John 2, 13 through 3, 7. The
Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
In the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep
and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. And making a whip
of cords, He drove them all out of the temple with the sheep
and the oxen. And he poured out the coins of
the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those
who sold the pigeons, take these things away. Do not make my father's
house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that
it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. So the
Jews said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things?
Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days
I will raise it up again. The Jews then said, it has taken
46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three
days? But he, Jesus, was speaking about the temple of his body.
When, therefore, he was raised from the dead, his disciples
remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture
and the word that Jesus had spoken. Now, when he was in Jerusalem
at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the
signs that he was doing. But Jesus, on his part, did not
entrust himself to them, because he knew all people. and needed
no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what
was in a man. Now there was a man of the Pharisees
named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus
by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher
come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless
God is with him. Jesus answered him, Truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can
a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into
his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot
enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not
marvel that I say to you, You must be born again. Let's pray. Father, Your Word is true. It
reveals Your heart. It reveals the reality of who
we are. And Father, it reveals to us
the severity of who You are in relation to who we are. And most importantly, Lord, there
is a good news to be heard this day. A good news that you have
done something powerful to overcome the darkness of the human race. To overcome the darkness of the
souls of the heart of your people, who without your grace and mercy
would perish in their sins. So Lord, I pray that as we hear
this word this morning, that we would be encouraged. that
we would be equipped to do the work of the ministry, that we're
called to every day, that we would become more intimate as
a people, understanding that everything we are in life directly
affects each other. Father, I pray that you would
grow us deep in the knowledge of grace, deep in the knowledge
of your mercy, deep in the knowledge of your Word, and deeply in love
with each other. As we worship, as we minister,
And as we go about this life, for the sake of Your great name.
Lord, we pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. John's Gospel does not waste
any time creating the kaiism or the pattern in which it's
written. If we see in the introduction,
the prologue of those first few verses, we see the outline of
the entirety of the text. And then we start to see Jesus
calling disciples And we see them following after Him as He
commands them to follow Him. Then we start to see Jesus' ministry
as He comes to the wedding at Cana. And He does a miracle there
and those who had believed in Him, their faith is strengthened
by the sign that He performed. Then He goes and performs another
sign in the temple with the people of His own, who had the oracles,
who knew His coming was here, at the feast in Jerusalem, which
was the feast of all feasts, the feast of Passovers, which
pointed to Christ from the very beginning, which pointed to the
Lamb of God, whose blood would take away the sins of the world.
And there was Jesus on His 18th Passover as a Jewish man, standing
the Lamb of God, and yet the whole totality of the nation
of Israel was blind to see who He was. And He gave them the
sign that came straight from their own Scripture. And they
dared ask Him, what sign do You bring to do these things? What
sign do You bring? And so we see some believing.
We see the sign of the wine being used to strengthen the faith
of the disciples. We see the sign of the temple
cleansing to show the outward response of the natural man,
even the religious and the zealous. And as we see the latter part
of chapter 2, it is really the beginning of chapter 3. Verse
23 is the beginning of the thought of John's writing going into
the dialogue with Nicodemus. So this is why we always fuss
sometimes about where the numbers are, but they've been there for
centuries, so we're not going to change them now. When we change
the hymnal numbers, it rocked our world, so much less that
we will not change the verse numbers of Scripture. But this is the beginning of
an explanation. And this is how John's written
his gospel, is that he will give a broad picture of something. For example, many believe in
the name of Jesus because of the signs that he performed,
but Jesus himself did not, I will paraphrase this as its meaning,
did not believe in them. For He knew all men, and He knows
what is in man." So what we see here is we see Jesus going to
the Jews and they reject Him. We see the large context of many
believing and then we see a personal dialogue that Jesus will have
with an individual. The same thing will happen in
John chapter 4 and 5 and 6 and so on, all the way through John
chapter 12. We will see this broad view of
the expressed consensus of the world, which is what John uses,
the world, and totality, which is always negative in John's
understanding and use of the term, that it's a totality of
human depravity, the totality of human lostness, the totality
of human inability, the totality of the objects of wrath, the
totality of judgment pending upon the world, And beloved,
we are not of the world. We are not of the world, for
Christ has snatched us out of the world. So don't forget these
truths. But Jesus, as I've said already
twice, turned the water to wine and created a stronger faith.
