Good evening. If you will open
your Bibles to John chapter 16. When I graduated high school
at my graduating ceremony, we had a speaker, someone from the
business world, and he spoke to us and said he wanted to give
us a piece of advice for the rest of our life that we would
move on with. He said, you're going to go to
college and you're going to meet people. And he said, the best
advice I can give you in life moving forward is to make friends
with these people. because these are people that
are gonna open doors for you later in life. Now, while this
worldly principle holds some truth, it may, it may not, our
Lord gives us a much more sure word of confidence when he gives
us the same advice here. And the title of my message tonight
is it's all about who you know. So if you look with me at just
verse 23, this is the Lord speaking to his disciples and he says,
And in that day, you shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, truly,
truly, I say unto you, whatsoever you ask the Father in my name,
he will give it to you. So what he's saying here is,
if you ask the Father for something, and if you ask in my name, you
can be sure that you will receive it. Now, what did he mean by
this? And how far can I actually take
that? Can I ask the Father for anything in His name and He'll
give it to me? That's what the Word says. Now, I know there's
someone here tonight that's thinking, well, I've asked and I didn't
get what I wanted. Well, the Scriptures address
that too. If you will turn with me over to James chapter 4. God will meet us on the grounds
by which we approach. And in verse 3 of James chapter
4, he says, you ask. So I've asked, I've asked God
and I didn't receive. I received not because you ask
amiss that you may consume it upon your lusts. That word amiss
actually means to ask with a wrong motive. So asking and receiving
has something to do with asking with the right motive. That's
clear from our text. And the right motive can only
be seen by someone who believes themselves to be a sinner. Now,
how do I know that? When the Lord reveals himself
to a person, what is the first thing that we see? We see his
majesty. We see that he's high. He's much
greater than we are. We see the arm of His power and
that He gives life to the dead. He gives me eyes to see, He gives
me ears to hear. I can see Him in His word. But
we also see the unbending holiness of God. We see an absolute strive
for perfection and acceptance of nothing less. It's only then
that we will see what Isaiah saw. When he saw the Lord high
and lifted up, his train filled the temple, what's the first
thing that he said when he saw who he was? He said, woe is me. He said, I'm undone. I'm a man
of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean
lips. All before that time, before he saw the King, he was, woe
is you. Woe unto you, scribes. Woe unto
you, O islands. Woe is you. But as soon as he
saw who the Lord was, it shut him up. Shut him up to grace. Shut him up and then he saw who
he was before the Lord. He saw that I cannot provide
anything to his standards. And I can only see that when
I see who he is first. Nobody ever came to God who saw
their own sinfulness and then looked to him. No. Your sinfulness
is revealed when you see who he is. You see that you're crooked. Everything about you is not straight. It's wrong. You see that your
deeds, they're imperfect. God can't accept that. I find
that my own words, the things that I say, the things that I
think, they expose me for what I am. Because there's no difference
between what I say and what I think to God. He sees both. So what
I ask for in this passage must be asked in the right motive,
having nothing to do with my lusts, which is my pleasures.
You know, somebody says, you know, I want to do well at this.
