them faithfully so you come preach
the gospel to us brother. Half the time Donny's been preaching
which means I'm half his age. We love you all it's such a blessing
to be here we pray for the work here and Love your pastor and
his family. And I'm very thankful to have
this privilege to try to bring a gospel message to you. Donny,
that was a blessing to my soul. Just the simplicity and clarity
of substitution. I need to hear that. I'm thankful I got to hear it
tonight. If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me, we're going to be looking at a couple of verses in the
Gospel of John, the first chapter of the Gospel of John, John chapter
one. And I want to introduce this
message by making a distinction between law and grace. in terms of how the Lord speaks. When God speaks the law, it is
always a clear command. No questions involved in God speaking
his law. He has authority to speak his
law. We are subject to the law of God. I am the Lord God. Thou shalt not have any other
gods before me. You shall not make any other
graven images. You shall not take the name of
the Lord your God in vain. You shall not lie. You shall
not steal. You shall not commit adultery. God speaks his law. It's unambiguous command. His law is holy, his law is just,
and his law is good. And we say with David, we love
God's law. But we also say with the Apostle
Paul in Romans chapter seven, we know that the law is spiritual.
But I am carnal, sold under sin. As holy as God's law is, God's
law has never made anyone holy. As just as God's law is, God's
law has never justified anyone. As good as God's law is, God's
law has never added an ounce of goodness to anyone. God's law was given for one reason.
to make sin utterly sinful. It was never given for the purpose
of saving anyone. Scripture says that having been
confronted with the law of God, every mouth shall be stopped
in all of the world. shall be made guilty before God. The law of God reveals the glory
of our God, the goodness, the holiness, and the justice of
our God. And it declares a clear distinction
between who he is and who we are, so that when we see God
in his law, we are brought to say There's nothing in me like
him, nothing. My righteousness, righteousnesses,
as the scripture says, are as filthy rags before God. The clearest definition I know
of in the Bible, the simplest definition to me for sin is this,
all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So the simple
question that we must ask ourselves is what in my life falls short
of God's glory? And God looked down from heaven
and he saw that every imagination of the thought of man was only
evil and that continually. The scripture often uses the
body as a picture of spiritual things. And in one place, the
scripture says that their mouth, their throat, is an open sepulcher. So that when we, like those little
birds in the nest, look up and open up our mouths, God looks
down our throats and he sees our hearts and makes one conclusion. It's dead. An open sepulcher. Left to ourselves. We are dead
in our trespasses and sins. God, when he speaks his law,
he just speaks it as a clear command. And when we hear God's law, we come
to the conclusion, I need a substitute. I need someone who is able to
stand in my stead before God, one who has been able to keep
God's law perfectly and satisfy. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And so the law
of God, the law is for the lawless, the scripture says. You put a
man under the law. Well, let me say it like this. We raise our children with just
the commands of the law. We're going to produce one of
two things. We're going to produce either a hypocrite like ourselves,
who will grow up and do the same thing to their children, or we
will produce a rank rebel who will who will rebel against everything
that they've been commanded to do. It's like you said, tell
them not to go in that room, that's the room they're gonna
go in. That's just the way the law is, that's what our nature
is. When God speaks in contrast to
that, when God speaks to the heart in grace, he often speaks
in the form of a question. Over 315 times in Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, the Lord Jesus Christ asked a question. He asked a question. And back to the illustration
of our children, there are times when we must say to our children,
don't do that, stop. Why, Daddy? Because I said so.
Sometimes we have to exercise the full force of the law to
keep them from doing something that would hurt themselves. But
if you raise a child that way, well, I've already said what
you'll end up with. The ideal correction of a parent is to
be able to sit down with a child, not that you have less authority,
not that you're giving them an opportunity to have some input,
but because you're expressing your love to them and you're
dealing with heart issues and you're asking them probing questions
and wanting them to come to the right conclusions about what's
right and what's wrong. When our Lord speaks in his tender
mercies to his children, He often does just that. He sits
us down. He doesn't beat us with the law. He asks probing questions to
get us to think about what the truth is and And to love what he loves. I don't know if we have any educators
in this congregation. We have several in our church.
