharisees. You've got a hundred rulers,
and you've got a million citizens. What keeps them in check? Fear.
Fear. If you're not like me, the Pharisee,
you're not like God, you know what? We can help you, just follow
us. Oh, we've got to treat them right,
we've got to pay them right, we've got to do all these things,
because if we want to be with God, we've got to be like the
Pharisees. Jesus even says, If your righteousness is not greater
than that of the Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
Why? Because it was worthless. It was filthy rags. It was unrighteousness. And Jesus knew that their entire
heartbeat was that they got glory from man. They were looked at
by the community as these special, pious, religious, holy people. And they were worshipped that
way, in a sense. And Jesus says, I don't get glory
from people. In other words, I don't receive
my glory from what man says about me. I don't care what people
say about me. I don't care what you testify.
I don't care what people think about me because it is not what
they say that manufactures my majesty. It is not what people
believe. It is not the court of public
opinion that matters. It is not about my followers
and my likes and my subscribers. It is not about the size of my
congregation. As a matter of fact, Jesus was
the world's greatest at turning away the masses. But the Pharisees
wanted more. They wanted more glory. They
wanted more following. They wanted more prestige. They
wanted more honor. There is nothing greater in the
life of depraved human beings than being honored and glorified.
Because if it didn't exist, there'd be no trophy businesses. There'd
be no certificates. There'd be no diplomas. There'd
be no accolades. There'd be no banquets in people's
honor. There'd be no plaques on the walls of these apostate
buildings that supposedly hold Christian churches that don't,
with people's names spread all over them in honor, in memory,
in glory of these dead souls. You see? And we can't look at
the Pharisees and go, shame, shame, shame, because we're just
like them, except by the grace of God. What greater thing to do than
to look out into a sea of people? And when you say, raise your
right hand, everybody raises their right hand for what? You
ever been in a conference with 10,000 people? I do a mean Simon
Says game. Mean. Nobody's ever won it yet.
$20 for the winner. And they're all out. They're
all out. But for 10 minutes, they do exactly
what I tell them to do. For money. It's like a dog in
a tree. That's power, y'all. I know it's
silly, but that's just a scratch. It feels good to have people
laugh at your jokes. It feels good for people to look
online and say, oh, your baby is so pretty, doesn't it? That's
why we check it. That's why we check it. We don't
even check to see who said what. We just want to see how many.
A thousand people. could like it. And our day would be made. A
thousand, wow, that's all we talk about. Look at all the followers
we have, the affairs we've... Jesus says, I don't get glory
from Him. But the Jews did. Jesus did not need human testimony
for His authority to be truth. But what does He say in verse
42? This is awful. This is an awful thing for them
to hear. But they wouldn't hear I know that you do not have the
love of God within you. Wow, that escalated. How does
he know they do not have the love of God within them? Because
they seek glory from people. I want you to listen very carefully,
beloved. Men, women, children who seek
self-glory are utterly and eternally lost. Those who seek self-glory are
lost. Who would Jesus say this to today?
Many pastors who build their ministry at the
cost of truth. Many Christians who would rather
be known for their polemics than their proclamation of glory. Many professing theologians who
want to be contrary and get clickbait and get a following, even if
it's negative, rather than be a nothing in obscurity and proclaim
to a nobody the truth of Scripture. And friends, if it weren't for
the grace of God, your very pastor would probably be one of the
most infamous heretics that the world would ever see. Because
I got the knowledge of how to market this mess. Make it work. And friends, you want to talk
about an act? The Pharisees were actors of the highest level.
Don't be an actor. You do not have the love of God
within you. How do I know? How does Jesus know? He's God.
