This evening worship service
was held on July 28, 1991, at the Trinity Baptist Church in
Montville, New Jersey. Now may I encourage you to follow
with me in your own Bibles as I read a portion of the fifth
chapter of the Gospel according to John, John chapter 5. I shall read beginning with verse
30 through to the end of the chapter, which is a record of
the concluding section of one of the many discourses of our
Lord in his encounter with the Jews in Jerusalem. One of the
unique contributions of the Gospel of John is that we have these
lengthy discourses of the Lord Jesus which grew out of his debates
and conflicts with the Jews in Jerusalem, and chapter 5 contains
one such lengthy discourse. This is the last section of that
discourse, verse 30. I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge. and my judgment is righteous,
because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent
me. If I bear witness of myself,
my witness is not true. It is another that beareth witness
of me, and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is
true. He hath sent unto John, and he
hath borne witness unto the truth. But the witness which I receive
is not from man, albeit I say these things that ye may be saved. He was the lamp that burneth
and shineth, and ye were willing to rejoice for a season in his
light. But the witness which I have
is greater than that of John. For the works which the Father
hath given me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear
witness of me that the Father hath sent me. And the Father
that sent me, he hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard
his voice at any time, nor seen his form, and ye have not his
word abiding in you. For whom he sent, him ye believe
not. ye search the Scriptures, because
ye think that in them ye have eternal life, and these are they
which bear witness of me. And ye will not come to me that
ye may have life. I receive not glory from men,
but I know you that ye have not the love of God in yourselves.
I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not. If another
come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe,
who receive glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from
the only God, ye seek not? Think not that I will accuse
you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you,
even Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. For if ye believed
Moses, ye would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe
not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? Now, before we turn to the exposition
of the Word of God, may I ask you with me to pray one very
simple prayer from the youngest to the oldest, you children. adolescents, teens, post-teens,
to gray-haired men and women, will you pray one simple prayer
as we unite in prayer, and that is that if no one else in this
building hears the voice of God through the Scriptures, that
you would be that one who hears the voice of the Son of God.
Surely, anything Jesus would say from His Word to your heart
would be in your best interest. What have you to fear by praying,
O God, if no one else hears your voice tonight? May I hear your
voice speaking to me through the scriptures. Would you make
that your prayer as we seek the help and blessing of God the
Holy Spirit? Our living Lord Jesus Christ,
we come unto you, believing that your heart is one full of pity
to needy sinners. And we therefore plead that in
mercy, in pity, in grace, and in the revelation of the glory
of your own salvation, you would speak to hearts this night. bind the powers of darkness in
the virtue of your work upon the cross and in your mighty
resurrection, and in your session far above principalities and
powers, O Lord Jesus, will you not this night manifest the triumphs
of your cross and of your open tomb by bringing to yourself
some who at this moment are yet wedded to their sins, blinded
by unbelief. But who by the end of this hour
will behold the very glory of the Father in your face? Lord Jesus, for your name's sake
and glory, hear our cry. Amen. Now this blessed book from which
we have read together, this book that we call the Bible, is an
utterly amazing book, being the very word of the living God it
contains, truth so profound as to stagger the most brilliant
but sanctified mind upon the face of the earth. It contains
reality so sobering as to shock into sobriety the most giddy
and the most shallow worldling, and it contains words of comfort
and encouragement to put hope in the most despondent and despairing
heart. But this book that contains things
profound sobering and encouraging also contain some of the most
sad and doleful words ever spoken upon the face of the earth. Words
that taken at face value can only be called tragic words,
bitter words, overwhelmingly sad words, And one such statement
is found in the passage read in your hearing in John chapter
5, and it is found in verse 40, some of the most sad words found
in all of the Bible. When Jesus had to say to living
men and women who had seen him, who had beheld his mighty who
had come into contact with his spotless life, men whom he had
challenged, saying, Which of you can convict me of sin? And they were silent. Yet he
said to them, Ye will not come to me that ye may have life. Sad words. Ye, in all your need,
will not come to me in all the plenitude of my grace, in order
that you might have life, true life now and life eternal, life
in communion with God and under the favor and blessing of God. I, the author and the giver of
life, I who will purchase life with my death, I stand before
you and offer you life, and ye will not come to me that ye may
have life." Our Lord in speaking these words has just asserted
that His claims with respect to His person have been abundantly
attested. There was the witness of John,
to which he makes reference, the witness of the Father, the
witness of his works, the witness of scriptures. God said at the
mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed,
but Jesus said there were four witnesses validating that he