I'm going to pray for that. I want more money. I want more
power. I want more influence. I want to be happy. All these
things we want, but we're not guaranteed an answer for those
things. If God shows you who he is, and then shows you who
you are as a sinner, before him, we're gonna cease to be worrying
about having a bigger house, about being happy, about having
more money, extra $1,000 at the end of the month or an extra
$10,000. None of these things are gonna matter because none
of those things can deliver my soul from a holy God. So in seeing
him for who he is and seeing myself as a sinner, that's gonna
influence what I ask for. And apart from seeing that, I
won't ask for these things. So what will you ask him for
then? You're only gonna ask him for what you cannot provide for
yourself. Otherwise, you'd attempt to provide
it for yourself. So what we wanna look at tonight,
I've got five things that I cannot provide for myself that I must
ask for. The first being forgiveness of
sin. I cannot provide a forgiveness
for my sins. Now, for most people, most people,
they can look at some of what they've done and says, I've sinned. I've done wrong here. I haven't
done right. I'm guilty there. Now, they don't
see it all, but we can all look at things that we've done and
say that. But it's twofold problem. It's bigger than just what you've
done. See, someone who God reveals himself to that you're a sinner,
You're ashamed of what you are. I'm ashamed that I am a sinner,
not that I've sinned. My sin is shameful, but I'm ashamed
of what I am because it's all that I can do. I can't do anything
but sin. I try, I try not to, but I find
in myself all that I can ever do before his law and before
God is to sin. My nature is sin and I'm crooked. The crooked is only revealed
when it's compared with that which is straight. I'm going
to give you an illustration I've given before, but I think it
illustrates this well. When I was in college, I liked
to play billiards a lot. And the place that we would play,
I got pretty good at it, I thought, relatively. And I'd grab a stick
off the wall, and I'd play. And some nights I'd do really
good, and some nights I'd be just bad. And I could never really
understand why some nights it was just everything I did was
bad. And then some nights it'd be great. So I would see these
guys that played a lot more than me, they'd bring in their own
pool cues. And I finally went over to two of them, because
there's four dozen of them on the wall. Why do you bring your
own pool stick in here? He said, go pick out any stick
on the wall. So I went over, grabbed one off
the wall, goes roll it across that table. I rolled across the
table, plop, plop, plop, plop, rolls over it. He said, now watch
mine. He rolls his, roll just as smooth.
See, all those sticks that I was pulling from, they were crooked.
Every one of them were bent. I couldn't tell, and looking
at them, I could look at them on the wall, they all looked
the same to me. But you see, it's only when it was laid against
that straight slate table, There was no bend in that table. It
was that which is straight. It had to be, when compared to
the straight, it's only then that I saw what the crooked was.
So you see, compared to men, we look at each other and say,
compared to somebody over here, I'm doing pretty well. They're
all kinds of messed up, but I'm doing well. So we can do that
against men, but when we compare ourselves to God, what do we
see? We all wind up crooked. Romans
3.23 says, all have sinned and have come short of the glory
of God. Apart from seeing the glory of
God, we can't see our sin. And so this is what reveals in
us that we are crooked. Among men, some are better than
others, but before God, we're not. So yes, I do need and must
ask for forgiveness for what I've done. but how much more
for what I am. This is where my sin comes from.
It's not things that influence me, external influences. It's
sin that comes from the heart. This is where my sin comes from.
So the first thing I must ask for is for forgiveness of my
sins. The second thing that I cannot provide that I must ask the Father
in his name to give me is repentance. Scripture says, the Lord says,
except you repent. you shall all likewise perish."
Now, if this means stop sinning, or even a particular sin, how
well have you done with that? I'm going to wager not too well. If it relied upon you stopping
any sin altogether, there'd be nobody in here that would be
saved. So it must not mean that, because compare it to this. stopping breathing. So you can
hold your breath. Hold your breath in, you can
do it for a little while, but eventually you're going to have
to breathe again. You know what? You can even hold
your breath long enough that you pass out. And you know what's
going to happen? You're going to wake up and find
you're still breathing. You know why? It's because your
body's nature is to breathe. Now, stopping sinning is just
as unnatural as you trying to stop your body from breathing.
It's because it's your body's nature to sin just as much as
it's your body's nature to breathe. You can try to restrain it, but
your body's gonna conform itself to what it is programmed to do.
So we can't get beyond what our nature is. I can't stop. Stopping
breathing is just as unnatural as stopping sinning. So what
does repentance mean? Because I must have this. Repentance
means, it just means a change of mind. I used to think something,
and now I don't anymore. I used to think that if I stopped
this particular sin in my life, I can remember this, before I
was asked to be baptized, I was thinking, I've got to stop doing
this before I can be baptized. And you know what? I never stopped
it. And so all this time I was torturing
myself with this, I've got to stop this. And I found I can't
stop. My body's nature is to sin. So
I couldn't stop it. So it means a change of mind.
