Open to Colossians chapter 3. Every time I preach somewhere
else, I say, I hope this isn't what I preached to them the last
time, because I'm not very good about writing in my notes where
I preach this or that sermon. But on the other hand, I hope
this is what I preached to you the last time. I just hope I'm
using a different text of Scripture, so it'll sound a little bit more
interesting again, maybe. I want to preach to you on this
question, what is Christianity? What is Christianity? In this
world, they've got their definitions of it. To many, Christianity
is a moral system. And they say, well, it's following
the morals of Jesus. You've got your political views
of what Christianity is. We're now at war with men who
ascribed to another religion, the Muslim religion, and they
believe that our response is a religious response. They see
it as the Christians against the Muslims. I certainly hope
it's not. That is, I hope that we don't
perceive that what our nation and some other nations are doing
is a religious warfare. It's not. I can say this of an
absolute certainty. The Lord Jesus Christ never called
on us to take up arms against other humans in His name. Never. He said the weapons of our warfare
aren't carnal. They aren't made out of steel.
I'm not saying that there's no legitimacy in governments going
to war. God gives the governments certain responsibilities, and
part of that is the defense of its people, which involves carnal
weapons. But the church never rides forth
with any sword other than the sword of God's Word. So when
I ask this question, what is Christianity? I don't care what
the world thinks Christianity is. They don't have the right
to define it. It doesn't even matter. Now,
hang on to this. It doesn't even matter what Christians
say it is. Because Christianity, the one who has the right to
define what Christianity is, is the one who invented it. That's
who has the right to say what it is. And he pretty well described
it in his book. And it really is rather simple.
In fact, haven't you noticed over the years that you believe
the gospel? All of it's pretty simple. The difficulty of the
gospel is not in its doctrines. The difficulty of the gospel
is that the flesh stands utterly opposed to it, has its own carnal
reasoning, which Like I said, brother, you preached my message,
which the carnal reasoning builds up these strongholds constantly. That's why we can't use carnal
reasoning to bring them down. It's carnal reasoning built them. And so it can get complicated
in our minds if we're just trying to use our rational way of thinking
to sort stuff out. I know this. for every rational
argument you can come up with to defend the testimony of the
scriptures, the devil and the flesh is going to come up with
ten more questions to challenge it. I used to think that I would
really be valiant for Christ if I could come up with an answer
for every objection to the truth. You know what I found? My own
flesh has come up with more objections than I can answer. Faith is not of the flesh. It's
not born of the flesh. That is, it's not born because
of who your mom and daddy is. It's not born of the fleshly
efforts of preachers and churches, anything like that. Faith is
a miracle work of God. It is the expression of the new
man created through the new birth. A man who does not have the new
birth cannot believe, not in a saving way, not in the the
way that faith justifies it. He can't do that because he simply
does not have that faculty that believes. He can be convinced
of doctrines. He cannot believe God. And the
man who has been born of God cannot not believe. Do you realize
that? You know, I've heard people say,
well, you know, the unbeliever doesn't have free will. Neither does
the believer in the sense that people normally use the word
free will. The believer cannot choose to
disbelieve God. He may say with that one man,
Lord, I believe help my unbelief. He understands that within his
flesh, the unbelief still running around, still causing trouble.
But from his heart, he says, Lord, I believe and I do. But God help my unbelief. What is Christianity? The answer
would have a lot to do with what a Christian is. And I'll tell
you simply what a Christian is. It's someone who believes that
Jesus is the Christ. That's what a Christian is. Of
course, now you say that, most people don't even know what that
phrase means. Jesus is the Christ. Most people think that Christ
is the Lord's third name. He's Lord Jesus Christ, you know,
first, middle, second, third name. But Christ is one of his
titles. He has one name, Jesus. He has
two titles, Lord and Christ. That's what Peter said. He had
made him Lord and Christ. And Christ is a specific title
that tells us some specific things about what Christ came to do. And the believer, and we'll detail
them, but the believer, the Christian, is the one who believes Jesus
is the Christ. Christianity is founded on two
points. And the first of those points
is that Jesus is the Christ. Christ is the title given to
our Lord Jesus that unites all three mediatorial offices which
were fulfilled by Jesus. Now, we normally don't refer
to our Lord simply by his name, though the apostles did from
time to time. Sometimes we feel a little uneasy about that. We
ought to call him Lord. And they called him that, too.