was all that he said he was in his person. and that he would
do all that he proclaimed to do for sinners, the witness of
John, the witness of the Father, the witness of his works, and
the witness of the Scriptures. And all of them attested that
he was and is the only Savior of sinners, and that he is freely
offered to all men in the gospel as the giver of life, He had
said to them in verse 34, I say these very things in order that
you may be saved. So here is the author and the
giver of life, his own life and mission attested by John, by
the Father, by his works, by the Scriptures, and yet those
who saw him and heard him and beheld the witnesses attesting
the validity of his claims and of his mission. Concerning them,
he says these sad words, ye will not come to me that ye may have
life. Now, if this were merely history,
it would be sad history. But the tragedy is that the words
of Jesus represent a tragic, ongoing reality. The reality
expressed in the lives of some of you sitting in this very building
tonight, who have had the Lord Jesus set before you in His Word
and by the attendant ministry of the Holy Spirit, times without
And the Lord Jesus has been set before you in the multifaceted
glory of his person and in the perfection of his work. And these
words have been spoken to you again and again that you might
be saved. And yet, tragically, it can be
said of you, ye will not come to him that you may have life. Now, why is it that you will
not come? Why is it that these did not
come? Surely there must have been in
their own minds some rationale for their refusal to come to
Christ, who only desired that they should be saved and have
life. He meant them no harm. He only
desired to take from them that which would damn them. and give
to them that which would bring them safely home to heaven with
Him. Who would refuse such a Savior,
offering to take from them only that which is destructive, and
to give them that which is only beneficent in kind? What went
on in their minds that they would not come to Him, that they might
have life to make the question more pertinent and personal,
what goes on in your mind? That you will not come to him
that you might have life. For our meditation with this
verse is the framework of our study. I want you to consider
with me tonight four major reasons why sinners, young sinners, teenage
young adult sinners, middle-aged sinners, old adult sinners, male
and female sinners, polite sinners, notorious sinners, sinners of
every kind and stripe and age do not come to Christ in this
place tonight. Four reasons why you will not
come to Christ. If you are one who has refused
to come to Him, would you pray even now, O God, Show me where
I sit in the picture and give me eyes to behold reality. Why is it that needy sinners
sitting here tonight will not come to Christ? Well, here is
the first reason. The first and fundamental reason,
and it was true of these to whom our Lord spoke, is ignorance
of your desperate need of Christ. Ignorance of your desperate need
of Christ. When Christ is set before you
as the great burden bearer, as the only Savior of sinners, the
only refuge from the burning anger of God now and in the day
of judgment, When Christ is presented before you in His gracious command
and in His gracious entreaty that you would repent and believe
upon Him, that you would, in the language of this passage,
come to Him, He entreats, He invites, He reasons, He pleads,
but all apparently in vain. Why will you not come to Him
that you might have life? Well, in some of your cases it
is because there is ignorance of your desperate need of Christ. It's supposed to be a true incident
that a certain Christian had picked up a hitchhiker. And as
they were driving along the road, they saw where someone in what
might be a bit unwise zeal had taken a can of paint and painted
on a large rock by the highway. Christ is the answer. And so the Christian thought
he would take this occasion to open up an opportunity of witness
with the hitchhiker whom he had picked up, and so he commented
upon that question. The statement, Christ is the
answer, the hitchhiker said, what's the big deal? I don't
know what the question is. There on the rock are the words,
Christ is the answer, but what's the question? Christ is the answer
to what? You see, that man was showing
his utter ignorance of his desperate need of Christ, and therefore
the statement, Christ is the answer, meant nothing to him.
It was simply a symbol of religious fanaticism. But once this burning
question begins to be the question with which you live day and night,
when you go to bed and when you awake, When you dress and when
you undress, when you go out to play and out to work, when
you sit down to eat or go out for recreation, when this question
begins to burn within your breast, how can I, a guilty sinner, avoid
being swallowed up in the wrath of a holy God because of my sins,
that begins to be the burning question. You pass by a rock
with the inscription, Christ is the answer. That will be wonderfully
good news to you. The reason why some of you will
not come to Christ even as these to whom our Lord spoke in His
own day, is that you are ignorant of your desperate need of Christ. For it is to these same people
that Jesus spoke in another passage in the Gospel of Luke, who were
offended that Jesus was eating with the riffraff of Jerusalem,
eating with those who were notorious sinners. I'm sorry it wasn't
Jerusalem, it was in the northern part of Palestine. And they began
to murmur and ask the disciples, why do you and your master eat
and drink with publicans and sinners? And Jesus said, they
that are healthy have no need of a doctor, but they that are
sick I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. You see, those people had no
felt sense of their need of Christ, and because they had no felt
sense of their need of Christ, they would not come to Him to
obtain life, for they had no awareness that they were in a
state of death. That is one of the major reasons
why some of you sitting here tonight do not come to Christ.
