Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Joy. Good morning. We're going to be looking at a few verses in John chapter 10, the gospel of John chapter 10. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith. in his excellent word. What more can he say than to you, he hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus hath fled.

The Lord has given us a testimony of his mercy. and of His grace, an infallible word. And we were so very thankful and comforted to have the Holy Spirit make these words effectual to our hearts. I've titled this message, Tell Us Plainly. The Pharisees knew nothing of the power of the Spirit of God, Speaking these words to their hearts and The Lord says in verse 27 My sheep hear my voice and I know them and They Follow me Let's pray together our merciful heavenly father, what great joy there is in our hearts being able to call you our father. Knowing that we're able to approach your holy presence in the person of our savior, thy dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And know Lord that your presence is a place of grace and a place of mercy. Father, for Christ's sake, we ask that that mercy and that grace would be shed abroad in our hearts this morning as we open your word, Father, that you would open our hearts, that you would send your spirit in power, that you would enable us this morning to worship thee according to the truth of thy word, the revelation that you've given of us, your testimony.

Lord, give us faith to believe thee and to follow after Christ. For it's in his precious name that we pray. Amen. Let's read these verses together, John chapter 10, beginning at verse 22. And it was at Jerusalem, the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch.

Then came the Jews round about him and said unto him, how long dost thou make us to doubt? They were blaming God for their unbelief. How long are you going to make us to doubt? That goes all the way back to the garden, doesn't it? Adam, where art thou? And what did Adam say? The woman, did you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? The woman that thou did give me, she gave it to me and I did eat. Many have read that and accused Eve, but Adam wasn't accusing Eve, he was accusing God. You're the one that gave me that woman.

James chapter one says, let no man say when he is tempted that I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust. And when lust has conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin bringeth forth death.

One of the evidences of God working in our hearts is that when we hear those words, though we find ourselves often in the daily struggles of life, murmuring and in a sense complaining and accusing God of our circumstances, when we hear these words, if we know Christ, our response is truth, Lord.

This is all my fault. And all the times that I've not been satisfied and content with the things that you've given me and hurled my veiled accusations toward heaven, that's my fault too. I loathe myself. Lord, my sin is my fault, no one else's. These Pharisees were accusing God of their own unbelief. How long are you going to cause us to doubt?

What a blessing it is. What deliverance, what relief, what hope there is when being able to come before God Almighty and own our sin, knowing that the Lord Jesus has taken them all and put them away by the sacrifice of himself. It's it's my sin that put him on Calvary's cross. When the spirit of grace and supplication comes to the house of David and to the Children of Israel, They will mourn after him as one mourneth after his own son, the one whom they pierced, the one whom they pierced. It was my sin that pierced Christ.

Here's the evidence of an unbelieving heart. It's not my fault. God made me. God made me this way. We hear people say that today. God made me this way. No. Now, we come into this world sinners, but we're fully responsible for all our sin. And only as, that's what 1 John 1, 9 means. If we confess, if we agree with God that our sin is all on us, if we confess, that's what that word confess means. If we confess our sin, and that confession is a work of grace in the heart, when the Lord causes us to see that this is all on us, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us of all our sins and cleanse us of all of our unrighteousness.

You see the contrast between what these self-righteous Pharisees are saying? How long do you keep us in doubt? You're making us not believe you because you haven't been clear to us. If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Nothing could have been more plain. Nothing. And Jesus answered them in verse 25 and said, I told you and you believed not.

That's the polluted well from which all sin comes. All of our sin is drawn up from that polluted well of unbelief. It is the sin that does so easily beset us. It's the struggle that we have with our sin. It's all rooted in unbelief. The Lord Jesus Christ believed his heavenly father perfectly. and obeyed him perfectly. And that's what God requires. God requires perfect faith and perfect obedience. And the only way that you and I are gonna be able to stand in the presence of God is if we are found in him, in him. Because we're incapable of perfect faith. We're incapable of perfect obedience.