But Jesus is not a shameful name. Jesus is a glorious name. Remember
who gave it to him? God did. The angel announced
it. It's a good name. It means Jehovah
is my salvation. I can't think of a better name.
In fact, we think it's such a good name, we won't give it to our
kids, will we? Now, down in Mexico, I guess
they do. And really, believe it or not, we do that here not
knowing we're doing it because Joshua is the same name. But
in the United States of America and in most of the Western world,
Jesus, pronounced that way as the name of the Lord, and we
count it such a high and holy name, we won't put it on anything
else. We won't give anyone else that name. It's a good name.
But when we say Jesus is the Christ, what do we mean? We mean
that he fulfills the three mediatorial offices between God and men.
Remember, the Scriptures say there's one God and one mediator
between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. He is the mediator,
and that mediator was described in three offices. Prophet, priest,
and king. You realize, don't you, that
you cannot go to God. You dare not go to God. You must go to Him through someone. If you were to appear in the
presence of God in yourself, you wouldn't last a moment. There are some who are presently
now in the presence of God without a mediator, and we call that
place hell. People say, well, hell is a place
where God is not. Boy, they wish He wasn't there.
Those in hell would be delighted if God would leave. People's
idea of hell is that the devil's down there punishing people.
The devil's going to be punished. He's not the punisher. God is. Hell might not be a great place,
but it wouldn't be a horrible place if God weren't there. They are there without a mediator. Old Testament economy. There
were these three offices of prophet, priest, and king. All of them
were anointed to their office. And that's what the word Messiah
and Christ mean. By the way, Messiah and Christ
mean exactly the same thing. It means the anointed one. I
think it's only once or twice in the Old Testament in our English
Bibles that the word Messiah appears, but the Hebrew word
behind it appears a lot, and it normally says my anointed.
But they anointed kings to their office, they anointed prophets
to their office, and they anointed the priests to their office.
Now, the prophet is the one who speaks to men in behalf of God.
The priest is the one who speaks to God in behalf of men. And
the king is the one who rules over God's people under God's authority for their
direction and for their protection. Now, under the Old Covenant,
there was a lot of them. In particular, Hebrews mentions
there was a lot of priests. Why? Because they died and needed
another one. And they'd anoint a new guy.
The king would die. They'd anoint a new guy. The
prophet would die. They'd anoint a new guy. But
one thing that believing Jews realized was that all these anointed
ones, all these small M messiahs, were pointing to one man who
would come and embody all of those offices perfectly, eternally
in one man. We read that in the book of Daniel.
It says, speaking of it, to be so long until Messiah will come. And they referred to him in his
prophetic office as that prophet. They referred to him in his kingly
office as the son of David. I don't know that they had a
particular name for him in his priestly office, but they knew
somebody was coming to do all that. That's Jesus. And what
did the early apostles, when they went out preaching, what
did they preach? Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is Messiah. Now,
they could only preach that to Jews because the Gentiles wouldn't
have had a clue what they were talking about. They'd have said,
Jesus is Christ. Good. What's Christ? And they
would have to explain all that. But generally, the apostles would
go into a town. They'd go into the synagogue and begin preaching
there. And their message was this. You
all know what Messiah is. We know who He is. And He's Jesus. And here's how He is, the Messiah. He came and He spoke. He is that
prophet. And when He spoke, never a man
spoke like Him. No man has seen God at any time,
but the only begotten One of God, Jesus of Nazareth, he saw
Him, and He came here and told us all about Him. Yea, in the
beginning was the Word, this Word is the Lord Jesus, and the
Word was with God, and more than this, brethren, the Word was
God. But the Word was made flesh,
and He is that Prophet, He is that Christ. And John the Baptist, in a sense,
talked of his priestly office when after how many generations
of killing lambs and stuff there at the temple and nobody's sins
ever being taken away, he points to the Lord Jesus, priest and
sacrifice bundled into one person and says, behold, the Lamb of
God that takes away the sin of the world. He said, the Lord said that John
was the greatest of all the prophets. I don't know that the Lord was
meaning that John was better than the rest of them in his
person, because all the prophets were depraved men whom God saved
by the grace or by his grace and gave them his spirit to teach. Here's what I think was the greatness
of the superiority of John in his ministry from whoever you
would have called the first prophet onward, they said, Christ is
coming. Christ is coming. Christ is coming.