His sign in the temple brought about a humanistic rejection
of who they knew He was. I mean, think about that. This
is last week's message. They hated the fact that Jesus was
Messiah. So instead of confessing that,
that which they knew was true, they rejected it, and they asked
for more signs. And then Jesus did many other
signs. Look at verse 23. We will unpack these next few
verses, peeking over into chapter 3, but not going there fully
until next week. Now, when he was in Jerusalem,
he was at the Passover feast. Remember, this is where he's
come from. He's gone. He went to Cana. He went there,
then to Galilee, then to Jerusalem. So on his way to Jerusalem, he
stopped in to Galilee for this wedding. Now he's in Jerusalem. He cleanses the temple while
he's there. causing havoc. Friends, you think social media
gets the word spread? I can promise you, I can promise
you Facebook couldn't have touched what happened this day in Jerusalem
when Jesus went in there and tipped over tables and kicked
people out and shoot out animals and ruin people's livelihoods.
I mean, if somebody gets a little inebriated in town and runs into
a light pole and runs out without his clothes on, the whole world
knows about it. Oh, remember that crazy guy that
ran down the street acting crazy? Everybody knows about it. Quickly.
It's talked about at the barbershop. It's talked about at the beauty
salon. It's talked about at the cafe. It's talked about at the
family restaurant. It's talked about at the table
at home. Then it's talked about with friends at church. It's
talked about with kids at school. So without even the powerful
quickness of social media, things spread. So here is Jesus in this
day where He's just been, I don't know, a little agitated. And
people are probably saying, who does this man think He is? He's
coming here and He's disrupted the temple services. He's disrupted
our Passover. But yet He was there just the
same. And the Scripture says that there were many signs that
He did that are not recorded. Many signs. As a matter of fact,
we see John writing the idea that if everything that Jesus
ever did and said was written, that the world could not contain
the pages. Brothers and sisters, that is
not hyperbole. That means it's not an exaggeration
to make you go, wow, that's a lot. Like I could eat a horse. I had
a person, she was an engineer, I said that one time, and she
looked at me so puzzled, she goes, you really eat horse? I
said, no sweetie, that's a figure of speech. But it's not a figure
of speech. How many millions and millions
and millions and millions of pages? How many people did Jesus
talk to? How many miracles did He perform?
We don't know. But the Scripture says that there
would not be enough volumes in the cosmos to hold the reality
of what Jesus has said and done. And you think about the commentary
and the volumes that have been produced and published passionately
throughout. I'm not talking about contemporary
publishing, where you can slap a cool cover on a book and write
the same garbage that you wrote 10 years ago and it's a New York
Times bestseller. I'm not talking about that. I'm
talking about just deep commentary and thought. reflection, meditation,
focused writing on what Jesus has revealed to us through Scripture,
there is an insurmountable, insurmountable pile of published writings about
what the Scripture has said. So how much more so is there
to learn about Christ? How much more so is there to
every day we get up and if we only read about Jesus turning
the water into wine, we would never see the end of the truths
that are revealed there doctrinally as it teaches and theologically
as it shows us the face of God. The same is true here. So put
yourself in the shoes of a first century Jew for just a minute,
under the oppressive hand of Rome. You have no government,
you have no power, but you can somewhat worship. And Jesus tears up the most spiritual
week of your year. He was not a beloved person. Church. Jesus was not loved. The world as a whole has never
loved the Christ. His own people hated Him. And as we'll see in John 4, when
His people reject Him, the maggots of society receive Him. And that's par for the course
for Jesus' earthly ministry. The pious, the righteous, those
who can see, The religious, those who walk according to the right
standard of the law, they always rejected Jesus. But yet, the
ill, the sick, the blind, the poor, the wicked, those who live in debauchery,
they came to see Jesus for who He was. And all of this took place just
this little bit during that week of Passover. And if we take the
Scripture, last week I started out the message talking about,
was that Wednesday night? I think it might have been Wednesday
night. Context and pretext. It was Wednesday, sorry. Understanding
that a proper hermeneutic, that's how we interpret Scripture, must
be approached from a contextual point of view. In other words,
if we want to know what the Bible means in John's Gospel, we must
get the meaning from John's Gospel. We must hear how the language
goes together and makes sense. That's called syntax. That's
how it goes together and makes sense. And then we can understand. Let me show you an example of
a pretext. That means not out of context.
