Turn, if you would, this morning
in your Bibles to John's Gospel, the 18th chapter. I take the
title of my message this morning from this chapter, from the words
of a man by the name of Pilate, Pontius Pilate. If you look down
in John 18 and verse 37, when our Lord is standing there
before this man in a kind of judgment, if you will. Verse
37, "...Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that
I am a king. To this end was I born, and for
this cause came I into the world." that I should bear witness unto
the truth. Everyone that is of the truth
heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is
truth? And when he had said this, he
went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in
him no fault at all. But you have a custom that I
should release unto you one at the Passover. Will ye therefore
that I release unto you the king of the Jews?' Then cried they
all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas." Now, Barabbas,
was a robber. If there was ever a picture of
spiritual death, spiritual blindness, spiritual ignorance, all of which
characterizes every son and daughter of Adam, we have it here in this
man Pilate, because he stands before the Lord Jesus Christ
And after asking this question, he never waits for an answer,
but he simply turns away and gives over the Lord Jesus Christ
to the mob. You see, he is so much like a
lot of people. who try to hide from the truth
by saying that there is no absolute truth. They say things like this,
well, this group believes this, and that group believes that,
and this group believes another thing, and there's no way that
we can really know what the truth is. But I want you to not only
think about this, but turn back over in this same gospel in chapter
14, and look at what is said by the Lord Jesus, by this man,
Jesus of Nazareth. He says in the 6th verse, "...I
am the way, the truth, and the life." No man cometh unto the
Father but by me." He says, I am the truth. And he is not only true, as he
certainly is, but as he just gets through saying there, he
is the truth. And we may know a few true things
But we don't know the truth apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. I like what the psalmist writes. He says, "...for with thee is
the fountain of life. In thy light shall we see light."
Light is truth. And we only know the truth as
we know it in Christ who is the truth. And it is in the light
of Christ crucified that we learn the truth about God. It's in
the light of Christ crucified that we learn the truth about
ourselves, that we learn the truth about God's purpose, and
that we learn the truth about how a just God can save sinners
such as we are and be just. You see, Jehovah Jesus, as He
certainly is, is the source of all truth that was communicated
by the prophets, just like the man Moses. As a matter of fact,
what the Scripture says is, when you get down to the book of the
Revelation, it says that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit
of prophecy. In other words, one prophet wasn't
talking about this, and another one talking about that, and another
doing a social commentary of the time he lived in. They, every
one, all the true prophets, were talking about the Lord Jesus
Christ. But I want you to turn back to
the first chapter of this Gospel of John and listen to what John
says when he likens and he contrasts what came by Moses to what came
by Christ. If you look in John chapter 1
down at that 17th verse, this is what he says. He says, "...for
the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ." We have that law, that Old Testament economy, that was
given of God by Moses came to us through that Mediator whose
name was Moses. But he says, truth came by or
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if I were to try to define
truth, I'd have to say something like this. Truth is a representation
of things as they really are. You think about that. We only
know the truth to the extent that we know things as they really,
truly, are. And we'd have to say, in all
honesty, that figures, or types, or shadows, or pictures, they
are not the truth. I traveled off last week and
I make sure that I have with me, on my phone especially, I've
got all these pictures of my granddaughter. I love her so
much. I always make sure that when
people ask me about her, I've got pictures to show them about
her. But even though I had all those
pictures with me, I didn't have the truth with me. I didn't have
her with me. And so it's in the light of what
we read there in that 17th verse of John 1 that I want us to look
at two other verses in Scripture. And they're found in the book
of Hebrews. Turn over to Hebrews, first of
all in the 8th chapter, and listen to what the Apostle says in Hebrews
chapter 8 and verse 2. The apostle in Hebrews is led
by the Spirit of God to not only contrast the priests under that
Old Testament economy and the things of that economy, but to
contrast them and to show the superiority of Christ and that
priesthood that we hear of in the gospel. Look at what he says
in that second verse of Hebrews 8. a minister of the sanctuary
and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man."