John said, there he is. There he is. And God has exalted him. All
king after king after king sat on Israel's throne, and even
the very best of them, David and Solomon, were scoundrels. We may want to have in our mind
these two wonderful guys, David and Solomon. Do you realize,
in all likelihood, if you knew them, you wouldn't want them
as members of this church? David had multiple wives. Could grief
Solomon? I don't know how many wives.
What, a thousand wives and concubines? We wouldn't tolerate that. A
murderer? The best of the king. would have offended us, sinful
people, but he's the king in whom there is no offense or fault. It says, the interesting thing
is, you know, we always talk about prophet, priest, and king,
and I don't know how that order ever got established, but I do
know this, that's the order in which the Lord discharged his
Christly duties. He was the prophet first who
spoke. He was the priest next who offered
once for all a sacrifice that actually did take away sin. And
what was the result of this? Wherefore, God hath highly exalted
him and given him a name above every name, that at the name
of Jesus, every knee should bow, things in heaven and things on
the earth. And that if she confessed what? Jesus is Lord. He's the King of kings. He's
the Lord of lords. One of my favorite pieces of
music, and I imagine it stirs a lot of you too, is the Hallelujah
Chorus. And they repeat over and over, King of kings and Lord
of lords. To the heart of the believer,
that's got to be one of the best things you've ever heard. I used to be a little bit politically,
too much politically involved, too much invested of my emotions
in politics, only to realize there isn't one of them that
I want to trust with very much. I'm glad that there's one that's
king over them. I'm glad that there's one that's
Lord over them. And that no matter what they
do, they're doing what He said they would do. And the believer
believes that the Christian is the one who listens to no one
other than the Lord Jesus Christ. I know you're hearing my voice,
but if you're a believer, I know what you're doing. You're running
it through a filter. You're like the brains. You're running it
through the filter of Scripture because you believe the Scripture
to be the Word of Christ. And you might like me, but you're
not going to believe me if I say something contrary to what Christ
has said. And if you're a believer and I'm telling the truth, God
is speaking to your heart. So prophet, priest, king. Jesus is the Christ. That is
the first tenet. of Christianity. The second one
is this, and it's in Colossians 3, verse 11, where there is neither
Greek nor Jew. Now, what's he talking about
there? Well, we could say he's talking about in the church,
and that's true. But to get more precise, we would say in the
new creation. Now, we might think in our mind, well, someday God's
going to make a new creation. Brethren, he's already making
it. And you who believe, it's already
started in you. The seed of life has already
been planted. A tree has come forth, as it
were, and it's beginning to bear fruit. Now, unfortunately, it's planted
in a rather nasty garden. But, blessed be the name of the
Lord, it is not affecting the tree. It's in our flesh. And we have this constant warfare
because of it. I once preached a message and
I made this statement. I said, you know, Christians
don't have spiritual problems. People are surprised by that.
Also, they can't because their spirit is perfect. It came directly
from the hand of God. They got fleshly problems. They
got problems in their brains. They can't always put all the
pieces together, but they believe the Lord God with all their hearts.