We just take a little piece of a sentence and we create an entire
system on it. Look at verse 23. Now, he was
in Jerusalem at the Passover feast. Many believed in his name
when they saw the signs that he was doing. Now see, an improper
interpretation of that text is to take that verse away from
its context. It's to take that specific little
tiny element out of the recipe and say, look here, we've got
cake when all I've got really is a handful of flour. And some people would like to
take that verse, because that's all they do is read a verse list,
or use a computer software to find a keyword, and then they
build a sermon based on the keywords that they find, which is blasphemous. And they would actually say,
see, Jesus did signs, and signs brought people to salvation. Okay? If we cut everything out,
John chapter 1 and all up to verse 24 chapter 2, we cut it
out and blot it out and we blot out verses 24 all the way through
chapter 13 verse 1. Yes, we're right. We're right. Jesus did signs, many people
got saved. Well, don't you hear that all the time today? Well,
people got saved, man, they saw God move. You didn't see God
move if you didn't hear His Word preached in context. That isn't
God, that's Satan moving. That's the God of this world
moving. That's the emotions of the demonic moving. This is the
powers and the principalities of darkness causing the emotional
uprising of people saying, well, I met with God, or I felt God,
or I did this, and people are weeping and crying, and oh, and
celebrating, and they never, ever, ever stand up from that
and share the Christ of Scripture because they've never met Him
to start with. And so they go and they share the experience,
they share the high that they receive, they share the vision
that they saw, and all the while they draw other people into the
demonic. You see, we see God when we hear
His Word in context. We are empowered by the Holy
Spirit who is God when the Word of God is brought to us. Either
through someone teaching, or we reading, or hearing, whatever
means through which it's transmitted, it is given to us and we have
experienced God in spirit and in truth. But we're not going
to misinterpret this. Because the very idea that this
is written here is that Jesus has done two signs and He's done
some more signs, and people have believed in His name because
of the signs, and what we need to understand is that their faith
was ineffectual. What's that mean? They believed
it with all of their heart, with all of their soul, with all of
their mind. They knew it with every fiber
of their being that Jesus was Messiah. They understood with
perfect grasp, better than we do, all the prophetic fulfillment
of who Jesus was standing before them during this Passover feast,
yet they were still bound for the eternal judgment of God and
His righteousness. Well, that's a lot to say in
that text. You really have imparted a lot
there. I've just read a little bit ahead. But... See that verse 24? But... And that's a big but. That got
the kids' attention. But Jesus... So here's the thing. Many believed in His name because
of His signs. But Jesus... But Jesus, on His
part, did not entrust himself to them. Let's unpack that for
a second. Let's go back to John 1 in our
brains. That's why I want you to read this continually. Read
it every day. It'll take you 90 minutes if
you listen to it. John 1, all who received him,
who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the
children of God, who were born not of the will of the mind,
the decision of the mind, blood, or the decision of man, or the
will of man, but of God. But of God. And you know why
that rubs people the wrong way? Because the very point of what
happened in the Garden of Eden It's a reflection of the very
point of eternity past, which is sort of oxymoronic, when Lucifer stood before God
and decided he was good enough and glorious enough to stand
upon his own self. And he tempted Eve, and Eve was
deceived. Adam was not deceived. People don't like that. You're
always picking on women. No, Eve was deceived. Adam willfully sinned against
God. Eve was tricked. Adam was told by God not to eat
that. Adam sort of related on to Eve and as they're standing
there and she's deceived, he's like, sounds good to me, let's
do it. And when people don't like God's
mercy and grace and sovereign gospel, it's because they want
to be God. What does it mean to be God as
a human being? I am the captain of my own ship. I am the one
who sails my own destiny. I make my choices. Where there's
a will, there's a way. All this other hubbub that's
good for business, and entrepreneurialism, but not for salvation. I'm a firm believer that you
need to make goals and go after them, if the Lord wills. I'm
a firm believer that you ought to have a positive attitude when
it comes to approaching life. You ought to not be just a pessimist. I cannot be a pessimist because
of the gospel. But the world shouldn't be a
pessimist anyway. Nobody likes it. But friends, when it gets down
to the end of the road, when we kick that can all the way
back to the brick wall, what is left is that men hate God's
supremacy over him. I want you to think about that. And all of us are going, no I
don't. Yes you do. If you hate the gospel of sovereignty,
you hate the God of heaven. If there is something in you
that's powerful enough, that's good enough, that's awesome enough,
that's enabled enough to come to God and tell Him what He's
going to do to save you, and that you followed the prescription
for salvation, therefore God must check you off the list,
or worse, heresy, add you to the book of life. You hate the
God of heaven, for the God of heaven is a gracious God, and
all human beings deserve His eternal judgment. We all deserve
wrath. But before the foundations of
the world, God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit,
one God, He purposed to save a people for Himself through
His hand, through His Son, through which we have redemption. Why? Because He is glorified
in it. And we don't come and there's
a difference, beloved, in saying, man, I just don't understand
this. Good, me either. Let's just keep working through
it. But it's another thing to say, I hate that. It's another
thing to say, I hate that. Even when I see it, I hate it.