The true tabernacle. And then if you look over in
Hebrews 9 and that 24th verse, he says, for Christ, is not entered
into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures
of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the
presence of God for us." So we only know the truth as far as
we are able to see Christ, not just in some historical fashion
or as some historical figure or mystical person, but we only
know the truth as we know Him as Christ and Him crucified. Turn back over to Luke's Gospel
and look at that last chapter in the Gospel of Luke, Luke chapter
24, at what was said by our Lord to those two disciples that He
made Himself manifest to on the road to Emmaus. Verse 25, "...then
He said unto them, O fools and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ
to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?"
You see, they had some knowledge of some true things that men
such as Moses, these prophets, wrote, but they didn't know the
truth. Listen. And beginning at Moses
and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures
the things concerning himself." The things concerning his own
self. And then just a little bit later
in this same chapter, when we find him making himself manifest
to a larger group, look down in verse 44. And he said unto
them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was
yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were
written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the
Psalms concerning me. And then opened he their understanding."
that they might understand the Scriptures. We know the truth
when God gives us some understanding of the Scriptures as they are
in Christ Jesus, and not just Him as some person, but in this
gospel of Christ crucified. Look at that next verse. And
he said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoove
Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day,
and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in
his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." In other words,
we know the truth as we know it in Christ, but we know the
truth in Christ as it pertains particularly to his death, to
his suffering. Turn back to Hebrews 8 where
we look there at those verses. Now, that's what the apostle
is doing here in Hebrews 8 and 9. He's showing not just the
similarity in some senses, but the very superiority of that
priesthood and that sacrifice and that altar and that tabernacle,
all those things, which were pictures and shadows and foreshadowings
of the true which is in Christ." Hebrews chapter 8 and verse 1. Now, of the things which we have
spoken, this is the sum. He's been going back. and talking
about everything that we had given by Moses through all that
Old Testament economy and all those prophets, but especially
Moses and those things that were given under the law. He says,
"...now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum. We have such a high priest."
In other words, under that economy, he says they had a high priest,
but under the gospel, in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a
far greater high priest. And he is not only greater in
his person, but he is greater in his work, he is greater in
his sacrifice, he is greater in his altar, he is greater in
his tabernacle. He says, this high priest is
set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the
heavens. And he as a minister of the sanctuary
and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man,
for every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices,
wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also
to offer." In other words, this priest under that Mosaic priesthood,
under that Arianic priesthood, showed the necessity and the
way that God deals with His people in mercy and grace, and shows
that what we need is not an earthly priest of the kind they were,
but we need a far greater priest. And if we look at the strict
definition of a priest, what we find is that a priest is one
that represents men before God. And so the apostle is telling
us that those who are the people of God, they have a priest, but
not like this priest in every sense, he's far greater. He does
not have to offer again and again because His sacrifice is far
greater. He goes in not in an earthly
tabernacle or tent, but He stands before God in the heavens and
He represents them in the matter of their sins. So look at what
He says in that 9th chapter, in that 24th verse again. He
says, "...for Christ is not entered into the holy places made with
hands." That earthly tabernacle, that earthly holy place, was
a holy place and an earthly tabernacle made by instructions from God,
but they were made by man's hands. He said, "...and they are figures
of the truth." But he's entered into heaven itself now to appear
in the presence of God for us, nor yet that he should offer
himself often as the high priest entereth in to the holy place
every year with blood of others." In other words, those priests
that were figures of the true, They entered in year after year,
they entered in again and again, and they did so with the blood
of lambs and goats and such as that. They entered in, but they
came back out and they had to do it again and again, because
it's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could ever
put away sins. So he said, here's the truth.
Christ, who is Himself the truth, He as the priest of His people,
appointed by God and accepted by God, offers the sacrifice
of His own blood, and He does so once before the presence of
God because of His great sufficiency to accomplish everything that's
necessary to the salvation of His people. from their sins. He has by one offering put away
their sins. He did it once because He's God
manifest in the flesh, because He offers up to God a perfect
sacrifice. He offers up to God a perfect
sinless blood and accomplishes their salvation to the satisfaction
of divine justice. He said if that had not been
the case, He'd had to have done it over and over again. But he
appears once in the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. In other words, we don't know
the truth. until we are brought by the Spirit
of God through this gospel of God to see and to understand
and to believe that what the Lord Jesus Christ did almost
2,000 years ago was a work which accomplished the salvation of
His people. How could we ever read what the
apostle is saying here without knowing without being sure that
in His death, the Lord Jesus Christ did truly and really put
away somebody's sin. Somebody is not going to face
God in their sins. Blessed is that man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. Well, where did He impute their
sin? He imputed them to Christ. The Lord hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all, Isaiah writes. And we only know the truth when
we're brought beyond what men preach as the work of Christ
wherein He said to have died for everybody but nobody will
actually be saved who doesn't do this or that or the other.