You are ignorant of your desperate need of Christ. And this condition
of ignorance is utterly inexcusable. It is utterly inexcusable. The testimony of the Word of
God concerning your true state and condition as a sinner is
as clear as the noonday sun. The Bible says you with me are
part of a race that fell in our first father Adam. The scripture
speaks explicitly to this issue and says in Romans 5.12, wherefore
As through one man sin entered into the world, and death passed
upon all men, for that all sinned. When did all sin? All sinned
in Adam. This is why the same apostle
could write in 1 Corinthians 15.22, as in Adam, all died. When our first father partook
of the forbidden fruit, the entire race was piggybacked upon him,
and when he fell from God, we fell with him and in him. And we are sinners who fell in
Adam, our first father, in his first transgression. We are sinners
by nature. In the language of David, he
says, Behold, Psalm 51, 6, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin. Did my mother conceive me? This is why Paul can say in Ephesians
2, We were by nature, without having to do a thing, but be
what we were. We were by nature, children of
wrath, even as the rest. We are sinners by practice, Romans
3, 10, and following as it is written, there is none righteous,
no, not one. There is none that understandeth,
there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none righteous, no,
not one. And then he begins to describe
how sin manifests itself in the disposition of the heart, in
the activity of the tongue. And he culminates that description
in verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes. That
is, they look out on life without the fear of God as the glasses
through which they perceive all of life. There is no fear of
God before their eyes. They do not live in the consciousness
of their obligations to God, of the law of God, of the claims
of God, of the rights of God. They live under the impulse of
their own notions and passions and desires and impulse and appetites
and inclinations. But the fear of God is not that
through which they view all of life and by which they shape
all of life, and so for you to be ignorant of your desperate
need of Christ is utterly inexcusable. You have a Bible which tells
you your true state. Your Bible is like an honest
physician of great integrity. He's unconcerned about your feelings
ultimately. While he may seek to develop
a gracious way of conveying the news of deadly and terminal illness,
and while he may seek to be empathetic and kind and gentle at the end
of the day, if he's a physician true to his Hippocratic oath,
he'll tell you the truth about yourself. And He will not tell
you, take a few aspirin and all will be well, if you have a deadly
cancer that will put you in your grave in three months. And Almighty
God has told us the truth about ourselves. And here in His Word
it's plain for all to see and to read. But you will not come
to Christ because you are willfully, inexcusably ignorant of your
desperate need of Christ. That's why you will not meditate
upon the Ten Commandments. You will not reflect upon God's
law. You will not reflect upon your
life in the light of God's law. Why? Because the scripture says,
he that doeth evil will not come to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved. That's inexcusable. As with these,
he said, if you truly believed Moses, if you read Moses with
understanding and faith, you would come to me. For much of
Moses was calculated to demonstrate that man is, in the very core
of his being, a sinner whose only approach to God can be by
the blood of an innocent sacrifice, the great sacrifice being the
Lord Jesus himself. My friend, you are inexcusably
ignorant of your need of Christ, for the testimony of the Word
of God concerning your state is clear, and when you're honest,
the testimony of your own conscience is clear. Romans 2, 14, and 15
indicates that even in the conscience of those who've never heard a
word of gospel truth, who've never heard a word of the Ten
Commandments expounded from Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5, God has
left a witness within the breast of every man, and conscience
accuses or excuses with respect to our deeds and thoughts and
words and desires. Have you not known, if you're
honest, that twinge of conscience when you've lied, young person?