How can we know that Jesus knew? Because He expounds upon it this
way. You receive glory from people,
so you don't have the love of the Father in you. The love of
God is not in you, and that means you're lost. And he gives an
example. I, he says, have come in my Father's
name, and you do not receive me. You see? You know who I am,
and I've come by the authority of God the Father, and yet you
refuse me. Why? Because I will steal away
your glory. Because if we know what John
wrote in his Apocalypse, all glory and honor and power and
wealth belong to Jesus forever and ever and ever. And the lost
and the reprobate, same people, and the saints will all call
Jesus Lord forever. We, however, will do it with
joy because He is the Lord of our salvation. But for the lost,
He will be the Lord of their destruction. But He is their
Lord. I have come in my Father's name,
in the name, in the fullness of, in the power and the authority
of the Father, revealing Him fully in all truth and power
and all authority. But Jesus says, you will not
and you cannot believe it, so you do not have the love of God
within you. You glory in your own ability. You glory in your
own knowledge. You glory in your own ministry.
You glory in your own power. You glory in self-honor and being
honored by people. I speak the words of God, Jesus
says, because I come from God, because I am God, and I do the
works of the Father. And as the Father was working,
I am now working, so that that which I do is God working, for
I am God. And if you do not believe in
Me in this way..." See, Jesus can't just be a martyr
who was raised from the dead supernaturally. He has to be
God. If you don't believe that Jesus
is God, you're utterly lost. If you don't believe that Jesus
died for His people, you're utterly lost. If you don't believe that
Jesus obeyed perfectly as a human being, you're utterly lost. Well,
wait a minute. Is all that necessary for salvation?
Eventually, it will be necessary from salvation. What is it that
God uses to save His people? The Holy Spirit through the hearing
of the Word. And then as we are saved, then we come to know more. And as we see it, we go, wow,
whoa, holy cow, hallelujah. And we get deeper and we're like,
oh, wow, more, more, more. We don't look at it and go, nah,
I don't believe that. Another regenerate person says,
I won't believe that. A regenerate person, the Holy
Spirit teaches. So good thing to see a false professor. How's
that operate? Trey and I were talking about this yesterday.
How do we know church discipline? When people start to refuse a
teaching of Scripture, start to cause division within the
church, what does Paul say? Warn them and kick them out. Don't let them be divisive. I'm not talking about working
through our understanding. I'm talking about refusing, rejecting
the Gospel, rejecting the teaching of Scripture. Why? Because the
Holy Spirit will cause us to believe what we see. Matthew 24, Jesus says, many
will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will
lead many astray. And Jesus is saying that these Jews would
believe anybody. In verse 44, you'll believe anybody.
But you won't believe me, and you know that I've come from
the Father. You won't believe me. Why? Because it doesn't satisfy
your flesh. You don't want to believe. You
refuse to believe. You believe in many who come in their own
name, and this matter is still an issue today. How? Any person
who exalts himself in speech or action or obedience, etc.,
is self-glorian. Any person who exalts himself
in a manner that they are right over the lives of men. Well,
no, I'm right. I don't care about you. I'm going
to do what I'm going to do and I don't care about you. That's
an uncanny, fleshly thing to do. It doesn't mean that we won't
have a day or something like that, but the Lord will correct
us in those things. We're not going to be known as
a lifestyle of hatred. Any person that exhausts themselves
as the answer to everything, religion, or politics, or government,
or whatever it might be. Well, I'm the answer. They're
lost! No man who is filled with the
Holy Spirit of God can stand on a platform of any place on
earth and say, I have the answer. Pick me! Pick me! Pick me! That's devilish! That's satanic! I about took off then. We have to be careful, beloved,
not to think that people are saviors. People are pawns in
the hand of a holy God. And they are pawns of destruction
or they are objects of mercy. Let that sink in, beloved, for
it is the truth of the instrument of God's grace and God's righteousness. There is no free agent in the
human race. There is no free agent. And let
me tell you something, beloved. That message is what got us persona
non grata with the churches of this community. It wasn't anything else. It was
that we believe in a sovereign God who operates everything for
the purpose of His glory. Someone posted this morning on
a feed that I'm a part of, and I never respond to this, but
I just was being a little cheeky, so I did. And the guy said, the
god of Calvinism caused the shooting in Florida for his own purposes.