It says that He entered in once as the great high priest of His
people and by His own sacrifice, the sacrifice of His perfect
and unique self, He put away their sin. You see, there are
many, many pictures. There are many figures under
that Old Testament economy. They had a brazen serpent. You
might remember the Bible says that those people, these Israelites,
they sinned and they murmured against God, and God, as the
righteous judge He is, He sent fiery serpents into the camp,
and everyone that was bitten of those serpents, they died. Death is always the consequence
of sin. The wages of sin is death. The soul that sins shall surely
die. And we've never met the issue
of our sin until we're brought to meet the issue of our sin
as it's related to death. And we'll never have hope until
it causes us to see what that death has been brought to through
the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had this brazen serpent.
God said, Moses, you take and you fasten out of brass or bronze
or whatever it was. You fashion a serpent as these
fiery serpents are, and you take that brass serpent and mount
it to the top of a tall pole, and you fix that pole, raise
it up in the center of the camp. And everyone that looks to that
brazen serpent, they'll live. Everyone that's bitten by that
serpent, when they look at that serpent of brass there in the
midst of the camp, they'll live. What does that mean? What relevance
is that in our day? We're all gathered here together,
I'm sure that Lots of folks got lots of places they could be
and do and such as that. What would be the benefit of
you being brought into a place where a man's talking and hear
or read about what took place there on that occasion? Paul,
when he's talking to the people in 1 Corinthians, He said, what
I told you, what I delivered unto you was the same thing that
I first received. Well, what was that, Paul? How
that Christ died according to the Scriptures, how that He was
buried, how that He rose again the third day according to the
Scriptures. But there's just one thing about
it. He didn't have the New Testament Scriptures. He and some more
were about to be used of the Spirit of God to write what is
now called the New Testament. So what was he talking about?
He was talking about the Old Testament Scriptures. He was
talking about just such occasions as we read about there, when
that fiery serpent came in the camp, and then God commands Moses
to make this serpent of brass, put it up on a pole, and tell
the people, everyone bit into that serpent. If you look at
it, you'll live. Turn back over to the Gospel
of John again, to the third chapter. Now, don't you get me wrong.
I love John 3.16. I can't say that I love it any
more than I love any other verse in Scripture. But if I had to
strictly say so, I'd say that the gospel is not so much in
John 3.16 as it is in John 3.14 and 15. But they're in John 3
and verse 14. and as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness." You see, I've said for years now that
God gave the illustrations first. There are a lot of preachers
running around here for a good illustration. I pretty much gave
that up a long time ago. God beat me to it a long time
ago. He gave the illustrations first. And he says here, as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, "...even so must the Son of Man
be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have eternal life." What does that mean? Well, we know
by what the parallel we find in that verse is, that looking
to Christ and believing in Christ is the same. Not just here, but
other places. And just as this serpent of brass,
those who had been bitten by the deadly bite of that fiery
serpent, which is nothing but a type of sin, and they were
unable to look physically to that brazen serpent and be healed
and delivered from that sheer death, those who are brought
to look by faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, who was lifted
up between heaven and earth by God on that cross, they'll live. As a matter of fact, the fact
that any sinner ever looks to the Lord Jesus Christ in this
sense, that's the evidence that God has made him alive. He that
liveth and believeth. You see, Christ crucified is
the truth. They had a rock. A very unique
and special rock. You read about the wanderings
of Israel throughout all the wilderness of those 40 years,
and the Bible says that they murmured. You know, it's always
in the face of their sin and murmuring that God blesses them. You can go back and you can read
all that was said about Israel and God's dealing with them,
and you can hear them saying again and again to Moses and
others like him, you just tell us what we need to do to get
God to bless us and we'll do it. They never did it, but He
blessed them. Though they were on another occasion
murmuring. They're out there in that desert.