So I thought that I'd be somehow better than if I was still doing
it. Again, before men, this might be okay, but not before God. If you keep, attempt to keep
one law, you are a debtor to keep the whole law. And we were
in a lot of trouble before that. You can't keep one law. How are
you gonna keep the rest of it? I had mentioned this to the church
in College Grove last weekend when I preached this, just because
I had just gotten back from New York at the time, and there's
a large population of Haddisic Jews in New York, and they're
always in the airports, and I'm standing there waiting on my
flight as usual, and I see this guy come in in a robe, and he's
got books, and he's chanting and rocking back and forth over
and over. He went through this process
for close to an hour and a half. And he would look around for
a minute, and he looked absolutely miserable. Absolutely miserable. And I was thinking to myself,
how much is enough? At what point, how long do you
do this to where God is pleased with what you've done? At what
point can you sit down and say, I'm okay? I don't know, but this
man looked miserable, so keeping the law, even in one point, we're
called upon that we must keep it all. My mind has been changed. I now see apart from Christ keeping
the law for me, I'm doomed. My mind's been changed. How a
man can be just before God. I used to think something else.
I don't think that anymore. This is all repentance is. How
is my mind being changed? My mind was changed when I was
born again. The Lord gave me a new spirit within me. Not changing
the old one, he gave me a new one. One that gave me eyes to
see. I used to read passages in here and think I had it figured
out. But before I had eyes to see, that's what I thought. But
then he gives you eyes to see and you see Christ in his word.
You may have read passages dozens of times and never seen something,
but there's a time when he turns the lights on and you see it
and you can believe. So that's what this spirit, this
new man that he gives you is, being born again. It makes me
also, so not only can I worship and see him in his word, It makes
me willing to repent. It makes me willing, makes this
rebel willing to look at the things I've done and turn my
back on them to say I was wrong. It takes a lot to break a man. And the Lord applies just the
right pressure in order to do that. And in giving this new
spirit, it makes me willing to do so. Only God can give this. Now, the only person who doesn't
believe in this two natures, it's no different than asking
someone else to describe somewhere that they've never been. They
don't understand it because they've never been there. They can't
describe it to you. So someone that doesn't understand that
there's two natures denies that there is, is because they only
have one. They've never seen that there are two. They can't
tell you about where they've been if they've never been there.
So to repent, my mind must be changed in that how God saves
a sinner, and I must ask God for this. The third thing. I cannot provide the love of
God. Now, you cannot make someone
love you. Trust me, I've tried. You cannot
make someone love you. Now, if we desire in this world
to be loved, there must be something lovely about us. The same goes
with our relationship with God. Now, with regard to God's love,
I'm a sinner and God hates sin. How then can God love you? How can God love me? Well, he
can't. You and I are an offense before
him because we're sinners. God hates sin. The wages of sin
are death. God will punish sin and all sin. In fact, how much did God hate
sin? When he found it on his own son, he killed him. And what
do you think that he will do with you and I when he finds
it on us? He loved his son. His son was everything before
him, before the world ever was. He was willing to kill him when
sin was found on him. How much less do we have to go
on before God in our own sins? How then can God love you or
love me? Turn over to Ephesians chapter
one. This is all explained in one
verse here, and we're just gonna make just a few comments about
verse four. According as he, God the Father,
hath chosen us, who's the us? That's all the elect who were,
where? In Christ, in him, before the foundation of the world.
Now, so we see here, who chose who? He chose us. And where did
he choose us? We were in Christ. And if we
keep on reading, when did he choose us? Well, he chose us
before the foundation of the world. To what end? Why did he do all these things?
Well, he tells us that we should be holy, perfect, without sin,
just like God in a form that he can accept us. And what else? And without blame before him.