And I said, praise God, you finally believe. I don't know what's going to
be like. I'm going to have to block somebody by the time lunch is over, I promise
you. I just couldn't stop myself.
Because if we don't believe that, what do we believe? You know
what we believe? We believe in a world that is
hopeless. We believe in a God that is powerless. We believe
in the enemy of God that is more powerful than he. We believe
that there is maliciousness of man that runs amok without any
kind of check. We believe that there is the
wickedness and sinfulness and the heart of destruction that
is overpowering everything good because Friends, when we look
at the heart of sinful people, when we look in our own neighborhoods,
we have an altercation yesterday in our own neighborhood that
I tried, and I preached the gospel to these people that they might
calm down and leave and repent and believe in faith in Jesus
Christ, but they went to jail instead. So, you know, we look
at it. If we don't know the truth of
God and His sovereignty, we are hopeless. The Pharisees were the people
who exalted themselves over the souls of men, which is even worse. And idolatry sometimes is when
we exalt any man over Christ. Christ says that those that are
self-exalting do not have the love of God within them. So why
would we honor them? Self-exalting. I'd rather be
Christ-exalting and wrong half the time than self-exalting. What does self-exalting look
like in a pastor? The word I comes out of his mouth
a lot. Let's be careful about that. It doesn't mean that when we
say I, it's self-exalting because it could be self-deprecating,
which is okay, unless we're using that as a reverse psychological
effect to deprecate ourselves so that somebody will come and
say, oh, no, you're not like that. Oh, you're a good guy. Oh, don't
beat yourself up. Yes, beat yourself up and trust
in the gospel of grace. 44, how can you believe then
when you receive glory from one another? See, a lot of times,
well, see, now James, you're putting in things that aren't
there in Scripture. You made that up that they were self-glorian.
Well, Jesus just tells us in verse 44. That's what He meant.
That's how I know that's what He meant. I'm not psychic. That's
how I know. I just told you before you saw
it. When you receive glory from one another and you do not seek
the glory that comes from God, He says, how can you believe?
How can you believe when everything that you are loves everything
that you are? And not who I am. You don't love
God, you love yourself. That's what Jesus is saying.
See, Jesus is the glory that comes from God. He is to be praised.
They refused Him and they hated Him. So therefore, they hated
God. They began to think that Jesus was an accuser. Who is
the accuser? Satan's the accuser. The accuser of the brethren.
Satan makes accusation. He says, look, James is a sinner.
And God the Father goes, yes, I know. But what does it teach us? What
does John teach us? That if we sin, we have an advocate with
the Father. What is an advocate? Someone that stands in your place.
Someone that stands alongside of you. Someone that stands there
and says, no, no, no, no, you're wrong. This isn't going to happen. This isn't who you're talking
about. And though I may be wicked and vile, I may be wicked too,
I don't know what that means. I may be wicked and vile, Christ
is my righteousness. It's not me. I'm not righteous.
Nothing about me is righteous. Though I may be wicked and vile,
I'm not utterly lost. Because I didn't choose Christ,
Christ chose me. Though I may be wicked and vile,
I'm not working my way to glory. Christ is my glory. He is my
life. He is my truth. He is my God. And He is your God. And He is
your truth. They refused the grace of God.
They began to think that Jesus was an accuser, but Jesus knew
their hearts. They refused the grace of God.
They despised the gospel of grace. They considered Jesus' words
of verse 34 of this text. What does it say there? Not that
the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these
things so that you may be saved." They hated that. Why would you
hate someone if they come to you and say, I'm saying these
things to you so that you may be saved? You know, some of the
greatest anger that has ever been illustrated in my face in
ministry is when I would come and sit down with a professing
believer And I would teach them the gospel again and again and
again. And I would say, I say these things for your salvation.
