Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
program. I hope that this program will be a blessing to you. If
you'd like to follow along in your Bibles, I'm going to be
preaching from John chapter 15. I'm going to start in verse 16
of John 15 and go through the rest of this chapter. The title
of the message is The Church in the World. The Church in the
World. Many times when people talk about
the church, they talk about different denominations, or they're talking
about buildings here and there, where people meet to worship
in whatever way they think is right. But the church The true
church is, in the Bible, is called the bride of Christ, it's the
vineyard of God. We talked about this last week
and in the first part of this chapter where Christ said, I'm
the vine, you're the branches. Branches, that's his church.
The word church itself means called out, called out of the
world, and that's why I'm gonna deal with here about the church
in the world. those individuals whom God chose
before the foundation of the world and gave to Christ. They're called the elect of God.
That's His church. God chose them. And God justified
them. Christ was made to be their surety. That means their sins were imputed,
charged to Christ, His righteousness to them. They are justified,
forgiven of all their sins, and made righteous in God's sight.
How? They are the ones whom Christ redeemed on the cross. That's
the just ground of their justification. Christ had all their sins imputed
to him and he died for those sins. He redeemed them with his
precious blood. And in that transaction, he paid
the debt in full for his church. He mentioned that, Paul mentions
that in Acts chapter 20, talking about the, to the Ephesian elders,
the church of God, which he redeemed with his own blood. And they're
called his sheep in John chapter 10. The good shepherd gives his
life for the sheep. And also, as I said, the word
church means called out. They are those who are not only
redeemed by the blood, but they're regenerated by the Holy Spirit. You see, you must be born again
or you cannot see or enter the kingdom of heaven. That's another
name for the church, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.
And so, you must be born again. We fell in Adam, ruined by the
fall, and were born dead spiritually in trespasses and sins. And because
Christ redeemed us with His precious blood, He sends His Spirit to
regenerate us and convert us through the Word of God, through
the Gospel. And that's the new birth. And
that's the church. And so they're called out of
the world and now, whereas before their relationship with the world
was one of fellowship and love of the world in whatever way.
Now listen, to say I love the world is not necessarily to say
I love the world's immorality. Now there are people who do love
the world's immorality and they're partners in immorality, human
immorality as men say it. But to love the world can be
to love the world's religion, love the world's religious activities
and all of that. But when God saves you and calls
you out of the world, you are in the world, but you're not
of the world, you have a different relationship with the world. Now, before I get into John 15
here, we're gonna look at verse 16. I wanna quote a verse from
Galatians chapter six, and it's verse 14. And Paul is showing his new relationship to the world. And he says it this way. He says
in Galatians 6, 14, God forbid that I should glory or boast
or have confidence save or accept in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ. the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ, the glorious person and finished work of Christ,
by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. In other words, Paul, when he
was brought by the Holy Spirit to glory only in the glorious
person and finished work of Christ, his blood, his righteousness
alone, When he was brought there, he looked upon the world which
he loved before the religious world as being crucified, dead. But now the world looked at him
as being dead. And you know Paul had many enemies
after he came to saving knowledge of Christ. Now that's what Christ
is talking about here in John chapter 15. Look at verse 16,
he's talking to his disciples. He says, you have not chosen
me, but I have chosen you and ordained you. that you should
go and bring forth fruit. Now, what he's talking about
is the preaching of the gospel by which God brings forth converts. Now the preachers, the apostles,
the ministers, the evangelists, the preachers, we don't save
anybody. We can't save anybody. We can't
even save ourselves. But God does through the preaching
of the gospel. It pleased the Lord by the foolishness
of preaching. to save them that come to him. And the gospel is the power of
God unto salvation. So he says, I've chosen you to
go out and bring forth fruit that your fruit should remain,
that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he
may give it to you. And he's talking about salvation
there. He's not talking about just all of our desires and our
wants as if he's some kind of genie in a bottle. He says in
verse 17, these things I command you that you love one another.
What he means by that is yes, love one another, but it's not
just a Hallmark card or a romantic notion. You stick together in
the fellowship of the gospel. That's the love that he's talking,
that's divine love. You take sides with one another
against the world. The world will persecute you.