How? in love. So God did all this, chose us
before the foundation in Christ, foundation of the world, in Christ,
so that we might be made holy, so that we could even approach
unto him. And why did he do it? He says because he loved us.
So that we would be seen in him, in his son, so that because he
loved his son, we'd be seen in him in love. When did he do it? for the foundation of the world.
No good works or bad works to recommend us. There was nothing
that we could do to appeal to Him to even love us. He loved
us in Him before the foundation of the world. Now God is love,
and this is how He loves. This redefines our definition
of what love is, if He is love itself. that he would be willing
to save his people. He did all these things, everything
that's happened in the course of history up to this point before
time even started. All these things happened for
the purpose of saving his people from their sins because he loved
them. Greater love hath no man than
this, than that a man laid out his life for his friends. Now
you consider this for just one minute regarding that verse.
We were his friends before he laid down his life. And if he
laid down his life for you, he can call you friend. With friends,
is there distance? Do they want to stay apart from
one another? No. With a friend, do they love one
another? They do. Do friends keep each
other apart and say that, you know, you stay over there and
you've done wrong? No, friends want you to be with each other.
We enjoy each other. We love each other's company.
He says right here, greater love hath no man than this, that a
man lay down his life for his friends. And he did just that,
didn't he? He laid down his life for his
people. Now, are there any for whom he
laid down his life that are not saved? Well, we have to ask the
question then, why did Christ die? Well, sin, he died because
of sin, the wages of sin are death. Whose sin? For my sin
and all the sins of the people for whom were chosen in Christ
before the foundation of the world, those were laid on him. My sin that I committed. Now,
if he died for my sin, can I then be punished for it again? If
he died and he paid for it? Let me ask you this, have you
ever tried to pay a bill twice? I have. I thought once that I
remember I was paying off one of the cars that I had a long
time ago, and I hadn't looked at it for months, so I sent in
an extra payment. I thought I paid it off, but
I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna send in another one
because I thought there was one more because they hadn't debited
it from my account yet. They sent that money back. See,
they wouldn't accept that money any longer because there was
no more debt. If Christ paid your sin, dad, if you will, there's
no more debt. There's nothing more that can
be asked for you that he hasn't already paid. There was one offering
for sin, one payment from the man, Christ Jesus. He came to
save his people from their sins. Now, did he do it? Well, if I'm
not risen, neither is he. because I am in him. This is
what we confess in baptism, that we are united to the person of
Christ before the foundation of the world. In his life in
this world, we say when he lived here and did the things that
he did that were righteous works before God, I was in him. When
He died on the cross, I was in Him. I died with Him. And when He was raised again,
I was quickened again with Him. So if He died and paid for those
sins, then they're paid for. God has accepted Him, proof being
that He raised Him from the dead. Now, if I'm not risen and neither
is He, turn with me over to Acts chapter 4. This is a much more
sure word of confidence. Verse 11 and 12, this is the
stone which was set at nought of you builders, which has become
the head of the corner. Speaking of Christ, neither is
there salvation in any other, for there is none other name
under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. This
says that we must be saved. This is not a, you might be saved
if, or if you did this or that. It says we must be saved. If
you're in Christ, we must be saved, and we can have that confidence
that we will be saved because of what He did. Is the Son loved? Is the Son risen again? He is.
So were all who were elected and who were chosen in Him. So
I must ask God to provide for me His love for me because I
can't make Him do it. Fourthly, I cannot provide a
righteousness that He can accept. And verse 6, but we are all as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. We all do
fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away.