Long as we're in this body of flesh, we're carrying around this stinking corpse, We're going to be struggling with our unbelief, unbelief. We all cry, believers all cry with that father who said to the Lord, Lord, I do believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Help thou mine unbelief. I told you, but you believed not. Your unbelief is all on you. And our faith is all on him. He is all the praise and all the glory because we would remain in our unbelief.

That's why the miracle of the new birth must happen Not in order of time. Not in order of time. In time, the new birth and faith happen simultaneously. But in a logical order, as we think through it logically, in a logical order, regeneration, a sovereign, unilateral work of grace invading our hearts with the Spirit of God, born of the Spirit, born from above, born of God, in a logical sense, order of things.

That happens. The evidence of that is faith. The evidence of that is faith, that we are able to believe God. We're able to believe the gospel. We're able to believe that we're sinners. We bow to God's word. We respond to everything that God says with truth, Lord. Amen. Lord, help me. You believe not.

The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. The miracles that I performed, the inexplicable supernatural miracles that you have seen me perform. They testify of me. John chapter nine, they interrogated the man that was born blind. All the evidence was clear. That man was a beggar in the temple. They knew who he was. They saw the miracle.

And yet they refused to believe. The works that I do, they testify of me. But you deny the obvious revelation that I've given of myself. You remember in Mark chapter two, when those four men brought their friend and they could not get to the Lord because of the press of the crowd.

And so they took him up on the roof of the house and removed some tiles from the roof and lowered him down to where the Lord was. And the Lord saw that and he said to him, he said, your faith has saved thee. And the Pharisees saw it. And they said, who does this man think he is?

Only God can forgive sin. And the Lord Jesus looked at them and he said, what is easier to say? Your sins are forgiven thee, or take up thy bed and walk. But that you might believe that the Son of God has power to forgive sin, I say unto you, take up into your bed and walk. And the man got up right there in the presence of them, and he walked away with his bed, and they saw it. People say, well, if I could just see a miracle, no, wouldn't convince you. Wouldn't convince you if you saw a miracle. The only thing that convinces God's people to believe is conversion, conversion. That's the only thing that will convince us. Nothing that we see, no. In John chapter 12, the Lord was in the temple and the Pharisees were watching him, the scripture says, to see if he would perform a miracle on the Sabbath day.

And he found a man, there was a man there with a withered arm And he told the man to stretch out his arm and it was made whole. He did it right there in the face of those Pharisees. And they refused to believe. Later on in that same chapter, the scripture says that there was a man possessed with the devil and he was deaf and dumb. And the Lord Jesus cast the devil out of the man. And immediately he was able to see and hear and speak. And the Pharisee says, he did that in the power of Beelzebub. Unbelief will not be convinced by outward evidences. Unbelief is going to accuse God of their unbelief and no amount of outward evidence will convince them.

In the next chapter of the Gospel of John, in John chapter 11, the Lord Jesus went to Bethany and he raised Lazarus from the dead, which is a picture of regeneration. The Lord Jesus didn't say, Lazarus, if you want to come back to the world, you decide what you want to do, Lazarus. No, Lazarus, come forth. And the dead man, four days in the tomb with body stinking, came to life.

And they saw it. And they ran down the hill back into Jerusalem and they got the Sanhedrin together and they said, what are we gonna do? If we allow him to remain, everybody will believe on him and we will lose our place and our position. We'll lose our power, we'll lose our nation. And from that day forward, they set to destroy him, to kill him.

Unbelief, there's no cure for it. Other than regeneration, there's no cure for unbelief. I told you and you believe not. The works that I do in my father's name, they bear witness of me. If you don't believe me for what I say, at least believe me for what I do, what you see. They wouldn't believe. Verse 26, but you believe not because you are not of my sheep. I've left you to yourself.

That is a fearful thought, a fearful thought that God would ever leave us to ourselves. We'll not be saved. We'll not believe. We'll go to the grave with our fists raised to heaven. And we'll spend eternity separated from God in a lake of fire. We'll not come. We'll not come.