The world will hate you, but you stick together. Don't you
side with the world against the church, but you stick with the
true church against the world. Love one another. And that does
involve helping one another when in need, feeding one another,
visiting one another, all of that, all that's included. But
the mainstay of this love, and understand this now, the mainstay
of this godly love is that we who are true believers, in opposition
to the world, we're to stick together in the fellowship of
faith. Now we may not be together in politics. We may not be together
in sports. We may like one team and you
may like another. We may not be together in what we like to
eat or drink. But in the gospel, we are all
100% glued together. The church. And the world is our enemy in
that sense. Now, we're to go out into the
world and preach the gospel and pray for those who listen that
God will bring them to faith in Christ. That's the fruit of
the vine. But now listen to what he says
here. He says in verse 18, if the world hate you, you know
that it hated me before it hated you. Why? Why when people claim to be Christian, claim to follow Christ. Why would
they ever expect the world, the immoral world, the religious
world, the atheistic world, whatever, any part of the fallen, sin-cursed,
unregenerate world, why would you expect them to love you and
embrace you in this truth? All right? People say, well,
before I preach the gospel to them, they need to know that
I love them. Well, now listen to me. We believers are commanded
by God to love one another and to love our neighbor as ourself,
even our enemies. But that doesn't mean that the
enemy's gonna recognize it as love, especially when we tell
him the truth. Now listen to what he says. He
says, if the world hate you, you know that it hated me before
it hated you. Now Jesus Christ was love incarnate. And yet the world hated him.
And you know who hated him the most? The religious world. The Pharisees, the scribes, the
zealots. They all hated him. Now why did
they hate him so much? Well, we're gonna get to that.
Just hold on to that. But we who are true disciples of Christ
who preach the gospel that the world hates, and that's your
key there, we ought not expect them to receive us and be happy
with us and embrace us. And if they do, it may be that
because we're compromising the gospel to gain their love. That's what they call a spurious
love. In other words, I want them to
like me and embrace me before I tell them the truth. Or you
may not believe the truth yourself. You compromise it. Well, he says
the world hated him. And as I said, The publicans
and the sinners, he ate with them, he talked with them. They
were lost now and he told them the truth. He didn't hold back
the truth. But the Pharisees and the scribes,
they hated him. Hated him without a cause because
he exposed their deeds as being evil, but hold on to that. He
says, verse 19, if you were of the world, the world would love
his own. In other words, if you were in
fellowship, united with the world in their thoughts, in their religion,
in their philosophy, in their ways, they'd love you. Because
the world loves its own. But because you're not of the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the
world hateth you. And he says in verse 20, remember
the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than
his Lord, If they've persecuted me, they will also persecute
you. If they've kept my saying, they
will also keep yours also. In other words, if they persecuted
Christ because of what he told them, what do they think you're
gonna do to you because of what you tell them? Now, thank God
that we live in a country where we have a constitution that keeps
us safe, but that still doesn't mean the world's gonna love us.
They may not be able to touch us physically and harm us physically,
But they can think it in their minds, can't they? In their hearts.
So he says in verse 21, but all these things will they do unto
you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.
But look at verse 22, now here's a key. If I had not come and
spoken unto them, they had not had sin, but now they have no
cloak for their sin. Now what's he talking about?
Well, you know, the Lord Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry,
He went about healing the sick, didn't He? Feeding the hungry. He went about, I mean, He made
the lame walk. He made the deaf hear, the dumb
talk. I mean, He did so many marvelous
things that impressed people. But those things didn't draw
the wrath and hatred of the world. What did? He says, if I had not
come and spoken unto them. And what is it specifically that
he said that drew their wrath and their anger and their hatred
against him? Well, he says here in verse 22,
if I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin,
but now they have no cloak for their sin. Now, they were sinners.