Let me find some proof texts. Let me find some pretexts so
I can disprove your context. You see the problem? Let me find
that three little words like pos, all. Oh, oh, see that word,
all. Put it in context. It's when we hate God and we
don't see it. Why? Because we're blind. The
world is blind. The world wants a religion and
a spiritual focus that takes us and keeps us on the throne
of our destiny. People believed But Jesus did
not believe them. And He did not reveal Himself
to them. Why? Because what they believed
in their mind had no effect at all on Jesus. And Jesus knew
that they were sincere. You ever contemplated what sincerity
is? You ever thought about what it
means to be really sincere? Have you ever been so sincere
and so passionate about something and been sincerely and passionately
wrong? That's why it's not a good apologetic
to share the gospel with someone who says, well, I just don't
know if I can believe that. Well, what if I'm right and what if you're
wrong? You know what? For luck's sake,
I'll choose what you say. What have I got to lose if I
say yes to Jesus? And if you're wrong, hey, we'll
all play cards in the afterlife. If you're right, woo, we'll worship.
That's not salvation. And sometimes people think, what?
And I hear it. People tell me, you're just,
you're laboring this point too much. Friends, just because we
have in our documents, and in our understanding of our Articles
of Confession, what I believe is the right truth of Scripture. It does not mean that every one
of us grasps it salvifically. It doesn't mean that everyone
who is a member of this church, even by profession, even by action,
is truly born of God. It does not mean that even we
who are born of God are certainly mature and ready to just set
it all on the shelf and be done with it. Because I don't know
about you, but if God would give me 400 years in this life, I
pray that He doesn't. But if He did, I wouldn't still
scratch the surface of Scripture. We might know what something
means, but if we can't answer why, It matters. So what? Jesus did not entrust Himself
to these people. He did not believe in them. The
Light, who is Jesus Christ in the Gospel, shines out in the
darkness. Where is the darkness? You're going to see it in John
3. It's going to be about a month before we see the darkness. explained. Let me give you a preview. The
darkness is the blindness of humanity. The darkness is the
depravity of humans. The darkness is unbelief. That's what darkness is. The
light has shined in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome
it, will not overcome it. 2 Corinthians 4, veiled, we can't
see. For the God of this world has
blinded the eyes of unbelievers in order to keep them from believing. But God who said let light shine
out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give us the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
So when we understand that this darkness will never win, We need
to ask ourselves, well, who are going to be called out of darkness? And John 3 will answer that for
us. John 3 will teach us in a couple of weeks that those who the Father
wishes, by the will of God, will be brought out of darkness. that
as we teach the Gospel to our ears, as someone else shares
the Gospel to us, as the Word of God is imparted and taught
and explained, the Spirit of God blows where it wishes. Chapter
3, verse 8. And it does that which it intends
to do sovereignly. Sovereignly. And the argument always usually
is in evangelical circles, why is that necessary to teach? Because
it comes straight from text like verse 24. Many believed, but they remained
in darkness. And though the light shined before
them, the signs were not sufficient for salvation. The Spirit is
necessary for salvation. How do I receive the Spirit?
You've got to hear the Word. And you've got to believe. And
sometimes, sometimes, we've got to understand that the Word of
God needs to shake our faith. The Word of God needs to shake
our complacency. We have a love affair with salvation
in America. We have a love affair with salvation
experiences in America. Those are our idols. which is
robbing glory from Jesus Christ who is our God and our Savior. We would rather share the experience
of what we did to get what God has rather than what God has
done on our behalf. We would rather say we represent
the work of God because of what we've accomplished in it rather
than to say Jesus Christ represented me on the cross and represented
me from a baby to a man. in obedience to the Father. Jesus
Christ either represented us in His obedience, and His death,
and His resurrection, or we are still in darkness. Many people believed, but it
was not a new birth. Because the new birth is the
work of God, as we'll see. The work of His will. What does
this belief look like, though? What does this belief look like
were these people who believed? Well, we'll see it. Nicodemus
comes and says, I've heard it this morning already, right?
We know that you are a teacher come from God. For no one can
do those things that you do except God be with him. Now, I ask this
question, what is it that Nicodemus truly confessed there. Who were
they waiting for to come from God? What other person was to
be come from God? Who has ever come from God except
the one who was with God? You see, prophets of old weren't from
God, they were sent by God. God spoke through them. Jesus
Christ is God. with us. There's a big difference. There's a big difference. What
can we learn about our present Christianity from this text?
I'll tell you what we can learn in brief. We can say that this
belief, in a sense, is just a decision. It's just an action. It's just
a work, whereby somebody goes, you know, that makes good sense.