Have you not known that twinge of conscience when you've cheated
at school, when you've mumbled dirty words under your breath,
when you've deceived your parents and disobeyed them? Have you
not known that twinge of that little moral monitor within who's
accused you when you have sinned? Oh yes, you have known it. But
you've sought to drown his voice, you've sought to bury his witness,
you've sought to ignore his testimony. Therefore, your ignorance of
your desperate need of Christ is indeed inexcusable. Now listen to me carefully. If
you sit here tonight as one who will not come to Christ because
of ignorance of your need of Christ, hear me carefully. All
men, women, boys, and girls will sooner or later be made very
conscious of their desperate need of Christ. Do you hear me? All men, women, boys, and girls
will sooner or later be made aware of their desperate need
of Christ. You'll either be made aware of it now, while the door
of mercy is open, and in the felt awareness of your need,
come to Christ while he yet invites you, or you will meet him in
the day of judgment when he will spell out your need before the
whole universe, and you will hear the words depart from me
into everlasting fire. and then you will know too late
your desperate need of Christ. But all men will be forced to
acknowledge their need of Christ. Why, why, why, why will you wait
until your need is forced upon you at the level of your consciousness? When now the Son of God stands
before you, entreating the Word of God is open before you, indicting
you for your sins, and conscience speaks if you will only listen
to His voice. May God grant that if this is
the reason why you will not come to Christ, you will see the folly
of that posture of mind and heart. and own all that God says about
you, and all that conscience bears witness to within your
own breast, how much must you feel your need of Christ? As
the hymn writer said, just so much as to make you know that
your only answer to the problem of your sin is in Him. All the
fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him. How much conviction
must I have, enough to come to grips with the fact that I deserve
hell? I can't deliver myself, but Christ
is able and Christ is willing. That much, no more is needed,
no less will do. No more is needed, no less will
do. Why did these people not come
to Christ? Because they had wrapped themselves
in their garments of self-righteousness, willfully blinded to their state
of heart, and they would not come that they might have life. But then there is a second reason
why men and women, boys and girls, do not come to Christ. They did
not come in his day. They will not come in this day.
Not only is it because of ignorance of your desperate need of Christ,
but there's a second reason, and this is more appropriate
for some of you. See if you can see yourself in
the mirror of the Word. Your condition is more likely
to be described in this second heading. You are marked by impenitence
before the demands of Christ. Impenitence before the demands
of Christ. You say, Pastor Martin, what
do you mean? Well, simply this. The Lord Jesus who invites men
to himself and says, come unto me. The Lord Jesus who said,
ye will not come to me that ye may have life. He is the Jesus
who, inviting men to come to himself, commands them to forsake
a course of sin and of self He said, if any man would come
after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross. and follow
me. That is, no longer must my will,
my notions, my ideas, my goals, my ambitions, my notions of what
real life is all about and by what standards I should live,
everything that grows out of what I am as a natural boy, girl,
man, or woman, centered in myself, my desires, my longings, my notions,
my appetites, governing all that I do, Jesus said, you must repudiate
that. Self-centeredness and self-sufficiency
must be repudiated as the fundamental premise on which you live. And
he says you must follow him. That's to bring over into the
language of apostolic preaching The words repent. Paul said he
preached repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus
Christ. Acts 20, 21. In Acts 5, 31, we
are told that God has exalted his son to be a prince and a
savior to give repentance and remission of sins. And there
will be no remission of sins, no obtaining of life in Christ. unless we are prepared to bow
before the demands of Christ to be divorced from our sins
and to repudiate a life of self-centeredness. And that's the problem with some
of you. You're not insensible to your sin. No, you have a consciousness
of your sin. You are, some of you in dread
of the judgment of God. Some of you, like me, live with
foreboding thoughts of death as I did every day of my life
until I was converted at age 18. Living in the constant dread
that something might smash away my life and I would stand before
God Even fell asleep every night with dread of sleep itself, for
fear my sleep might be the very valley that would land me in
hell. Oh yes, you know your sin. You're
not ignorant of your sin, but here's your problem. You will
not part with your sin, especially your darling sin, that you might
have Christ. And you know enough to know,
having savender sound preaching, it's not Christ plus my sin,
it's Christ for my sin. For the angel said of him, Thou
shalt call his name Jesus, for he it is that shall save his
people from their sin. And here in this very context,
notice what Jesus said to these people, what was their crowning
sin, upon which he focused the spotlight, verse 44, How can
ye believe who receive glory one of another? and the glory
that comes from the only God ye seek not. He says it's morally
impossible for you people to believe. That is, you cannot
come to me until the honor and praise of God is more important
than the honor and praise of men. You mean men will go to
hell simply for seeking the praise of men more than the praise of
God? Yes. Yes! You see the relevance of
this to you kids? Oh, how important it is to have
peer acceptance. I don't want to be thought weird.