He's not saying they wouldn't have been sinners. What he's
saying is they had a skewed view of sin. and they cloaked it under
religion and self-righteousness, and he exposed it by the gospel
that he preached. Now, if you'll look back in John
chapter three with me, over in John chapter three, you know
he's talking to a man here named Nicodemus, a very religious man. But listen to what he says in
verse 18 of John three. It says, he that believeth on him is not
condemned. He that believes on Christ is
not condemned. Scripture says that. But he that
believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Those who do not
believe are condemned already. Now there he's making a distinction
between those who believe and even those who eventually come
to believe, and those who remain in unbelief and die in their
sins. And he says in verse 19, and this is the condemnation,
that light is coming to the world and men love darkness rather
than light because their deeds were evil. The light of the gospel,
the light of Christ, And he says in verse 20, for everyone that
doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light,
lest his deed should be reproved or discovered or exposed. Now, what he's talking about
here is how the gospel message reveals that the only way a sinner
can be right with God, can be saved, can be justified, is the
righteousness of God, the merits of the obedience unto death of
the Lord Jesus Christ, His righteousness imputed, charged, accounted,
and everything else, everything else, no matter how noble, how
religious, how sincere it is or appears, if it is aimed at
saving us, or keeping us saved, or making us righteous, right
with God, is dead works, even evil deeds. Evil, not because
they're immoral in the sight of men, and not because the people
are insincere, but evil because they deny the glory of God. We've all sinned and come short
of the glory of God. What is the glory of God? Christ
is. His righteousness, the merits
of His obedience unto death, the very righteousness of God
revealed in the gospel. One way. All else is death. All else is evil. That's the light, you see. In
the Bible it tells us, in Acts 17 and verse 31, that God's gonna
judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained
and that he hath given assurance unto all men and that he hath
raised him from the dead. My friend, there's only one way
to God, one way to forgiveness, one way to righteousness, one
way to glory, and that's the merits of the obedience unto
death of Christ. God manifest in the flesh, who
died on that cross to save his people from their sins. And every
other way is a way of death, it's an evil way. And that's
what he's saying here. The way of the Pharisees was
the way of righteousness by works. And they felt like if they did
enough work, they felt like, well, they're descendants of
Abraham, They were circumcised and they
kept the law of Moses and they felt like that those three things
together, that they were okay. But Christ came along and he
spoke the gospel and it removed the cloak of self-righteousness
and religious pride and unbelief and exposed their sins so that
they had no cloak for their sins. And so, verse 23 of John 16,
he that hateth me, hateth my father also. Christ was sent
of the Father to work out and establish the only righteousness
whereby God could be just to justify the ungodly. And it was
through the obedience and to death of Jesus Christ as the
surety, the substitute and the redeemer of his people. And he
got the job done. Now, I preach on this program.
The one way of salvation, many of you may agree with me, many
of you may not. Many of you may be going to churches
where they preach a different gospel. Salvation by grace plus
works, it may be plus baptism, it may be plus perseverance,
whatever. I can tell you right now, if
you're going to a place where they preach that you can be saved
and then lost, you're not preaching the same gospel that this book
preaches. I can tell you that. And those
who believe that Christ died for everybody and it's all up
to you to make the decision and seal the deal. That's salvation
by works, by the works and the will of man. And all it does
is bring forth fruit unto death. And if you're offended by that,
this is what applies to you. You have no cloak for your sin.
Look at verse 24. of John 16, he said, if I had
not done among them the works which none other man did, they
had not had sin, but now they have both seen and hated both
me and my father. You see, the works that Christ
did gave authority and validity to the words that he spoke, that
he was from God. And so it's like I tell people
all the time, you know, if you get mad at me, don't get mad
at me. I'm just preaching the word of God. You've got to take
this up with God. And he says in verse 25, he says,
but this cometh to pass that the word might be fulfilled that
is written in their law, they hated me without a cause. And there he's quoting from the
35th and the 69th Psalm. Well, every word of the gospel
is preached seeking the salvation of sinners. not the hatred and
the wrath of sin, but man by nature, left to himself, will
reject it and hate it. But he says in verse 26 here,
he says, but when the Comforter has come, whom I will send unto
you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth
from the Father, he shall testify of me. He proceeds from the Father
and he points sinners to Christ. points them to Christ for the
forgiveness of sins by His blood alone. Points to Christ for the
justification before God by His righteousness imputed alone.