I think I'll do that. You know, I heard somebody say, if I rubbed
coconut oil on my feet, I'd grow three inches. So let's rub coconut
oil on our feet. Some of you are going, I'd never
do that. Yes, you would. We'd all would. We'd be the coconut
greasy feeted bunch of folks we'd ever seen. Because if we
believed it, even if we had to hide it, we'd do it. Same thing
is true. People would make a decision.
Wow, Jesus, he's definitely from God. Wow, he might be Messiah.
Look at these disciples that are following around. He must
be Messiah. Let's just follow after Him. Let's go. Let's go."
And Nicodemus is one of these men who believed. The woman in
Sychar is one of these women who believed in her flesh. But
until the Spirit of God birthed her, until the Spirit of God
birthed Nicodemus, until the Spirit of God birthed you and
birthed me, our faith was in vain. Why is it so difficult? because it's out of this world.
The things that are from above are from above. The things that
are of the flesh are of the flesh. And Paul would really pound this
doctrine out. He would say that the natural
man is hostile to God. It hates him. It's at enmity
with God. It cannot seek Him. It cannot
understand Him. It cannot do. Jesus in John 6
will say the same thing that man cannot see and cannot believe. except that God do a work. And
God doesn't do a work to enable. God does the work of saving.
If Jesus is the Savior, He's not the ticket that you've got
to go get. He is the very carriage to life. He is life. He has transferred
us out of the domain of darkness. Snatched us, Paul would say,
into the light of the kingdom of His Son. People everywhere believed on Jesus. Sadly, this
is not taught in Scripture that you can have eternal life by
deciding to follow Jesus. Fanny got it wrong. She didn't write that, correct
me. In John 20, 30 and 31. Now Jesus did many other signs
in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this
book. But these that are written, are written so that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing
you may have life in His name. See, the belief of man in his
own ability is worthless if it's not created by God. The belief
of man is worthless if it is not centered on Christ. The belief
of man is worthless if it is for himself and not for the glory
of Christ. And so what we see is that the
picture of all Jerusalem was that they believed, but they
weren't really believing. They looked, they saw, they absorbed,
and they said, yep, I agree with it. That's not saving faith. Be careful. Put in your trust,
and your faith, and your faith. Your faith must be in Christ.
And if we're shaken by that, if we're disturbed just a little
bit, this is the opportunity for us to rest in the sufficiency
of Jesus. What must I do to be saved? You
must believe that Jesus did it all. You must put your faith
in Jesus who did it all. You must put your trust in God
who accomplished salvation. There are no criteria through
which man must meet certain points or positions in order to have
salvation. God has established all that
is necessary for salvation to be received by faith alone. But Jesus did not entrust Himself
to them. He did not believe in them. He would not accept their
faith as genuine. He would not disclose Himself
to them. He would not let them enter into the circle of His
entourage, if you will, and just start hanging out because they
professed that they believed. But yet there was one that He
did allow. Why? So that Scripture might
be fulfilled. But even Judas Iscariot, Jesus
did not entrust Himself to Judas. Jesus did not give Himself to
Judas. Jesus did not die for Judas. Jesus did not open Judas' eyes. Judas saw this opportunity to
follow after Jesus as an economic success, as a powerful display
of people to see him and say, wow, he's one of Jesus' disciples. I mean, isn't that the way we
think in our culture? Having conversations about pop
culture and different ways in which psychologically people
react and respond to certain things, there's this weird bizarre,
psychotic, I use the word psychotic because I want it to be sort
of stern, experienced, people we've never met, that don't even
know our middle name, that we've never seen, we talked to them
online for a couple of weeks, and they're our best friends.
That is the dumbest thing that ever befell the human race. Dumb. Well, these are my friends. They
are not your friends. You cannot call them to change
your tire ever. They're not your friends. You
cannot say, hey, I'm in town and I'm in trouble. Can I stay
at your house and eat your food? We're not there. The key's under
the mat. They're not your friends. They are inanimate, ambiguous,
faces on a page, words in a comment section. Yes, they may be friendly. Yes, it may be engaging. Beloved,
we don't live Vicariously through ambiguity, we live intimately
in person. Jesus lives with His people intimately
in person. I want you to hear this. I don't want to lose you. And
when it says that He did not entrust Himself to them, He did
not give Himself intimately in person to these people that did
not have saving faith. Because the very idea of saving
faith is that when Jesus exposes and gives Himself personally,
when He entrusts Himself to someone, it is because they are His sheep
and He is their shepherd. John chapter 10. That's the argument. And His argument against the
Jews who say that God is their Father and that they are the
sheep of God. And Jesus says, you're thieves
and robbers to the Jews. You come over the wall, you climb
in, you're standing at the door, and when trouble comes, you run
because you're a hired hand. The sheep know my voice and they
will follow it. And with every fiber of my soul,
I pray that God, through the teaching of His Scripture, would
grow you intimately into Christ, first salvificly, and then mature
you in worship every single moment that we get together. And that
we would not take our Christian faith as just some pin to put
on our lapel. So yep, got it? Got it. We change it every day. Christ
is in us. And the church should be intimate
accordingly. He would not be the shepherd
of the people who do not know His voice. Why? See, it's answered right here,
the latter part of verse 24. Why would Jesus take such a stance?