They didn't have any water. They're dying of thirst. And
God commands Moses. He says, Moses, you go to this
particular rock, you take your staff, and you strike that rock. And when you strike that rock,
as he did so, water came gushing out of that rock to satisfy their
thirst and give them life. Then another occasion, they were
in the same predicament. And God said to Moses, Moses,
you go down there and you speak to that rock. And Moses was like
a lot of God's servants, like I get sometimes, I'm sure. He
got angry, he just got frustrated dealing with their ingratitude
and their unbelief and all that. And so he went down there and
instead of obeying God, he again struck the rock. And when he
did, the water flowed out. Why? Because salvation does not
depend on a man's obedience. It's God's mercy and God's grace. God said to Moses, "'Cause you
failed to sanctify me in the eyes of this people, you will
not be allowed to take them into the land of promise.' And God
killed him and buried him where nobody knows to this day." Why? Because that rock was a type
of Christ. And that rock, representing Christ,
is once smitten. He entered in once in the end
of the age to put away sin. And all the Lord's people ever
do after that is they speak to the rock, call upon the rock,
and they find the waters of His grace and mercy flows freely
to them. When you go and look, I can't
take you to all these this morning, but when you go to 1 Corinthians
10, and Paul is talking about the occasions and experiences
of Israel, and he makes reference to that rock, and he lets us
know the truth. He says, and that rock was Christ. On another occasion, they had
a special food called manna. They were starving to death,
and God caused on the morning dew, for there to have fallen
in the night a little grain, he likens to a coriander seed,
and it fell on the dew, and they gathered it up, and they took
it, and they ground it up, and took it on a pedestal, and ground
it up, and made a meal out of it, and made cakes, and they
roasted it over the fire, and they had bread to eat." One day
our Lord was talking. some of the Pharisees and the
scribes and such, and they were so proud of their association
with Moses. They said, Moses gave us manna,
bread, in the wilderness. What were they saying? They were
saying, compared to Moses, what you've just done really wasn't
much at all. But our Lord said, Moses didn't
give you that bread from heaven. My Father did. And he said, I
am the true bread which has come down from heaven. Man that eats
of this bread, he said, if you eat of my flesh and drink my
blood, which is simply an appropriation of Christ by faith, believing
on him is like eating bread and drinking this water in the matter
of your soul before God. He said, you just never die.
A man can eat of this bread that you're talking about and die
as they did, and die in unbelief. But he said, the man that eats
of the true bread, the true Christ, he said, I'm the true bread,
I'm the true man. And then on another occasion,
the whole of Egypt was about to go under the deadly hand of
divine justice. God said, I'm going to slay the
firstborn of man and beast in every household in all the land
of Egypt. You can just play sissy with
God if you want to, and say, well, God wouldn't do this, and
God wouldn't do that, and God's not like that, and God's too
loving to do this. You better open this book and find out how
God really is. He destroyed the whole antediluvian
world, except eight souls. because of sin. Though the Lord
says to Moses, Moses, each family you happen to take and shut up
a male lamb out of the flock and watch him and scrutinize
him and make sure he doesn't have any flaws or broken legs
or crooked ears or anything like that. Why? Because he said, a
sacrifice that's to be offered to the Lord, it has to be perfect. You take him, you shut him up,
you watch him, make sure he's perfect. On a certain day of
the month, you take him out and you slay him. You slay him. You take his blood. You mop that
blood on the lintels and doorposts of your houses. And he said,
when I come through and I pass through this land, taking the
firstborn in every household, he said, and when I see the blood,
I'll pass over you. You do that for memorial in every
succeeding generation. Can you imagine that? The death
cries and the screams of agony and pain are just being sounded
all throughout all the land. But down in a little dark place
called the land of Goshen in the house of those Hebrews, they
were eating a feast. He told them after you take that
blood and put it there, you make a feast, roast the lamb, Eat
it, don't leave anything else. That's another message. But what
was that all about? Well, Paul tells us when he writes
to the Corinthians in another place, he said, for Christ our
Passover is sacrifice for us. What did that all mean? What's
the truth in that? Well, the truth is that judgment
fell on the houses of those Hebrews just like it fell on the others. That blood was representative,
it was a picture and a figure of a God-appointed sacrifice
and substitute, a sacrifice of blood, the blood of an innocent
victim wherein his judgment fell on it rather than on them, but
in every place God's justice was satisfied. And that's what
Christ is to His people. He's our Passover. Divine justice
fell on His head. He poured out His blood. And
all His people, as that little chorus we sing sometimes, that
says, under the blood of Jesus, safe while the ages roll, Every
one of God's elect is safe under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and their judgment passes over them in one sense, but yet in
a greater sense actually falls on them in their substitute Christ
as God views them in His Son. You see, the truth that we find
pictured and foreshadowed in all these things show that salvation
is of the Lord. It is not in any part of your
works. You can just sit back and say,
in the same kind of blindness that Pilate did, well, I'll just
do the best I can. Or you can say, well, you know,
this preacher says one thing, and that one says another, and
all this kind of stuff. Christ says, I am the truth.