Points to Christ as the only source of life, the vine. He
says in verse 27, and you also shall bear witness because you've
been with me from the beginning. Now I wanna go down into verse,
in chapter 16 for a few, just a few verses here. And I want
you to notice something here in the first few verses. He says
in John 16 one, these things have I spoken unto you that you
should not be offended. What he's saying there is I'm
telling you this so that when you go out and preach and you
see how the world reacts in their anger, in their hatred, don't
be amazed, don't be surprised, don't be tripped up by that. I remember when I first heard
and came to believe the gospel, I thought it was a message that
everybody would want to hear, but I found out differently.
And that's what Christ is saying. I'm telling you this so that
you won't be amazed and surprised. Verse two, listen to this. They
shall put you out of the synagogues. Yea, the time cometh that whosoever
killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And verse
three, and these things will they do unto you because they
have not known the Father nor me. Did you see that? They'll
throw you out of the synagogues. He didn't say they'll throw you
out of the bars and the brothels and the drug dens. Now maybe
they would, but he's making a point here that's very significant.
He's saying they will throw you out of their religious gatherings,
their worship service. They will not stomach you if
you tell them the truth. If you don't brag on them and
tell them what they want to hear, if you don't validate their experiences,
their testimonies, but you tell them that salvation is of the
Lord, the sovereignty of God, He chose a people before the
foundation of the world gave them to Christ, Christ came to
die for them and they shall be saved and all else will be damned. You tell them that Christ's righteousness
alone saves and preserves and gives life to the people of God,
justifies us before God, that anyone who's either ignorant
of or not submitted to His righteousness, His righteousness imputed is
lost in their sins. They don't know God. They neither
know the Father nor the Son. He said, they'll throw you out
of their religious gatherings. Cause they can't stomach you.
It reminds me of when the Lord, as recorded over in the book
of Luke chapter four, when he went back to his hometown synagogue
in Nazareth and he went in there and they were reading from the
book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 61, and after
the man finished and closed the book, the Lord got up and he
continued to read and he looked up at him, he closed the book
and looked up at him and he said, today this scripture is fulfilled
before your very eyes. Claiming that he himself was
and is the Messiah, Son of God. He was the subject of the prophecy
of Isaiah. And he went on to talk about
the gospel and he told them that God saves whom he will. That
just because you're a Jew doesn't mean God's gonna save you. God
has a people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue and nation, Jew
and Gentile, and they were chosen by God sovereignly before the
foundation of the world and given to Christ. The scripture teaches
that. Christ came and died for their
sins, His sheep, Jew and Gentile, and they'll hear His voice. They'll
hear the preaching of the gospel in the power of the Spirit, and
they'll come to Him. They will believe. Jew and Gentile,
He said. He used the illustration of how
in the days of the prophet, how God went to a Syrophoenician
woman and healed her when there were many widows in Israel, He
left them by. And they got so angry at him
that they got up to take him outside and throw him over a
cliff. But he walked through unharmed. It wasn't his time. But the greatest act of hatred
came about as we put him on the cross. That's a picture of fallen
sinful humanity in our natural reaction against the gospel,
the truth, that exposes us as being lost that exposes our deeds
as being evil, that exposes all of our religious refuge as being
false refuges. You say, well, I know I'm saved.
Well, I hope you are. But I'll tell you what, if it's
not according to the Word of God and the salvation that God
has freely and fully provided in His Word, by His grace, His
sovereign grace through the Lord Jesus Christ, and based upon
His blood alone, His righteousness imputed alone, it's not the salvation
that God gives. It's a false refuge. It's a false
claim. And you need to examine yourself
whether you be in the faith, lest you be reprobate. That is
one whom God did not choose, whom God did not redeem, and
whom the Holy Spirit does not call. These are the issues that
separate the church from the world. That's what we need to
see, the church in the world. The church is not of the world.
The church right now is in the world, but to be a witness separated
from the world, telling the truth concerning how God saves sinners. And why? For His glory in the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is God in human flesh, who died on that
cross to save His people from their sins. I hope you'll join
us next week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.