They would become enraged. Why? Don't you dare tell me I'm
not saved. Oh, I didn't have to, you did. One of them even cursed me. One
of them was a pastor and cursed me on the telephone and hung
up and I called him back and he used the curse word again
and the Lord's name in vain and hung up. And some of you know who I'm
talking about. We weren't here, but it was here. That you might be saying, they
hated that. Who do you think you are telling us we need salvation? Who do you think you are telling
us we need to repent and change our minds and believe in you?
Do you know who you're talking to? You know, that kind of mindset.
Who do you think you're talking to? It's like our dads would
say when we start mouthing off at 12. We think we're a man and
we're really just a little kid with some peach fuzz. For us
guys and girls. And daddy would go, who do you
think you're talking to? Well, I'll kill you. And then your
mama will clean the blood up in tears. You want to do that
to her? That's what these Pharisees are
saying. Who do you think you're talking to? Do you know who we are? Do you know
what kind of glory? Do you know that just with a
word we can move the masses of these people to follow us and
to do the things that we do? You are telling them to disobey
us. Do you know who we are? They despise the gospel. They
don't want to hear Jesus say they need to be saved. Jesus
then subjects them to His own judgment, straight back to the
Word of God, the Holy Writ. And this is something we need
to be reminded of. It's why we need to hold to Scripture. It's why
we need to know how to utilize Scripture and read it and understand
it. When a person disobeys the Lord and follow untruths, they
are unregenerate. It doesn't mean that we can't
be deceived. But when people reject truth after being corrected,
they are not following after Christ. One cannot be filled with the
Spirit of God and reject the teaching of God. The apostles were sent by God.
Jesus is God, sent by God. They all teach the truth of the
words of God. And those who belong to Him listen, as we'll see in
chapter 10. They listen to the voice of Christ. They know the
voice of their Savior. And they believe in what He says.
And we must hold fast to the truth of Scripture. For when
we reject it, we are rejecting the living Word. We are rejecting
Jesus Christ. We see that as we went through
our study in 2 Thessalonians, where it says in chapter 2, verse
9, that the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan
with all power and false signs and wonders in order, listen
to this, that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth
but had pleasure in unrighteousness. That says that God will, through
Satan, empower him to perform miracles and to teach the Scripture
in such a way that it will twist the minds of unbelievers, that
they will follow after the lie. When is that happening? It's
happening today. It was happening in the days of Jesus. It was
happening in the days of Paul. The Pharisees were the fathers
of such things. You hear that? The Jews are the
fathers of satanic doctrine, using Scripture and using the
name of Yahweh in order to perpetrate it. So how should we look at
Israel as lost, unregenerate people that need to hear the
Gospel? We should not cater to Judaism. We should not cater
to the promises, a temporal picture of promises to Abraham, and political
promises. We should look to see them come
to faith in Christ. The reason so many people refuse
to believe, they refuse to learn the truth, they refuse to be
subject to the exposition of Scripture, is because they profess
Christ, but in their flesh they are utterly lost. and they want
the glory of their own path to righteousness. In the end, even
if deceived, it is because man prefers the lie over the truth,
because they prefer the temporal glory of their own fleshly allure. They prefer their glory over
the glory of God. And I'm not making that up. We
see it here. We also see it in John 12 where
the Gospel writer says, Many believed in Jesus that day, but
dared not confess it, for they loved the glory, that comes from
man rather than the glory that comes from God. These Jews have
not been converted, but we who believe the gospel of grace,
we do so by the power of His mercy, by the power of His Spirit.
And in His power, we cast off the ambitions of this world.
We cast off the desire to be self-gloried. We no longer peer
into the depths of what I would say human guile, and we no longer
wander lost in the paths of self-glory. We no longer take these steps. We no longer pursue these passions. We consider our present place
the greatest gift by the greatest of givers, and that no striving
with anything in us in any direction will ever suffice except through
the cross of Christ we will be made. Righteous. That's the only
way. These Jews could not believe
they were religious models of their day, yet they refused grace,
they refused the gospel, they refused Jesus Christ, the imputation
of righteousness. The mindset that this man, Jesus,
would be their key to life made them sick. In verses 45, 46,
and 47, listen to these words. They already thought Jesus was
accusing them, so in their hearts they were thinking, This man
is an accuser. He's trying to tear us away. You know that one
of the greatest apologetics, that means defense, when someone
is a heretic or a false teacher or a false convert, is they believe
that when someone talks to them kindly about the truth, that
they're being persecuted. They're being evangelized. But
they call it persecution. And then they want to say, well,
so-and-so is trying to... So my persecution is proof that
I'm a child of God. No, it's not. It's not. That's why we as the
believers, we must be gentle and respectful when we teach.