Because He knew all people. Now we can know that Jesus knows
all people because He is God. Jesus knew Nathanael. Jesus knew
Nicodemus. Jesus knew Simon, as you'll see. But yet, that's not what he's
talking about. It's part of it. Jesus knew all
men. He knows us. Jesus knows the
depths of everything that we are. He knows the frailty of
our faith. He knows the imperfections of
our thoughts. He knows the deep sins that never
grow leaves. that we could hide for the rest
of our days. But He knows them, and He knows
them intimately. And beloved, if you be in Christ
this day, He loves you intimately, which is why He took the knowledge
of your sin, and He put that on Himself. And He took the justice
of God on your behalf. That's good news. I promise you pulpits across
America will be preaching about hurricanes today. Irma is bad and absolutely amazing. It blows my mind. She's not even the swirl in God's
spit sink. You know what I'm talking about?
At the dentist, a little spit sink, when it's going down, it swirls. Irma is nothing. God's eyelash will make bigger
winds than that when it falls off His eyelid. We don't need to take the sublime
and shelve it for the ridiculous. And everything but Christ is
ridiculous in comparison. It's like me coming up here and
taking an hour to talk to you about the history of spectacles. And then relate it to the fact
that just like Jesus, when we put them on, we can see. Would
you put Jesus on? I've done too many youth camps
in my early days. If you want to put Jesus on like
a pair of glasses, come on down. Raise your hand. I see that hand,
young man. I see the hand on the back. I
see you. No peeking. Did you mean it? If you meant
it, stand up. If you really meant it. Hey, if you deny Christ before
men, He'll deny you before the Father. If you really meant it,
come down. Come down. Praise God, all these people
are saved. See them walking out the door? You know the only thing they're
saved from? The humiliation of the continuation of that service.
I almost laughed out loud. No, we don't shove the sublime
on a shelf for the ridiculous. Where's the application at, James? Where's the application? What
am I going to do with the fact that Jesus is an incredible Savior? He's the God of heaven. He is
the light of the world. What am I going to do with that?
What am I going to do with the fact that there's so many people that
believe? Where brothers and sisters at the most worship Him and celebrate
the reality that He has saved you in spite of you. He saved
us without us. He has come against the will
that we have that is broken and marred and depraved, that cannot
come after Him, no matter how ingenious we might think we are.
He has taken over the brokenness of the freedom of the human will,
which is dead in every breath. And He has snatched us into His
bosom through the blood of Jesus. And when we awake to see it,
and to believe by faith, the outcome of all of that forever
is that we celebrate life. That no matter how many ermines
fly over our house, and how many twisters tear down our property,
or how many of our loved ones are dead in the process, we worship
that Christ who is the God of all things, and the Lord of heaven,
and the Lord of earth, and the Lord over the wind, and the Master
of the sea. We have nothing else to look at. but Christ, and we
are glad, and we're at peace. That's the application of teaching
Scripture. That's the application of coming
together as a people. That not only are we learning
it for ourselves, but when we look to the left and we look
to the right, and we gather for the brief moments that we're
here, we can, in the Spirit of our Spirit, by the power of God
the Spirit, We can pray for one another with that knowledge,
knowing that our prayers are effectual, because it's not about
how we pray, or what we do when we pray, or how long or short
we pray, or the words that we use when we pray, but it's about
the faithfulness of God who hears the prayers of the weakest saint
for whom Christ has died. And that is enough, beloved,
to get up and kick our heels, and we don't even need to buy
a Toyota to do it. Old commercial. The world says everything and
all of our joy comes from all of our circumstances. The Scripture
says that Christ is our joy. He knew all men. And He needed
no one to bear witness about man. No one. He didn't need somebody
to come and say, you know, these guys are... You need to know
who they really are. He knew. More importantly, He
didn't need a man to come up and bear witness to Himself,
to Him about Himself. He didn't need somebody to come
and Jesus to look at the man and say, OK, now tell me what
you believe. And here's your petition for membership into
the Kingdom of Heaven. Make sure you get all this doctrine
right. I want you to tell me. Oh, you didn't cross that T right
there. You must not have been thinking about the cross. Sorry. Jesus doesn't have to ask. Jesus
doesn't have to hear your words, beloved. God doesn't have to
hear you say certain things for you to be saved. You don't have to sit there and
give a treatise to Jesus about what you believe about who He
is, and He goes, you know what? You got that right. You're pretty
good. Jesus knows what's in us. Jesus knew what was in these
men. Jesus knew what was in these women. Jesus knew what was in
these children. No one had to tell him what was
in man. He might say, well, what is it?