Salvation is of the Lord. It is through and by His Son,
and it is according to His sovereign will and mercy. You see, this
same God who came to this earth in human flesh, the Lord Jesus
Christ, the great mystery of godliness, the Word made flesh
and dwelt among us, Emmanuel, When Moses asked them the question,
he said, Lord, show me your glory. Now Moses had seen quite a bit,
I think. You know, most of us in our flesh
would have liked to have seen what Moses had seen. He'd seen
a pretty good display. He hadn't. Here's the divine
glory. God says, I will be gracious
to whom I'll be gracious. I'll have mercy. on whom I'll
have mercy." Who's all this happening to? It's happened to what God
calls the smallest people of all the earth. You see, this
nation of Israel, this wee small nation of Israel as it became,
is a people that God set His affection on. He says, Not because
you were greater or any of these things. He said, I loved you
just because I would love you. And you can be done with any
sense or notion that God loves you because you're something
special in yourself. All I am in myself, all that
any one in Adam ever is in themselves is nothing but sin, as Isaiah
is used of God to describe us in a picture, nothing but from
our head to toe, wounds and bruises and putrefying sore that have
never been bound up or mollified with ointment. We're just a running
leprous sore in the sight of a holy God. I know how we are. We're close enough to perfect
for each other, aren't we? Can somebody write a song called
Close Enough to Perfect for me? Not for God Almighty. One day
we're going to stand in His presence. We're going to find out what
holiness is. Perfection and glory. And you
can make your boast for whatever way you want to right now, but
you stand before Him in yourself with your sin, and you're going
to perish. And I don't mean you're going
to cease to be. I mean you're going to be cast
out of His presence forever, cast out into outer darkness
that's described as weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth,
where unsatisfied justice in the matter of your sin excludes
you from His presence and everything that's good forever and ever
as the ages roll. You see, these people were blessed
of God because He chose them, not because they chose Him. Christ
says, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. Whenever
Paul writes to those Ephesians, here they were a bunch of Gentiles.
And they lived in an area just covered with idolatry and wickedness
on every hand, and yet here they are believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ and are said to have been blessed with all spiritual blessings
in Christ Jesus. according as God had chosen them
in Christ before the foundation of the world. Somebody, some
religious writer asked a man one time, he said, when did you
make your decision for Christ? He said, I didn't. I was decided
upon. You see, it won't be what you
do that makes what Christ did effectual. But bless God, what
He did is going to do something for you. And if He died in your
place on that cross, if He suffered in your place, paid the debt
of your sin, the justice that required that death, if you're
to be saved, will also require that you be called and brought
to Christ. He'll put the hound of heaven
on your tail. You can't run, you can't hide.
They'd be born in Yugoslavia. He'll find you when he reads.
You may be born in the North, you may be born in Catholicism,
you may be born in every kind of ism. You might be like me,
be born in a Southern Baptist bunch of works religion. But
he said, I lay down my life for the sheep. And my sheep will
hear my voice and they'll follow me. They'll be sitting and brought
under the sound of the gospel one time. some time, some point,
some intersection, God is going to interrupt their life, and
He's going to intercept them and reveal Himself. And they'll
have a witness in their heart when they hear this gospel of
a full and free and eternal salvation that's outside of themselves
and accomplished by this man, Jesus Christ, in His life and
death. He's going to call them, and
they're going to say, That's the truth. That's the only way
it could be. It's all for His glory. It's
all by His grace. There's no way I could ever do
anything to please God in myself. It's according to His mercy.