They love the Lord God with all their heart. Say, well, I don't
know. You don't love him with your flesh, but you love him
with your heart. And one of these days, you're going to love him
with your flesh, too. But he's got this new creation,
it's already started, and in this new creation where God has
worked a work of grace, there is neither Greek, which was just
they call all the Gentiles Greeks. There's neither Gentile or Jew.
Now, under the old creation, there was. You know where it
says, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation, old things
are passed away. This is what it's talking about. It's not
talking about the fact that all your old desires and everything
are gone. If that's what it's talking about, I haven't met
a saved man yet. It means all the old creation was a creation
in the Garden of Eden, the creation in Adam. The creation of under
the law, Brethren, that's all gone. Our connection to Adam
is broken. Our connection to the law has
been satisfied. Therefore, the chain that binds
us to the law is broken. The old stuff's gone. It's all
new now. And in this, there's neither
Gentile nor Jew. Under the law, there was Gentile
or Jew. It made a difference who your mom and dad was. It
made a difference what country you were born in. It doesn't
anymore. Circumcision or uncircumcision.
Barbarian, Scythian. Barbarian was a word that the
Romans used to describe anybody that wasn't Roman. You know,
everybody's pretty well stuck on themselves, every nation and
every ethnicity, you know, and the Jews had a word for themselves
and Jews for everybody else, because if you weren't a Jew,
it didn't matter what you were. And the Romans, if you ain't a Roman,
you're a barbarian. But even among barbarians, there
were those that were more barbaric than others, and that was the
Scythians. They were a ruthless, barbaric, pillaging group of
people. And the Roman military often
came in contact with them. And you can imagine, as Paul
goes to these Roman cities and he's preaching, he says, well,
there's neither Jew or Gentile. And the Jews say, OK, we can
tolerate that. Yeah, maybe so. And the barbarians
and the Gentiles or the Romans are going, I don't know about
that. And Scythians, what? In Christ, it doesn't even matter
that you're a Scythian, a bloodthirsty, Murdering? Doesn't matter. We're going to find out why it
doesn't matter here in just a second. Bond or free. Oh, how men love
to draw distinctions in social class. There were the freemen and there
were the bondmen. And I'll bet you that there were
churches. This just shows you how corrupt even we believers
are. There were churches. Where the freemen sit down, the
bondmen stand up. There's not enough chairs. Just
like it used to be in our country that a black man didn't sit down
on the bus until all the white men sat down. You say, oh, a
believer wouldn't do that. Don't ever say a believer wouldn't
do that. You'll be the next one to do it. It's just so. And that's why Paul had to say
it. There's neither bond nor free. You mean I own property?
In fact, I own some of these guys that are in here in church.
And that there's no difference between me and them? Well, out
there in Roman law there is, but not in Christ, not in the
new creation. In fact, free man, God may pass
you by in his gifts and make a bondman to be your pastor and
to be your teacher. I'm not trying to create another
division in the church, because we could go on and say, lady
and clergy is nothing, and believe me, it is nothing. Nothing. And here's why. But Christ is
all. That's why nobody else is anything. Once you've filled up the bucket,
there's no room for anybody else. You may talk about clean water
and dirty water, but if the bucket's already full, it doesn't matter
whether you're clean water or dirty water. You ain't in. They
can't put you in there. And in the bucket of significance,
in the bucket of importance, it's already full of Christ. There's no room for you in the
importance bucket. In the significant bucket. That's one reason the flesh hates
the gospel. It makes all of us insignificant. Religion likes
to say, well, everybody's special. But I heard one little boy on
a movie one time. He hadn't done so well in some kind of contest
or something, you know, and so he wasn't feeling so special.
And his mother says, oh, so-so. Everybody's special. He said,
if everybody's special, nobody's special. Let me tell you something. In
Christ, nobody's special. Because all the special is Christ. He is all. One of the early heresies
of the church was called Gnosticism. And I may have mentioned this
to you before what it is. It helps sometimes understanding
the scripture when you understand the problems that they were addressing
in the scripture. But Gnosticism was the perfect
heresy to give rise to the statements of scripture because It'll fit
with almost any heresy. But Gnosticism essentially said
there was a special class of believers, the knowers. The word
Gnosticism comes from the Greek word meaning to know. And these
were guys that had a special connection to God, so they said.