What's in man? Depravity. Depravity. There have been states
who have passed legislation, who have tried to pass legislation,
making this type of preaching illegal for children to hear.
But the Bible teaches that every, and I'm not exaggerating, look
it up. The Bible teaches that every human being born into this
world is born dead. That we are not good internally.
That we are not worthy to be exalted by our families and by
God. The Bible teaches that man is
eternally corrupted in every fiber of his DNA, every molecule,
every step of life. And that the only worthiness
that man has is if Christ died for that man, in spite of him. That God is
no respecter of persons. He does not look and say, well,
these guys have got it right. Not so much. I'll save these. God saves. And God saves who
He wishes, when He wishes. But He only saves through the
hearing of the Word. Friends, we can say, good job.
I'm proud of you. I'm thankful that you did those
things. You're really doing well in school. You know what? You're a fine young man. You're
a fine young woman. But don't tell your children that they
are good inherently. Don't tell your children that
they're holy and wholesome because they know what is in them too. Jesus knows what is in each of
us. Don't look at me as some pillar
of piety. Just hang out a little bit outside
the stage and you'll see that I'm a human being. By the Lord's
grace, no, I'm not given unto constant sin that I can see. I'm not punching people in the
throat as though I like to joke from time to time. And my anger,
is it the punch or is it the anger that's the sin? It's the
heart that's the sin. No one had to tell Him what was
in a man. He knew. He could peer into the depths of the souls
of human beings. He didn't even peer. I just used that word to
help us understand. He knew. Jesus doesn't look and
go, ha, I got it. He knows. Omniscience means He
knows all things at all times, presently, eternally. God doesn't roll through the
database of the future and go, Oh yeah, I see what's going to
happen there. Oh, interesting. That's not God. That's Greek
mythology. That's not sovereign. That's
pathetic. That's a superpower, not omniscience. What's the difference? Big difference.
Big difference. There are people who teach an
idea of middle knowledge and all these other quantum physics
type things where certain times and certain things, it is wicked
humanistic heresy. And we can debate it and we could
all be friends, but I'm not going to teach anything but a sovereign
God who knows all things at all times, presently. But the cool thing is, Not only
does Jesus know all things about man, He knows all things about
every man, each and every human, each and every thought, each
and every sin. And for that we should shudder.
We should say, wow, God knows me like that? Have you ever tried
to hide from God in your prayers? I mean, you might not recognize
it, but let me give you an example. You're praying and you rearrange
your wording because you don't want to say honestly what you're
saying to God. So you're a little bit more polite
when you're praying. You're not tricking God. He knows
your heart. He's thinking, look at that silly
guy. faking his prayers, trying to
be polite when he's really angry, when he's really hurt, when she's
really broken. We don't have to hide from our
Father. We don't have to hide from our Savior. We don't have
to pretend. Because when we do, we're really
trying to be in control of our righteousness. When we do, we're
really trying to put on a front for somebody else. And quite
honestly, even if we did it well, we wouldn't be putting on a front
for God. He knows us. Acts 15, 8, And God, who knows
the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit,
just as He did to us. God knows the heart. And God
has given us the Holy Spirit. And it's a war, y'all. It's not
like, man, I got sand in my shoes. We live in this flesh, we live
in this fallen world. We live in constant ebb and flow of strong
faith, which really isn't probably strong, and little faith. Sometimes
wonder if we're even saved, or even have belief at all, and
we got, where are we? Sometimes we feel so on fire
for being with the church, and being in the Word, and then something
happens. It's like a light switch. And
we think, man, what have I done? Man, I need to get my life back
together. Anybody want to rededicate your
life? I see that hand. I mean, you see? Everything that
needs to be fixed, we just have hands to raise. That's not the
way it works. There's no prescription in Scripture
for that kind of stuff. What we do is we cry out to a
God who knows us intimately, and we say, have mercy! God,
you know where I am! I hate myself! I hate you! Sometimes. Oh, you'd never say that to God.
Well, then stop lying to Him. When things happen in our life,
sometimes our flesh hates God. But we are filled with the Spirit.