I've acted like His enemy, but He's treating me in mercy. They'll
find out that they're amongst a people. that God looked at
in old eternity, not seeing what they would do, not seeing anything
special in themselves, but just because of His own will that
He would do it, He chose them and purposed to bless them and
save them and make them His people and His children in Christ Jesus. And that's why a man who was
of Israel, the Apostle Paul, he writes to those believers
at Philippi, he said, we're the true circumcision. Weren't you
of Israel? Aren't you a Jew, Paul? Well,
I was by birth." But he said, they're not all of Israel that
are of that Israel. There's another Israel that that
Israel represented. And the truth is, this Israel
is a spiritual people, loved of God, chosen in Christ, redeemed
by His blood, called by His Spirit. And he said, we're the true circumcision
who worship God in the Spirit. He gives three things. We worship
God spiritually, by the Holy Spirit, and we rejoice in Christ. And we have no confidence in
the flesh. No confidence in our doing. Oh,
there was Abel's Lamb. What was that all about? Salvation
by grace, not by Cain's works. There was Noah's Ark. You remember
that little Bible story, Noah's Ark? You really ought to read
that again. The judgment that was due the
sinners on the earth was as much due for Noah and his family as
it was for the rest of that crowd of rebels. And the same water,
the same flood came up against them that came upon every other
person on the earth at that time. But there they were. Their judgment
beat against the ark. That's right. That ark was a
type of Christ. He's the true ark. All His people,
when He went to that cross, they were, as Paul says, in Him. And all of divine wrath in the
matter of their sin came on His head. It was made to meet on
His head. Just like Noah and his family
were preserved through that flood. So are all the lords elect."
That ark didn't look like you might think. You remember the
little Bible story books, and here's a fine-looking, seaworthy
vessel that they have pictured there. You know what it looked
like? It looked like a giant black shoebox, because God had
told Noah to pitch it on the inside with what would be tar,
black tar. And then to go on the outside
and do the same thing. So on the outside, I'm sure all
those people were laughing before the flood came. Look at that
big, black, ugly shoebox. That's because Christ is not
appealing to our natural eye. But He's the only salvation.
He's God's mercy. If you have God's mercy and God's
grace, you have to have it in Him. But not only is it just
Him, but it's the fact that that that judgment of God against
sin, that salvation of God is manward, in that it meets the
need of man as he is in a sinner. It had to be pitched on the inside,
pitched on the outside, because it's also Godward, meets the
necessity of God as that holy and just God. These all showed
that salvation is of the Lord. of His free and sovereign grace. It's His to give, His to withhold. It is for His people, it is for
these that were chosen in Christ, that His salvation is through
a substitute. His salvation is through God
imputing their sins to Christ and Christ's righteousness to
them. It's through the satisfaction of His justice, it's through
the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus, it's through all His sovereign
acts of grace and mercy in Christ crucified. All the promises of
God are yes and amen in Him. And that's why we have things
in the Scriptures that say stuff like this. Seek the truth. Buy the truth and sell it not. And we can only know the truth
through Christ, who is the truth. But where and how does Christ
speak the truth? You know, the apostle says that
God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son. Moses' day, God spoke to Moses,
because Moses was a mediator. He didn't speak directly to those
people. Because a holy God cannot speak
or be spoken to by a sinner, except through a mediator. And
Moses was a type of the truth who is the one mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Not some preacher, you walk down
the aisle, shake his hand. No, not some priest, you go into
a little booth. No, there's just one mediator.
That's the man Christ Jesus. Well, turn over to Ephesians
1. Ephesians chapter 1, and look at what we find in Ephesians
1. So amazing. Paul says to these Ephesians,
who, he says, like himself, have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ."