And they received their information directly. And there were the riffraff of
the church, and there was them. It was simply a Christian paint
job over top of self-righteousness. That's all it was. But they said
that they dwelt on a higher spiritual plane. You know, that attitude
is still present in our day. I'm pressing on the upward way.
New heights I'm gaining every day. Where did you start? Well, I
started in Christ. Is there any way to get any higher
than that? I remember one preacher, a fellow came to him, a fellow
of the Charismatic Persuasion, and said, don't you want more? Don't you want higher? And the
preacher responded, he said, well, if I'm just a simple believer,
do I have Christ? He said, yeah. He said, if I'm
a simple believer, will I get to heaven? He said, yeah. He
said, well, Christ is all I want, and heaven is as far as I want
to get. Brethren, this kind of heresy has been around all along
in one form or another where they try to categorize the church
according to the riffraff in the middle and the better. And
what Paul is saying, there is no such thing. When I was a kid,
I used to always pray, Lord, make me a better Christian. And
finally, when I began to understand the gospel, I thought there's
no such thing as bad Christians or better Christians. Now, there
are some who may be more gifted in certain areas than others.
There may be some who are more mature than others, but there's
no such thing as a bad Christian. It can't be. There's no such thing as better.
There are no divisions in God's church. There are differences,
but not divisions. And when there is a difference,
Paul tells the church this, who made you to differ? I stand up
here in this pulpit. People back home call me pastor. Some of them do. When I went
there, they said, what should we call you? I said, my mom named
me Joe, and it's worked real good so far, you know. But they
wanted to put a little tie on. I said, well, you can call me
pastor if you want to. But brethren, I am not in the least degree
better than you. God may have given me a gift
to preach his word, but I can tell you of a certainty from
my own experience, because there's a few times he's left me alone
in the pulpit just to teach me, just to remind me, or at least
he made me feel like I was alone in the pulpit. Boy, there's nothing
up here. There just isn't. And if you hear anything of value
to your soul this morning, I'll I can assure you it wasn't me
that told it to you. It was God. There is no difference. Christ
is all. These Gnostics believed that
there also was a ladder of more or less spiritual beings between
us and God. And the very top rung of that
ladder was Jesus. But there were other angels and
actually, I think they were just dragging a bit of Greek mythology
into the, trying to do that, trying to drag them into the
gospel. In fact, Gnosticism was based on Plato's philosophies
about flesh and spirit. And they thought everything material
was bad and everything spiritual was good. And so some of them
say, well, if the flesh is bad, we ought to deny it. And they'd
go around and they wouldn't eat good tasting foods, you know,
and touch not, taste not, handle not, such as Paul speaks of in
Colossians. It was the Gnostics doing that.
And then John had to deal with another brand of the Gnostics
who said, well, you know, the flesh doesn't amount to anything,
so it really doesn't matter what we do with it. We can just go
out and whoop it up. He's going to die anyway. I tell you, men
will do anything to justify their sin or to prove their self-righteousness. But anyway, these Gnostics had
this idea that there was this ladder of more or less spiritual
beings, and to get to God, you had to go through them. And you
know what they call that ladder? The fullness. And you know what
Paul says in Colossians? For it pleased God that in Christ
all fullness should dwell. It pleased God that in the Lord
Jesus Christ, the whole way from you to God is spanned. You don't have to pray to some
patron saint who will talk to some other one above him, who
will pass the message off to another above him and hope that
finally it will get up to the top one who will hand it off
to God. There is one God, one mediator,
not a whole bunch of them, not a series of them. One mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, everything it takes
to get from where you are to where God is, is spanned by the
Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, we pray for one another,
but this idea that there are some who pray better than others,
who got the ear of God better than other believers do? Nonsense. I better go call the preacher.