So I'm asking God to provide for me. a righteousness that
he can accept, because it says right here in the scriptures,
all of our righteousnesses, anything that you can provide for God
to look upon you with favor that you did, says they're filthy
rags. Now what does that mean? Filthy
rags, filthy means minstress. Now, during this time, In the
Old Testament, how was a woman viewed who was going through
this process of menstruation? She was viewed as unclean. She
was viewed no differently as a leper. She had to go outside
the city. She was unclean, so she couldn't
come around. You have to go outside the city,
you're unclean. Next, the process of menstruation,
why does it occur? It occurs because there's no
life present. So the shedding of the lining
of the woman's womb occurs because there's no life there. Now, if
she's pregnant, that doesn't happen because there's life there.
It doesn't need to happen, but it says, your righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. They're unclean and there's no
life in them. Our righteousness, what we could
present before God that we did that he may show favor unto us,
If we bring them before Him, He's gonna cast us out because
He's gonna say it's unfit, it's unclean, and there's no life
in it. You see, it's not your sins that'll
keep you from Christ, it's your filthy rags. What you bring before
Him, you say, this is what I've done, show favor upon me for
this. This is what will cast us out. How then do I have a
righteousness that He will accept? 2 Corinthians chapter 5, familiar
verse of Scripture to us. Verse 21, he says, For He, God,
hath made Him, Christ, to be sin for us, His people, who knew
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
Now, if I'm to have any righteousness of all, it's going to be by this
way. I will be only righteous if I
made it and if he does it for me. In Him, does God find complete
satisfaction for all that He's done, for all the Lord's done,
everything that He said, everything that He did, everything that
He thought, and not just because He's His Son, but I mean before
the law, before that law that we can't stand before that condemns
us. Does He find satisfaction in
His Son before the law? Yes, He does. Now, if I'm in
Him, the scripture tells us that we're made just like Him. Romans
8 verse 29 says, For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be
the firstborn among many brethren. Now, he planned this, he foreknew,
predetermined, predestinated, that we might what? Be conformed
to the image of his Son. That may as well say, be made
the righteousness of God in him. because we are made just as he
is. This is something that didn't
happen because we did something, didn't happen by anything that
we chose to do in this life. It's saying, for whom he foreknew,
he predestinated. So he planned this. So I had
no hand in it at all. So if we're made anything that
has anything to do with righteousness, it's only gonna be by his righteousness.
Now, lastly, I cannot provide righteousness
that He can accept, and I must ask for that. And the last thing
that I cannot provide is salvation itself." Now, what is salvation? Salvation is many things. It's
to be free from sin. We talked about that, both the
nature and the commission of sin. It's to be looked favorably
upon by God, to see that I have a righteousness that He'll accept. It's unspotted. To have a faith. that's unwavering, to be believing. None of these things I can provide. If you will, turn with me back
to Isaiah chapter 63. And this is what we see that the
Lord will do for us because we can provide none of these things. Start reading in verse four.
of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed has
come. And I looked, this is God looking, and there was none to
help. And I wondered that there was
none to uphold. Therefore, My own arm brought
salvation unto me, and my fury, it upheld me." So we see right
here, what does God say? He said, I looked. Can you save
yourself? He said, there is none to help.
We can't help one another. We're all rats in the same ship
that's going down. You might be in first class,
you might be working in the boiler room, ship's still going down.
It doesn't make a difference. There were none to help. And
he said, I wondered, there was none to uphold. You know that
you cannot bear your sin. You can't even pay for one of
them. That's why hell is forever. We can't satisfy God for one
of the sins. He said, there was none to uphold.
We don't even have the strength. So what did he do? He says, therefore,
my Omar brought salvation unto me. Who brought salvation? He
did. His own arm and by his own power
and will, what does Isaiah 40 say when
it speaks to his people? He says, first, your warfare
is accomplished. The warfare that's going on inside
of you, your new man struggling with the old. The things that
you would do that you can't. The things that you don't want
to do, fine, that's all you do. It's a constant warfare to where
we hate ourselves for what we are. The new man gives us the
ability to see that, to see our sin for what it is. And it's
a constant warfare that never ends as long as this flesh is
here. But he says, your warfare is accomplished. That war was
put down When Christ our Savior died on the cross too soon, he
put away all my sin. So my body, yes, I'll go through
the experience of living in this life with these sins and living
in it, but it's not gonna captive me. It's not gonna keep me captive.