If a man came back from the dead, you remember the rich man and Lazarus? And Lazarus died and was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man died and found himself in the torment of fire. And the rich man looked up, and he saw Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham.

And he said, Father Abraham, send Lazarus with just a drop of water on his finger that I might get some relief from this torment. And Abraham said, the great gulf is fixed between us. And so the rich man said, well, at least send him back. I've got five brothers. Send him back to my house and warn them of this terrible place that they not follow me. And Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets. They have the word of God.

And the rich man said, No, but if one raised from the dead, then they would believe. And Abraham said to Lazarus, though one raised from the dead, they will not believe. They will not believe. Not only would the unbeliever in this world not believe the gospel, though one come back from hell, the person who came back from hell would not believe the gospel. Apart from a sovereign work of grace in their heart, apart from the miracle of the new birth, a person who came back from hell would not believe the gospel without God doing something for them.

Now I hope that these words will cause every one of us to say, oh Lord, do something for me. Lord, don't leave me to myself. Lord, I can't be saved if you don't save me. Lord, if you don't open the eyes of my understanding, if you don't take out my heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh, if you don't give me faith, Lord, if you don't cause me to be born of the Spirit, this is clear. The scriptures are clear, I won't be saved. That's why the Bible says, brethren, salvation's of the Lord. from our election in the covenant of grace and eternity past all the way to our glorification in heaven. It's all of him and he gets all the glory. What a God. What a Savior.

This is part of what we were talking about earlier in owning our own sin. We own the fact that we're not able to save ourselves. We own the fact that we cannot present to God anything that would obligate him in any way to save us. Lord, I'm a sinner. All I have to put on the table is sin. Verse 27. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me." All of the evidences of the supernatural miracles, all the indisputable fulfillments of prophecy and the undeniable revelations of scripture, and yet these men would not believe. And these men were students of the Bible.

And yet, when you remember Nicodemus, who went to the Lord by night and told Nicodemus, Nicodemus, you must be born again. It was Nicodemus that went to Pilate to get the body of Christ. And clearly, Nicodemus was saved. The Lord had mercy upon him. But he goes before the Sanhedrin. I think it's in John 7. And he tries to defend the Lord Jesus. And he says, do we judge? He's part of the Sanhedrin. So he says, the Sanhedrin, that was the Jewish court.

That was the high, the men who ruled the nation and made all the religious decisions. And everyone feared these men. Nicodemus was a part of that. He was a ruler of the Jews. And he tried to advocate for Christ in the Sanhedrin. And they rebuked him.

They said, are you from Galilee also? And then they said this. They told Nicodemus. They said, go to the scriptures and search, and you will find that no prophet of God ever came from Galilee. Well, they knew better. Several prophets had come from Galilee. Jonah had come from Galilee. Elijah came from Galilee. Elisha came from Galilee. Hosea and Nahum came from Galilee. And these men knew it. They knew it. But they would not. I have.

We must be careful that we go to the scriptures not in order to frame an argument to defeat another man, but we go to the scriptures looking for the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, reveal yourself to me in your word. These men had studied the Bible so that they could stand head and shoulders above the common man and so that they could compete with one another amongst the rulers of the Jews to see who knew the Bible better. And yet, when the Bible spoke of things that was contrary to what they wanted to believe they denied the very scriptures.

I was talking to a man recently on the phone from another state. He called me. It was clear after about 45 minutes of conversation that he just wanted to impress me with what he knew. But it came out in conversation that he believed that sprinkling water on babies was baptism. And I showed him from scripture how not only is that not baptism, but it destroys the gospel. If you understand the implications of what you're doing, it ruins the gospel. And this man was very proud of his biblical knowledge.