If all my peers say that the in way to dress is as kooky and
far out as people stepping out of a madhouse, hair curled around
your nose, jeans spattered with every color of paint in the rainbow,
colors that don't match and everything, but if everybody's doing it,
I dare not appear different. I'll be thought weird. Oh yes,
even if I've got to cuss mom and dad under my breath because
they won't let me dress in a way that reflects not just innocent
changes of style, but imitation of godless, wicked people who
are the trendsetters in clothes and bathing suits. Now he's all weird, being covered
from here down to here. What will everybody else think? You see, kids? It's getting harder
and harder for kids to get saved. because the pressure of peer
conformity pushed down by the commercialism of the clothing
industry and the rock industry is tightening its bites. I weep
inwardly when my JCPenney sales catalog comes for the fall clothing
styles and I see the little kids with their weird clothes and
their funny-colored glasses and with their Walkman things on
their ears, and I realize here is the whole commercial structure,
pummeling these kids, saying, be like us or you're out. That's the way it is, kids. You
want to get saved, you've got to be willing to be a weirdo
for Jesus' sake. Yes. Yes, that's right. And that's the great sin that
is keeping some of you from Christ, just as it was these. How can
you people believe, Jesus said? Because you're more concerned
about the praise and honor of your peers than the praise and
honor of God. Remember the rich young ruler?
What was his crowning sin? He wasn't shacked up with some playboy bunny. He wasn't going around robbing
banks. He was moral and upright. When
Jesus probed him with the latter commandments to deal with horizontal
relationships, he came up clean, outwardly, all these things that
I kept from my youth up. And the Lord says, it's time
now to drop the gloves. Jesus loved him, the scripture
says. And he said, one thing you lack. You want eternal life? Eternal life is in me. Therefore,
if you want eternal life, you want me, and if you want me,
I will have no other gods before me. Go, sell that you have, give
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. Come and
follow me." And it says, the young man went away sorrowful,
for he had great possessions. What did Jesus do? Run down the
road and say, fellow, I'm sorry, I made it too hard for you. He
loved him and let him go. loved Him and let Him go. That's the issue with some of
you. You will not come to Christ. Why? Because you know to make
one step to Christ is to take steps away from the thing that's
most important in life to you. The acceptance of your peers,
money, a career, marriage. What is it? What is it? Oh, whatever
it is, my friend, is it worth the loss of your soul? Is it
worth eternal burnings? Is it worth no peace now? No rest of conscience now? No peace in life? No peace in
death? No refuge in the day of judgment? Oh, what a horrible thing to
refuse to come to Christ because of impenitence before the demands
of Christ. He is not demanding something
unreasonable. He's telling you to forsake that
which will only destroy you. He's commanding you as a man
would command a child ignorant that the thing he holds is a
bomb that will blow him to pieces and says, Son, cast it away! Is that a vicious command? It's a gracious command. And
that's why God says, cast away all your transgressions, for
why will you die? Clinging to your sins is clinging
to a bomb that will destroy you with everlasting destruction.
Whatever that thing is, whatever that person is, oh my friend,
may it not be said you would not come because of impenitence
before the demands of Christ. I would call upon you at the
lowest level to behold the scarred, twisted lives of those wrecked
by sin. What a cruel master she is. Romans
6 likens him to a master that calls for the service of our
members. And what a grievous thing it
is to see people in their twenties and thirties burnt out and brushed
and wrecked by so cruel a master. Behold the horrible death of
sinners, who die with a horrible conscience accusing, and go down
to their graves to await the day of judgment. But I would
ask you above all else to come with me to the cross. If that's
the issue with you, you will not come to Christ because there
is an issue that you refuse to resolve, to deal with, and you
know you must. That coming to Christ as with
a rich young ruler is inescapably bound up with dealing with that
issue. Where should you view that issue?
Well, view it in the twisted lies. Yes, view it in the horrible
death of the sinner. View it in the awful specter
of the day of judgment for the sinner. But above all, view it
in the light of the cross. The one who says, ye will not
come to me that you may have life, is the very one who in
a very short time, in the presence of these very people, went to
the cross by way of Gethsemane. Gethsemane with its bloody sweat
and its agonizing cries, the cross with its shame and nakedness,
with its blood and gore, the cross with its cry, my God, my
God, what have you forsaken me? the cross with the shrouded heavens,
the cross with the wrath of God being poured upon His only begotten
and well-beloved Son for human sin. No wonder John Newton wrote,
A bleeding Savior I have viewed, and now I hate my sin. That's the issue. When you view
a bleeding Savior and realize that the acceptance of your peers,
conformity to the standard of the crowd, that person, that
relationship, that ambition, whatever it is, view it in the
light of the cross, can you still coddle and fondle to your breast
that which broke the nails into His hands, the spear into His
side? press the crown of thorns upon
his brow, cut the lines of sorrow into his face, wrung the piercing
cry from his breast. My friend, if you can still cling
to your sins while looking at that, you deserve to go to hell.