I'm no longer captive by death and hell. That warfare is over.
Your sin does not reign in you any longer. Now in your body,
in your flesh it does, but that's gonna die. That'll go away. And
what are we left with? Everything else that's left,
our spirit, the new man before God, the one that doesn't sin,
there's no warfare in him. Everything that God desires and
is pleased with, we're happy too. We want those same things.
And that's why he can call us his friends. Isaiah 40 also tells
us, your iniquity is pardoned. All that you owed, all that you
could never pay for, all that nothing that you can do about
it, It's now gone. It's put away. It's free. And not only are you free from
it, God's forgotten it. It's not even there. You're free
from the law that you could never satisfy one commandment one time.
You're free from sin. And if you're free from sin,
that means you're free from death and you're free from hell. So
these things have no power over you any longer. You are free.
And Isaiah 40 goes on to say, for she hath received of the
Lord's hand, who gave it? The Lord's hand, double for all
her sins. Who gave it? The Lord gave it.
If you have anything, the only reason you're going to have it
is because he gave it. Was it just enough what he gave? How
much did he give? He gave double. See, you missed
this payment by a penny and you're going to wind up short. He gave
double so that there's no chance that that would happen. We have
double what was owed. Therefore, who is he that condemneth?
It's Christ that died. And this is our confidence that
what he paid for, it's paid for. Not only is it just taken care
of by just barely, it just paid it off. We're given double. We're
given all the righteousness of Christ and forgiveness of sins,
both of them. Because what if he just gave
you just enough to pay off your sins? How would you do from right
now on? You'd be lost. Because all it
would take is one second and you'd fall right back into everything
you were in. He's given us his righteousness,
one that we can be accepted for in God's presence. And when he
said, it is finished, God was satisfied. Are you? Is there
something else that's left to be done to make it work for you?
Well, I will give you something to do. Absolutely nothing. You do nothing. You're called
upon to believe the gospel. to believe what he said was true.
And we aren't to make a work out of faith and believing either.
You see, because if you have faith, there's only one reason
you have faith. It's the gift of God. It's not
something you earned. You don't earn a gift. You're
given it because somebody else wants to give it to you. So if
we have faith, it's because we are giving it. And making a work
out of believing is foolish because believing doesn't even get us
salvation. All believing is, is it's evidencing
what God's already done for us. He's going to call His elect
to believe. All those in Christ must be saved
for His namesake. Now, I cannot provide the forgiveness
of sins. I must have my sins forgiven.
I cannot provide a repentance that causes me to change my mind
in how God can forgive and how God can save a sinner. I cannot
provide the love of God. I cannot make him love me. I
cannot provide a righteousness that he will accept, and I cannot
provide salvation itself. Aren't you thankful that we have
a heavenly father that we can call upon at any time? As long as we ask in his name,
we are given the confidence he will give us exactly what we
ask for. My favorite kind of preaching
is when I hear the preaching, I know I'm saved. And that's
I was if what he said is so I know I'm saved. That's a wonderful
place to be. I was also thinking we're getting
ready to take the Lord's table. And you were talking about how
you you were afraid to be baptized before, you know, if you had
some kind of sin in your life. And I can remember as a young
man, I dreaded the Lord's table. I'd read those scriptures, if
any man drink unworthily, he drinks of the body and blood
of the Lord and brings him to himself damnation. And I was
just stressed out thinking that I would drink unworthily. And
well, I should have thought that, but as we take the Lord's table,
I hope what the Lord's table says, his
broken body and shed blood, says that every believer is sinless. Sinless. And when you eat that
bread and drink that cup, remember, you don't have any sin. What a wonderful place to be. So let's do this as the Lord
enables us in remembrance of him.