We're sealed. It is the guarantee of our inheritance that God the
Holy Spirit indwells us. And it is not, as I said just
a minute ago, like sand in your shoe that's an annoyance. It's
a pure-out war. It's a battle. It's a battle
to be polite to your co-worker, to your spouse, to your children.
It's a battle to have joy. It's a battle to have a positive
attitude. It's a battle to get in the Word of God. It's war
to come to church for my family. And it starts like Thursday.
It used to be Saturday. Then they get older, it's like
Friday. Then they get teenagers, like Thursday. What happens? Name it. Just close your eyes
and throw a dart. It'll hit some problem. Somewhere. Or me. Which is a problem. Somewhere. It's a war and it's something
that will go on until the day Christ returns and subdues the
enemy eternally into judgment and recreates our flesh that
there is no corruption in us. So though we may shudder with
the knowledge that God knows us intimately and we cannot hide
from Him, we should rejoice and come bold before the throne and
stand before God because our faith is not in vain, for it
has been worked by God. It has been given as a gift. And He's given us the Spirit.
As Paul teaches in Romans 8, 27, He who searches hearts knows
what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes
with the saints according to the will of God. See, that's
not what we do in our world, is it? That's not what we do
here. When we find ourselves really
in the midst of it all, we forget little things like this. We forget the truth of who we
once were. Maybe some of us even had a fake
faith, fake belief, false conversion. Maybe some of us have had some
false conversions until today. And sometimes pride keeps us
from even explaining, wow, I see for the first time. And then we might make excuses,
just like Adam made an excuse, just like Eve made an excuse,
just like David made an excuse. Moses made an excuse. Everybody
makes excuses. We all make excuses. But beloved,
we are guilty. But Christ is gracious. And this man named Nicodemus
came and confessed that Christ was from God. And Jesus says,
you cannot see nor enter the kingdom except you be born again. God shows His love for us, and
though while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That's Romans 5, verse 8. Now
what does that tell us? That tells us that there is nothing
we can do as a sinner to warrant the application of Christ's death
to our sins. Let me say that again. There's nothing we can do in
our fallen nature as a sinner to warrant Christ's death on
the cross for our sins. We can't say, well, what I've
done makes that effectual for me. What I did makes that work
for me. Christ died for you, and you
believe in Him. You believe the Gospel, which
is the message that Christ has satisfied the wrath of God against
you. Listen. You believe the Gospel, who is
Jesus Christ, who is the righteousness of God, who is the Creator of
the universe. You believe the Gospel that is
taught to us through Scripture, and you have faith that God has
certainly saved you through the work of Jesus. And everything
else that takes place in life is part of the journey of our
faith. has no bearing on its efficacy,
that it works. Christ knows. So I'll leave you
with this. Beloved, you cannot fake out
Jesus. And for we who are truly in Christ,
church, we who are in Christ, you, who are in Christ. We need
to be ready to take this gospel to the world. We need to be ready
to take this gospel to the person who comes over to give us our
paper, walking the dog as we walk, as we pump or don't pump
gas, as we check out at the grocer, I've probably had 200 people
in the community this week who asked me about the weather. And I wish I could say I have
200 gospel, 200 times I've shared the gospel. Not quite, maybe
50. You want to learn how to do that,
we'll show you. But ultimately, if you take what
you've learned this morning and just share it. Memorize some
Scripture and proclaim it. But most of all, pray. Pray that
the Lord would use you. Pray that the Lord would seal
and secure your conscience and your peace and your heart and
your mind. Beloved, I pray that there be
no excuses for any of us at the day of judgment, but a single
proclamation that Christ is my salvation. Christ is my righteousness. Children, Jesus and what He did
on the cross is the only way you can escape the wrath of God.
Let's pray. How true it is. that Your grace
is powerful. How amazing Your love. Lord,
we pray for our church, that You would continue to just work
in us through Your Spirit, Father, to make us a holy people, sealing us for that day when
we shall be, as You call us, righteous. as we trust all and
only in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not in us, but
in Him. Father, we thank You that we've
been able to gather together this day. And for those who are
not here, for preparation, for illness, for travel, Lord, we
pray for them. We miss them. We long to see
them. And Lord, I pray particularly
as an elder in this flock, That You would break down the barrier. That You would break down the
barrier, Lord, that seems to keep some, some of us from being
intimate with each other. Lord, that we would not hide
our needs. That we would not hide our needs
for prayer. that we would not share our hearts when we're grieved
and when we rejoice, that we would not hide those things,
Lord. Help us to be honest and to be true, Lord, to create in us a heart
that You would be praised for and that Your glory would be
seen as we share the Gospel and as we live by faith in the Gospel.
Lord, save Your people. Save the lost. And use this season
for that opportunity. In Jesus' name.