If there were no hell, God would have to make one for people like
you. If you can say, are more precious than the bleeding
incarnate God. And God would have to make hell
if there were none. He will not come. Why? Because
of impenitence before the demands of Christ. But then there is
a third reason why many do not come, and it applied in that
day as well, and it's this. It is not so much ignorance of
one's need of Christ, or in penitence before the demands of Christ,
but it is unbelief with respect to the promises of Christ. Unbelief
with respect to the promises of Christ. The biblical teaching
is very clear on this point, that Christ is both ready willing
and desirous to receive and pardon any and every sinner who will
come to Him. Let me repeat that. The Bible
is clear that Christ is ready, willing, and able to receive
and pardon any and every sinner who will come to Him. He says,
come unto me, Matthew 11, 28, all ye who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Again he says, Him that cometh
unto me I will in no wise cast out. John 6.37, again in the
last book of the Bible, the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. Whosoever will, let him come
and take of the water of life freely. In the days of his humiliation
here on earth, we see the Lord Jesus receiving all kinds of
sinners, notorious sinners, such as that man Matthew, who was
a well-known cheap publican. Harlots, notorious sinners, old
sinners, young sinners. Now, how did they come? They
all came the same way. by faith in his word of promise
that he would receive that. You see, even in the days of
his flesh, sinners had to come in terms of their confidence
in the word of Christ that he would receive them. And he is
not with us in the flesh, but his word of promise is here in
the scripture. We don't need to have someone
come up to us at work and say, do you know, Jesus of Nazareth
was in our town this weekend, and I heard him say, him that
comes to me, I'll in no wise cast out. And the sinner would
say, I can't believe that. That's too good to be true. I
can't believe that. Well, I heard him say it. Ah,
you didn't hear him rightly. You see, we need have no such
question. We can turn our Bibles to Matthew
chapter 11 and verse 28, and we can say, Lord Jesus, this
is what you say. This is what you said. Come unto
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. I will give you
rest. Lord Jesus, here is your word
of promise. And you see, with some of you,
this is the problem. This is why you will not come
to Christ. It is not because you're ignorant
of your need. You feel it very keenly. It is
not that there's some darling lust, some wicked ambition, some
perverse and perverted relationship. But I'll tell you what it is.
It is a vile, wicked unwillingness to believe that God does not
lie. And the Savior does not mock
us with empty promises. And of all the sins that will
damn us, this is the crowning in the undoing sin. The sins
that men regard as vile have all been forgiven by Christ.
Murder, adultery, blasphemy, thievery, none of those sins
shuts the door to heaven if a man will but believe. though you may have never committed
any of those sins if you refuse to believe the door of heaven
is shut. Underneath is the only bar to heaven and the unpardonable
sin, whatever that may be. Otherwise, the door is open.
The door is open to any and every sinner who will believe the promise
of Christ. And I plead with you, children
especially, who have grown up, as it were, in the very womb
of the gospel, gospel truth and gospel promises, and a Bible
and gospel-conditioned conscience is part and parcel of your life. What is it that is keeping you
from Christ if it is not your unbelief? The gospel table is
spread, and all that Christ purchased for sinners is there upon the
table. Forgiveness of sins, peace with
God, acceptance before the court of heaven, adoption into the
family of God, the gift of the Spirit, the promise that you
will be kept in this life and brought safe home at last to
heaven, it's all there at the table. But the Lord Jesus will
not force-feed you. You must come to the gospel feast. The feast is spread. You must
come. You must come. And how do you
come? The only way any of us had come.