He's talking about Christ. Verse 13, he says, "...in whom
ye also trusted after that ye heard the word of truth." I don't
know how many times over the years I heard Brother Mahan say,
you can't trust in an unrevealed Christ any more than you've come
back from where you've never been. after that you heard the
word of truth." What is that? The gospel of your salvation. Well, there'll be lots of people
today who will hear another gospel. They'll hear the gospel of what
you need to do to be saved. They'll hear a gospel of what
you need to do to save yourself. You'll need to give, you'll need
to do this or that and the other. You'll need to quit doing this
or quit doing that or start to. It'll be the gospel of how to
be saved. No. The word of truth is the
gospel of your salvation. The gospel that God, for a reason
known only to himself, loved you and chose you and predestinated
all things concerning you, especially as they pertain to your salvation,
that He, in Jesus Christ through His death, saved you. I don't know a lot about you,
but I've learned a few things about me over the years. If you
tell me something to do, just one thing, if I were to do it,
to save myself, I'll guarantee you I'd mess it up. So the only
thing that can be good news to me is to tell me about what God,
in His mercy and grace, has already done for me through His Son,
Jesus Christ. That when He was hanging on that
cross, He was saving me. 100% salvation free in Christ. Christ says in John 17 as He
prays to the Father concerning these that the Father has given
Him out of the world, He said, sanctify. That word literally
means set them apart. Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth. We live in a day when everybody's
got at least one Bible and most have got more than that. They
carry them under their arm. They beat on them. Preachers
say, I believe the Word of God. They don't even know the Word
of God. Because God has to be His own revealer. And the way
we know that the Spirit of God is not in such things is because
Christ said, when the Spirit of truth has come. The what?
The Spirit of truth. What will He do? He said, He'll
take the things of mine. and show them unto you. That's
what a preacher of truth does. Just takes the things of Christ
and shows them to you. Can't make you believe it, can't
make you do it, just trying to show them to you. It's best the
Lord will enable me. And of that people that Paul
sets in contrast to those who will perish in their sin, he
says there are those who receive not the love of the truth, And
therefore, God will send strong delusion on them. They'll believe
anything. They'll believe it sincerely.
They'll believe it to the death. They'll stand up, as they are
seen in Matthew 7, they'll stand up before Christ, even in that
hour, and they'll say, We did many great things in Your
name. We preached in Your name. We
cast out devils in Your name. We did many great, wonderful
works. And Christ said, I'll say to
them in that hour, depart from Me. I never knew you. Ye that work iniquity. You know what iniquity is? Inequity. Here's a bill over here on this
side of the scale that requires Twenty pieces of gold. Over here
is that which is offered up to try to settle that debt, and
a penny is plunked on it. It's not equal. And that's what
all our works and all our doings and all our persons are before
God. It's inequity. Only Christ. Only His life and blood. But
he turns in that same epistle, this is 2 Thessalonians, he turns
and he goes on in that second chapter, And he begins with what
I call one of those buts of grace. But. These that he's writing
to. But we're bound to give thanks
always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord. Why? Because God has from the beginning
chosen you to salvation. Give you a choice to salvation?
No. you to salvation. Chosen to give you opportunity?
No. Chosen you to salvation through
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto
he called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of
our Lord Jesus Christ. He called you through a preached
message His Word and brought you to obtain a glory, which
glory is simply that which has to be made manifest concerning
that which already is, to the obtaining of the glory of the
Lord Jesus Christ. What's His glory? That salvation
which is all in Him. All in Him. And all that Christ
saves, He brings, according to Scripture, to rejoice in the
truth, to receive the love of the truth, to worship God in
spirit and in truth, to speak the truth in love, and to walk
in truth. He may bring us as He did Jonah. to the bottom of the sea and
the belly of that fish, so that we confess like Jonah, salvation
is of the Lord. This same one here, he not only
said, I'm the truth, he said, I'm the way. Just one way. Somebody says, well, you take
your way, preacher, and I'll take my way. Both of our ways
are wrong. He is the way. and the way that
seems right to a man, they're the ways of death. He's already
told us that. He's the way, He's the truth,
He's the life. And all is death outside of Him.
He said, I'm Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.
He's all. He's all. Father, this day we
give You thanks and praise. for such wondrous mercy, for
such hope to sinners as we are, for such almighty and omnipotent
grace, for doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We thank you for the Lord Jesus,
who shall save his people from their sins. How worthy you are
of all praise and glory forever and ever. Honor and glorify yourself
as you call out your people in this world. For we ask everything
through and in and by our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.