And he finally had to just say, well, We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one." And I said, no, I don't agree to disagree. You're wrong. But if he had admitted, and I've talked to other people about this thing of christening babies and calling it baptism. And I found that in some circles, in some reformed circles, it is their holy grail. I mean, they will discuss anything else, but they will not submit on that one. And I've come to realize why it is. And this goes with our text.

If I admit that I'm wrong on that position and I believe that I know the Bible and I believe that God has taught me the truth, then where else might I be wrong? And they will not bow. They'll dig in their heels and say things that are contrary to grace and contrary to the gospel, all along professing how biblically astute they are. That's what these Pharisees were doing. You won't believe.

Notice, let's take just a moment and look at verses 22 and 23 because this is important as well. And it was at Jerusalem, the feast of the dedication and it was winter. Now, this is the inspired word of God. The Holy Spirit led the Apostle John to write those words. Is the Lord just giving us information?

No, no. The Lord Jesus said, destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it again. In another place, he said, one greater than the temple is here among you. In another place, he chased the money changers out of the temple. And he did that twice, at the beginning of his ministry and right before his crucifixion. He cleansed the temple. Even the disciples, when they sat on the Mount of Olives looking down at that glistening temple, were amazed when the Lord Jesus told them, not one stone will be left upon another. That temple's gonna be destroyed. That temple serves one purpose. It has served one purpose. It is a testimony of me.

Prior to the time of David and Solomon, the tabernacle was in a tent. God gave Moses in the wilderness a tabernacle. And the Ark of the Covenant was carried around in a tent. And then David gathered together all the materials that were necessary for building a permanent temple. And he wanted to build a house. to put the tabernacle, to put the Ark of the Covenant in.

And the Lord said to him, he said, no, because you are a man of blood, you will not be able to build it. But your son Solomon will build it. Now Solomon's name means man of peace. And both David and Solomon represent the building up. The Lord Jesus said, upon this rock, I will build my church.

And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Lord Jesus, as a man of blood, went to the cross and paid the debt by his blood for the church to be established on him, the cornerstone, and to be built up. But it's the Holy Spirit, Solomon, who has been building the church. It's the Holy Spirit that's been making the Word of God, the Gospel, effectual to the hearts of God's people. and regenerating them and keeping them and adding them to the body of Christ.

And now this temple, this glorious temple, had served its purpose. And the one of whom it pictured was standing in the very midst of it. not only in the midst of it, but on Solomon's porch. Notice, and Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. This long colonnade that was on the east side of the temple, where the golden gate was, where the Lord Jesus entered into the temple. And later, the believers gathered together on Solomon's porch. It was a place that God had honored to point to Christ, to point to the Lord Jesus Christ. But now the Lord Jesus is there in the midst of them, and he's there on the very feast of the dedication. Now, this is not...

When Solomon dedicated the temple in 1 Kings 8, The scripture says that that happened at harvest time. When the children of Israel came back from Babylonian captivity and they rebuilt the temple, Ezra dedicated the temple, and the scripture says that that was in the springtime. The Holy Spirit is telling us that the feast of this dedication was in the wintertime because it's referring to when After the death of Alexander the Great, one of his successors came in and tried to, well he did, he defiled the temple. And the children of Israel, under the leadership of the Maccabeans, led a revolt against these Greeks. And it was then that the temple was dedicated. This is the dedication that's being spoken of here, because that happened in the winter.

What's the importance of that? Well, I believe what the Lord's saying here. You've desecrated the temple. You've desecrated the temple. But I've come to make it holy. by the temple of my flesh. The word was made flesh and he tabernacled among us. The very, we've desecrated, the scripture calls us, our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, are they not? Yet how many times we've desecrated our temple. And doing things with our bodies we ought not to do.

You're here at the Feast of Dedication. You think that your ceremonies and your commitments are somehow going to make holy this temple, and the word temple means to be set apart, it means to be made holy. We're worshiping God in the temple. It's not by ceremony that the temple is dedicated. Yes, the temple's been desecrated. It's by the body of Christ that the temples.