We've come as we've laid hold of the promise of God in the
gospel. And said, Oh God, I do believe
that you cannot lie, that you do not mock us in our need, but
that your heart is open to us in the word and promise of the
gospel. And God says, he that believeth
not shall be damned. Oh, that you would venture on
him, venture wholly, let no other trust in truth. It's a call to
faith, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Then there is a
fourth and final reason why I fear some of you will not come to
Christ. And I want you to listen to me
carefully. Because, for some of you, this is so subtle. It is not that you're ignorant
of your need of Christ. It is not that you're consciously
standing on some ground of sinful desire and pattern of behavior,
refusing to be budged loose by the grace of Christ. And it is
not that you have any rank unbelief about the Word and promise of
Christ. But this is why you will not
come. You will not come because you have an unwarranted expectation
of some additional revelation from Christ. You have an unwarranted
expectation of some additional revelation from Christ. And what
do I mean by that? Simply this. You have heard enough
to know that God has a people called His elect. The Bible teaches
that. And you know that all that is
elect shall come and shall be brought home safely at last to
heaven. You know that in the very next
chapter of John there's a verse that says, no man can come except
the Father which has sent me draw him. You've been well instructed,
you've been catechized, well taught at home, in Sunday school,
in the preaching ministry. We have unashamedly set before
you the biblical doctrine of human inability. And you have taken the devil's
logic and said, well, if only the elect will come, and all
the elect shall come, and I cannot come except the Father draw me,
then I must wait. for something else to happen
until I come. You won't find a verse in the
Bible to justify that logic. Not a verse! It is a subtle attempt
of the devil to damn you and to keep you from Christ, all
under the guise of honoring the God of electing grace. My friend,
the God of electing grace is the God who says you must come,
and if you won't come based on the command to come, and you
won't come in confidence based on the promise that he'll receive
those who come, God has no additional revelation for you. He has spoken
in the word of the gospel. And that's why in the very passage
we read last Lord's Day in our consecutive reading in Matthew's
Gospel, Jesus finds no problem moving from this very glorious
doctrine of God's sovereignty and salvation in verse 25 of
Matthew 11 Right down through to verse 27,
he is praising his father, that the father has hidden things
from the wise and the prudent, has revealed them unto babes. He makes the declaration in verse
27, all things have been delivered unto me of my father. No one
knows the son save the father, neither does any know the father
save the son, and he to whomsoever the son wills to reveal him. Are we ashamed to preach that
verse? No. But then Jesus turns and
says, come unto me all ye that labor in the heavy land. Notice
he doesn't say, come unto me all you that have a revelation
from the Father. He had just said, no one will
know me except there is a revelation made by the Father. You'd think he would then say,
therefore all you that have this revelation come. No, he says,
come all ye that labor. And I will give you rest. What
does he say? May I say it without being irreverent. You leave to God to handle the
outworkings of his own sovereignty. And you put your attention on
your responsibility. And your responsibility and privilege
is to come. without any further revelation,
externally by a voice from heaven, writing in the clouds, internally
by some kind of what you would assess to be prevenient work
of God giving you a sense that you're included among His elect.
You have no warrant to expect anything of that kind. God comes
to you as He comes to all of us. in the word and promise of
the gospel. And if that will not be enough,
according to Jesus, we will have to choose to be damned. I want
you to turn to a final passage with me where this is so clearly
taught in the gospel according to Luke chapter 16. Jesus taught it in the passage
we've already considered. He said, if you would really
believe what Moses said, that is the Old Testament, you would
come to me because there I am the focus of the Old Testament
revelation as well as the new. And this is affirmed by our Lord
in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. You remember
the discussion that is going on between Abraham and the damned
soul of the rich man in hell. And suddenly the rich man in
hell becomes very concerned about others. And we read in Luke 16
and verse 26, besides all this between us and you, there is
a great gulf fixed. that they who would pass from
hence to you may not be able, and none may cross over from
thence to us. And he said, I pray thee therefore,
Father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have
five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come
to this place of torment. But Abraham said, They have Moses
and the prophets. That is, they have the written
scriptures, promises, invitations, warnings from God in writing. They have Moses and the prophets.