This is a real problem. I want him to pray for me. Why him? I'll tell you who I want praying
for me. Christ. He's at the right hand of God.
Your preacher may be in the study, but that's as close as he's going
to get. I mean, again, I don't want to deny the legitimacy that
we intercede for one another in prayer, but brethren, there's
only one mediator. It's Christ. He's everything. And he who has Christ doesn't
need anything more than Christ. I'm going to run out of time
long before I run out of notes, but let me clip off some points
here about Christ is all and what that means. Christ is all
in the church, and that's how you can find out where the church
is. It's pretty simple. You find that group of people
to whom Christ is all. Jesus is the Christ and Christ
is all. Now, there isn't such thing as a perfect church. And
you're going to hear from me, maybe if you hear enough, or
from your own pastor, messages that will contain things that
just, I will be frank, they aren't Christ. Why? Because we're men. But I'm certain of this. Anybody
that sits here long enough and listens, they're going to say,
you know what that church is about? They're about Christ.
Do you realize that's how the Christians got their name? Christianity
is a nickname, or Christian is a nickname, actually. Some believers
collected there together in Antioch. This new religion springs up
among all the other religions of Antioch. And people started
talking about them, and if you're going to talk about somebody,
you've got to give them a name. And, you know, you had the Jews,
and they picked up their name, actually, from the tribe of Judah. I think, in fact, even in some
of you, like in Germany, that Huden is what they call the Jews,
Judah. That's what they called them.
And you had the worshippers of the various Greek gods and Roman
gods and all that. What are we going to call this
new outfit? And what stands out about them? Well, they're always talking
about this guy they call the Christ. All right, we'll call them Christians.
Boy, wouldn't you like to know that Christ was so prominent
in this church that if people had to make up a name for you,
that's what they'd call you? Christians. The Christianity. Jesus is Christ
and Christ is all. He's all in the church. He's
all. He's the church's only message. I know of a certainty that the
church has only one message to the world. What nonsense that
we think we're going to send Christians up to Washington to
tell Washington something other than repent and believe the gospel. As though somehow or another,
we can establish a Christian government and then the kingdom
of God can come into the United States. Brethren, the kingdom
of God doesn't need a Christian government. Didn't have a Christian
government in Rome and did just fine. Didn't have a Christian
government in Europe in the Middle Ages. And it survived and even
flourished once God decided. He said, well, I want to expand
my kingdom. And he did. The kingdom of God, the church
of the Lord Jesus doesn't need anything from me and its message
to me is not to try to make them follow this way or follow that
way in politics or society. It is simply this. I'll say this, I think that most
of the problems that our country deals with right now are not
to be laid at the feet of its politicians. It's to be laid
at the feet of its preachers, because this land is full of
false prophets preaching a false god. And wherever there is a false
god, tyrants will flourish. That's just so. But tyrants learn their place
when the tyrant of all tyrants is declared. When the Lord of
lords is preached, all the plain old lords know to bow and to
show respect even to those whom they rule. I would that God would send a
lot of good grace preachers all over this country. Men that would,
without apology, declare the gospel of God's free and sovereign
grace. Not with rancor, not with meanness,
but with the meekness our brother showed out of the Scriptures.
Because the gospel doesn't even need us to growl to make it powerful.
The gospel doesn't need us to pound the pulpit to make the
point. Just tell it. Somebody says, I want to defend
the gospel. Gospel doesn't need defense. That's like defending
a lion. How do you defend a lion? Let
him out of the cage. He'll handle his own after that.
Christ is all in church leadership. If you ever find yourself, maybe
God will make you move somewhere, and you go looking for a church,
and you sit down, and they're having a big whoop-dee-doo about
who's in charge, you just might as well get up and leave. The
church knows who's in charge. And do you know that even the
offices of the church, what we call the office of the church
primarily, pastor, elder, and bishop, do you know that they're
all applied to the Lord Jesus Christ? Men of the world may look at
me and say, well, he's the pastor over at Grace Community Church.
I've told our church, I said, God help you if I'm your pastor.