Let me show you that. Turn with me to Hebrews. Well, I'm so sorry. It's in Hebrews chapter 12. The Lord speaks of the temple being consecrated. Oh, here it is. Hebrews chapter nine. Turn with me there, if you will. Hebrews chapter nine. Look at verse 18.

Whereupon neither the first Testament was dedicated without blood. Now, the Lord's gonna go on in this passage to tell us about how he has dedicated his people to the body of Christ and his temple by the shedding of his blood. Look down in chapter 10 at verse 19 of Hebrews. Verse 18, now where remission of these is, there's no more offering for sin. having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh. Now that's what's being pictured in our text. The Lord Jesus is standing in Solomon's porch, the very place where he would have entered into the temple.

These men are Well, matter of fact, the only charge that the Sanhedrin had against Christ at his mock trial was that they could find witnesses that corroborated the word that he gave about destroying the temple. He said, you destroy this temple in three days and I will rise it again. He's talking about the temple of his body. They thought he was talking about that temple. And they said, we don't need to hear any more. He has desecrated the temple because because he said he's gonna destroy the temple. Now this is a lot of details, I understand that, but I hope you see the big picture.

The Lord Jesus Christ is our tabernacle. He's our temple. And he's consecrated himself and his church by the shedding of his blood. Men are waiting for the Lord to return and reestablish temple worship in Jerusalem. He's already done that. This is Jerusalem. This is the city of God. This is Mount Zion. Glorious things are spoken of thee, Mount Zion. This is where the Lord consecrates his people though they're incapable of consecrating themselves. My sheep, I'm here in the temple.

And it's the one dedication of all the dedications that the Jews practiced that had to do with setting the temple apart because it had been desecrated. You and I have desecrated by our sin. The Lord Jesus has made it whole. He's cleansed it. This is the voice that my sheep hear.

The ones that refuse to believe are still going about trying to establish their own righteousness. They're still going about trying to go through the dedication of the temple. That's what religion's all about. Every form of religion is man trying to dedicate himself to God so that somehow he can make his temple acceptable to God. The Lord is standing in the temple, walking in Solomon's porch, and saying, my people, my sheep, they hear my voice. The unbeliever doesn't see me for who I am or what I came to do. Tell us plainly, how long do you keep us to wonder? Is your fault that we don't believe? No, it's not. No, it's not. Lord, I believe. Lord, I want to follow thee.

You remember when the Lord gave Bartimaeus, blind Bartimaeus, his sight? Bartimaeus, what would you have me to do for you, O Lord, that I might see? And the Lord gave him his sight. And then the Lord said, go thy way. Go thy way. And the next verse says, and Bartimaeus followed Jesus in the way. When God does a work of grace in the heart and he causes us to believe on Christ and to look to Christ, he puts a desire in our hearts for his way to be our way.

How do we follow Christ? Well, we don't look behind us to see how we've done. because I'm sure that that road's going to be crooked. We don't look down at our feet to see how we're doing. That only engenders self-righteousness and pride. We don't look to our right or to our left to see how our following Christ compares to other men following Christ. No. And we don't look ahead to anticipate where he may take us next.

No, we walk by faith, not by sight, looking unto Jesus who is the author and the finisher of our faith. This is the life of the believer. And there's such a contrast here in what the Lord's showing us about him being the one who dedicated the temple. He's the one by the shedding of his blood, by the renting of the veil, enables us to come into the very presence of God, the throne of grace, boldly, boldly, for the way has been made.

What hope? What hope? Let the unbeliever say, it's your fault that I don't believe. Let us be careful that we don't look for any evidences that might appeal to the flesh. We look upon those things that cannot be seen. Not upon those things which are seen. Miracles will not convince a man. will not convince a man. The new birth and the work of grace in the heart, God's work of grace, the only thing that'll keep us and make us to believe and keep us believing. The more we grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ, the more we see of our dependence upon him. Do we not? Do we not? Lord, save me. Lord, keep me.