We must be kind and long-suffering and patient. And we must endure
much persecution and much evil. This is the words of Paul, almost
directly to Timothy. We must endure much evil so that
God may grant them repentance and help them escape the snare
of the devil who has captured them to do His will. There is
no place in the body of Christ for poor attitudes, sharpness,
anger, maliciousness, slander. There's no place for that. It is not funny when someone
speaks a false truth and we make a meme about that false truth
and laugh at it. It is not funny that there are
so many who are going to stand in judgment and live in an eternal
hell. It is not a joke. It is not something
that the church, the true children of God, the sheep of Christ,
should be engaged in laughing at. We should be repulsed by
the humor of unbelief because it isn't funny. And I stand before
you guilty of having laughed at such things. Because quite
honestly, some of them are very It's humorous. But when we kick
the can down to the wall and we see what it really is we're
up against, we're up against the war of all wars. That the
devil, by the purpose of God, is blinding the eyes of unbelievers
in order that they cannot see the glory of Christ. But the
power of God, who is light, has given us this light. And we then
can proclaim, as Paul says, who says, let light shine out of
darkness, has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We proclaim
Christ and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness
will not overcome it. We don't laugh at darkness. And
these men that come to my mind when I say these things, by the
mercy of God, they're not in our fellowship. For if they were,
they'd be sitting on this bench right now and I'd be doing the
first time ever a sinner's bench in a public place because it
makes me sick. Let us pray for them, not hate
them. Let us pray for them, knowing
that if it were not for God's mercy, we would just not believe. Jesus says He wasn't going to
accuse them, but that Moses would. And that if they say they believe
the Scripture, then they would have believed Moses, for Moses
wrote of Him. And that if we can't believe
the Scripture, then how can we believe in Him? I'll preach those
verses next week. Let's pray and we're going to
take the Lord's table. Father, it is overwhelming sometimes. We all want to be the defender
of Your name. Lord, we don't need You don't
need mere humans to take up the banner of keeping You on the
throne. Father, for You are on the throne
forever. So let us subject ourselves to
the power of Your mercy, to the power of Your glory, to the power
of Your Word, and do that which You've called us to do in such
a way that through it all, when those who have been captured
by the devil and blinded by his work come to faith and come to
light, and come to life, Father, that You get all the praise and
all the glory and all the honor, that no man can look to any of
us, no woman can say, oh, that is the person who taught me to
love my Savior. No, Lord, let us all do those
things as an evangelist so that You are glorified in them all. And Father, not only in reaching
the lost, but in securing Your church. We pray that You would just do
the work that You purposed to do. But Father, in Your mercy,
Lord, would You see the lost among us? Would You look into
our homes and in our communities? Would You look into the culture
in which we live? And would You see that not only
are there many who live in a worldly fashion that seem to be lost
without hope, that have no bearing spiritually, but Father, there
are so many more, Lord, who claim to be Yours, who are no more
Yours. no more yours than the devil
himself, except that they be objects of wrath. Lord, would
You empower us to have faith that is undying so that we might
believe Your Word and trust in You. As we take of these elements,
Father, these mere crackers and juice, Father, I pray that we
would just remember and be reminded the powerful truth of the cross
of Christ. What You have done to secure
our redemption, Lord, is ineffable. So for all of eternity, as we
sit at the feet of our Savior, we will learn the truth of these
things. And we love You, and we praise
You, and we pray these things in His name, because You have
loved us first. In Jesus' name, Amen.