You know the word pastor means shepherd, and you know what David
said? The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord is my pastor. He may use a man to be a voice. The speaker may give him some
wisdom to lead in some basic things. But brethren, the shepherd
of your soul is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is called, if you
look in 1 Peter 2.25. We're running out of time, so
we won't turn there. But you return to the shepherd.
You return to the bishop of your souls. These guys get themselves
dressed up in a gown. Well, that's bishop so and so.
Well, pity the group he oversees. We have an overseer. In fact,
someone once said that word can be translated, and I don't know
if it's so, but I'd like to find out if it truly is. Not necessarily
an overseer in the sense of a boss, but one who watches over. Christ is the elder, the pastor,
and the overseer, the overwatcher of the church. And that's why
it survives all of its bishops, pastors, and elders, because
there's one above them all overseeing the whole thing. Christ is all
to the Father. The Lord said all things have
been committed to His hands. And this is the testimony of
the Father. He has given us this life, and
this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has life.
He that doesn't have the Son And Christ is all in the heart
of the believer. He's all the believer's love.
Peter made a mess of things in his denial. And when the Lord
would restore him, he does not set a law over Peter. He doesn't
make Peter make further commitments. All right, Peter, you made a
mess. But you know, if you will right now, bow your head, close
your eyes and promise to God, you'll never deny me again. Then
we can get started on it, you know, clear the slate. He said,
Peter, do you love me? Well, Lord, yes, I love you.
Well, feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love
you. Well, feed my sheep. Peter, do
you love me? And it grieved Peter that the
Lord asked him the third time, because I'm sure he understood
the connection with three. And you know what Peter said?
He said, Lord, you know everything. And you know I love you. And the Lord inasmuch said, yeah,
I know. It was you that didn't know.
But now you know. Now let's just forget that mess
you made and move on. Feed my lambs. He is all in the
believer's love. He's all in the believer's righteousness. Yes, I want to act good. There's
a lot of things I do that I wish I didn't do. And there's a lot
of things I know I ought to do that I don't get done. And I
wish I did better at those things. But what I do is not my righteousness
in the sight of God. I would not dare bring the least
of my efforts before God. Christ is all in the believer's
hope. Back in 1998, I had what they
used to call a nervous breakdown. They call it major depressive
episode. All mixed in with anxiety. And I tell you, I was one miserable
mess emotionally. And any of you that have ever
gone through a thing like that, you know one thing that really
bears down on your mind is guilt. And I used to ride my bicycle,
try to run off the excess energy this emotional disorder would
create, just burn off that excess energy. And I was riding along,
and I swear I felt like any minute hell was going to open up and
swallow me. Every sin I ever did, it was like it was right
there in my mind, fresh, and I just did it. I felt absolutely
horrible. And I was pumping that bicycle,
and I'm not lying to you. It's all I could do. I pumped
that bicycle and every time I put it in, Christ is all. Christ
is all. Christ is all. That's all I could come up with.
But it's all I needed to come up with. Because see, the testimony
of all those sins was absolutely true. I could not deny what my
conscience was telling me, my overactive conscience, and what
the accuser of the brethren was feeding it. I could not deny the truth of
how wicked I was and how right it would have been if hell had
opened up. But in the face of that, there
was a hope. Christ is all. And Christ is all the believers
desire. Is there anything else you want? I know there's things in this
life you want. I like to see them. I love my brethren and
sisters in Christ. This one thing I ask, says the
psalmist, give me this and I'll be fine, that I may dwell in
the house of the Lord forever and gaze upon the beauty of the
Lord. And Christ is the focal point
of the believer's faith. So I believe in God. You know
what Peter says? you believe in God. Now the devil and all
his demons believe in God, but they don't believe in God through
Christ. When we believe Christ, when
we trust in Him, our thoughts, our faith are focused on Him,
we're believing God. And we're believing in the saving
of our soul. What's Christianity? Jesus is the Christ. And Christ
is all. And that's the beginning and
the end of it.