Let them hear them. That's enough. And he said, no,
it's not enough. Father Abraham, if one go to
them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him,
If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be
persuaded if one rise from the dead. My friend, may I say it
this way? If you will not come on the warrant
of God's free promise and certain invitation to all and any sinners,
you would not come if God sent an angel from heaven and showed
you your name transcribed from the book of life. That's the
application. You will not come if God were
to send an angel saying, you are one of the elect. You'd say,
no, no. The Bible says, be not deceived that Satan himself is
transformed into an angel of light. That's a devil's angel
sent to deceive me. You see, if you're set upon not
coming, even a transcription of your name from the book of
life wouldn't give you grounds to come. God has spoken in the
scripture, boys and girls. He's not going to speak in any
other way. He's spoken in his word. He's spoken in his promise. And you will not come. Why? Because you have an unwarranted
expectation of some additional revelation from Christ. And that's
exactly what these people did. Though he had been raising the
dead, opening the eyes of the blind, what did they say? They
said, show us a sign from heaven. It's not enough that the dead
are getting up out of their graves and getting up out of their coffins
and walking around. That's not enough. It's not enough
that people who've been paralyzed for life now have healthy limbs
and run and jump. We want you to make the sun and
the moon and the stars play leapfrog with one another. Leave your
hand and give us some disruption of the celestial bodies, then
we'll believe. If Jesus had done that, you know
what they would have said? Well, that may be just our eyes playing
trick on us. Do it with the next galaxy. Jesus said no such sign will
be given. He would not in any way say there was any validity. Do you see the thing I'm pressing
upon your conscience? You have no warrant to expect
some additional revelation from Christ. You have Moses and the
prophets and Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and Paul and
Peter. And with one voice they say Christ
is a willing Savior. Christ is an able Savior. Christ is a seeking Savior. Christ
is a receiving Savior. Go to Him. Come to Him. He'll in no wise cast you out. Don't wait for some additional
revelation externally or internally, but conscious of your need, conscious
that Christ alone can meet the need, conscious that anything
that would keep you from Christ is not your friend, but your
cruel enemy who seeks to damn you. Go to Christ as you are,
where you are, on the ground of His Word, and promise to receive
any and all sinners who thus come to Him. I close with the
words of our text, Ye will not come to me that ye may have life. What sad Would the Lord have to write
them about you at the end of this day? Another day in which
you've heard the word of the gospel, the gracious overtures
of the Son of God to you, coming through His servant by His word,
saying, I am all you need for this life and the life to come,
in the perfection of what I've done for sinners, and in the
perfection and power of what I'm able to do for you, come
to me, will it be written of you and he, John, she, Mary,
he, Peter, she, June, would not come to me, that they might have
life. What a sad closing to this Lord's
Day it would be if those words were written concerning you would
not come. Oh, may it be written in heaven
that this Lord's Day, July 28, 1991, that John came, Mary came,
Peter came, Jude came. And you know what you're going
to find? He wasn't playing games. He meant every word he said,
that he does receive sinners. He does lift the horrible burden
of an accusing conscience. He does change the record in
heaven and our hearts on earth. He does give us the delight of
the knowledge of God and give us a will to serve Him and love
Him. He does not mock us. I ask you,
young people, Get up the courage to go ask some of the gray-haired
people among us and some of us with receding hairlines and the
marks of age. Just ask, when did you come to
Christ? Do you regret you came as early
as you did? Ask and see what answer you'll
get. For those of us who were saved
in our teenage years, at times we weep bitter tears that we
didn't come when we were toddlers. We regret the wasted years. Some of you who've come at age
25 and 30, you grieve that you wasted those 25 and 30 years. You've never yet met a Christian
who said, I'm sorry I came too soon. But the world is full of
people who do have a solid hope of heaven who go there grieving
all the way that they waited so long to come. Don't join their
ranks. Come to Him who said, Suffer
the little children, to come to Me and forbid them not. Go
to Him who welcomed sinners. Go to Him now. In your hearts
say, Lord Jesus. I didn't fit that first category.
I do know my sin. And as best I know, there's nothing
I would cling to, for it can only damn me. And as best I know,
I don't believe you're a liar. And I see that I have no warrant
to wait for anything else. Lord Jesus, take me as I am. Take me now. Take me according
to your promise. And He will take you. He will
receive you. He will pardon, cleanse, forgive
you. And He will make you His loving
bondservant for life, and then take you to heaven forever. O
come to Christ, that you might have life. Let us pray. O our Father, as we have sought
to reason simply and biblically with the minds and the consciences
of men and women and boys and girls, we're very conscious that
we can only do what we've sought to do, but you, O God, must do
what only you can do. And we pray that you would make
your word effectual that this day there would be some who would
mark this Lord's Day as the day when, by your grace, they came
to the Savior, found Him to be not only all that He promised,
but much more than they could ever imagine. O Father, for those
who are in willful ignorance of their need, pull, we pray,
the blinders from their eyes. For those who are clinging to
some darling sin that will damn them, show them the ugliness
of that sin in the light of the cross and in the light of the
burning pit. For those, our Father, who in
wicked unbelief refuse to credit all You've said about Your Son,
show them the vileness of that sin, and may they flee from it
tonight. And for any who've been waiting
for some additional revelation, O God, may Your Word persuade
them that You've already spoken all You'll speak to them until
the day of judgment. O God, make Your Word effectual.
And for those of your people who have sat and listened and
prayed as the Word has been preached, give us renewed joy that you
overcame all of these obstacles in our hearts, and that by your
grace we have come. And oh, fill us with a renewed
sense of the privilege and the responsibility to urge upon other
sinners who are on their way to destruction that they too
might come to the Savior. Hear our cry and bless your truth. To the glory of your Son and
to the good of our souls, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.