Educators call the question and answer method of teaching the
Socratic method. And it's very effective. And it's a whole lot better than
just teaching children rote memory. It's to ask questions and get
them to think about the questions and respond with an answer. The
thing about what we call the Socratic method of teaching is
it goes back a whole lot farther than Socrates. It goes all the
way back to the garden. The very first time that our
Heavenly Father dealt with us in love and in grace was not
in the in the sternness of the law, but it was Adam. Where art thou? The Lord never asked a question
because he didn't know the answer to it. He knew exactly where
Adam was. What a blessing it is when the
Lord sits us down and he speaks to our hearts, not by not by
demanding the law, but by asking piercing and probing questions. There was a woman once who came
to the Lord in the thick of a crowd, had an issue of blood, 12 years, crawled on her hands and knees
to touch the hem of his garment and virtue went out from him
and she was immediately healed and the Lord looked around and
he said, who touched me? He knew exactly who touched him.
The disciples thought he was serious about the question. Because
they said, Lord, everybody's touching you. Everybody's strong
in you. Why say you who touched me? No, virtue's gone out for
me. And the woman that touched him knew. I suspect that when
he asked that question, he was looking right at her. Who touched
me? And she told him all the truth. When the Lord went to that man
at the Pool of Bethesda, and saw that he had been there
for 38 years, the Lord looked at him, of all
those people that were halt and sick, he looked at that one,
and he said, would thou be made whole? Would thou be made whole? Lord, I can't. When the angel
comes and stirs the water, I have no man to help me. Well, that
was the reason the Lord asked the question, wasn't it? To get
him to confess his need. When the Lord spoke to blind
Bartimaeus, that poor, dirty beggar, Bartimaeus, what would you have
me to do for you? Oh, Lord, that I might see. You
see, what do we have? We have our loving Savior sitting
down with his children and teaching them by asking them questions
to expose their need. What a blessing. Luke chapter 24, our Lord is
walking back to the town of Emmaus. This was after his resurrection
and there was two disciples and the Lord came along beside them
and he asked them, what's wrong? You could tell they were downcast,
what's wrong? Are you new to Jerusalem? Have
you not heard that the one that we thought was the prophet has
been crucified and died, Jesus of Nazareth? And our Lord looked at them and
said, what things? What things are you talking about?
And then beginning with Moses and the prophets and the Psalms,
he expounded unto them those things concerning himself. Did
these things not have to take place in order for the scriptures
to be? You see, he's asking them questions
all along the way. What a blessing it is when the
Lord ask us questions. And for those who refuse to answer
those questions honestly, he leaves them to themselves. The
Pharisees ask our Lord, by what authority do you do these things?
And what did the Lord say? He said, I'll answer that question,
but I have a question for you first. The baptism of John. Was it of heaven or was it of
men? They got together over there. They said, you know, if we say
it was of heaven, then he's going to say, why didn't you believe
John? If we say that it's of men, we fear the men. Because
everybody loved John, believed he was a prophet. And so they
answered his question with, we don't know. Neither will I tell
you of what authority I do these things. You see, when an obstinate,
rebellious sinner refuses to be taught by the probing questions
of a loving Savior, he leaves them to themselves. to our text, you have your Bibles
open to John chapter 1, two very simple, essential questions. The potential or the answer to
these questions have eternal consequences. One question was asked by the
Lord. The other question was asked by the disciples, and they're
good questions. Verse 35, and again, the next
day after John stood and two of his disciples, and looking
upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, behold, the Lamb of God, Now, prior to that, he had already
identified him as the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins
of the world. The Lamb goes all the way back
to that Passover lamb, the lamb that Moses was commanded to slay
in Egypt and take the blood and put it on the door. And the Israelites
were told of God, get behind the blood. When I see the blood, I'll pass
by you." Well, we know that lamb goes back even further than that,
doesn't it? It goes all the way back to the garden when Adam
tried to cover his nakedness by sewing together fig leaves.
And you ever seen a fig leaf? We have a fig tree in our yard. And I don't know what fig trees
you might see. The fig tree we have, The leaves
on that fig tree, I can put one right there and it's the same
shape and size as my hand. It's got five things on just... What is the hand in the Bible?
Oh, what we put our hands to, we defile. Our hands are dirty, our hands
are sinful. And what Adam was doing in the garden is a picture
of what man naturally does. He tries to cover his nakedness
with the works of his hands. He tries to satisfy God's justice
and make up for his sins by what he does. He's working his way
to heaven. Adam, where art thou? Then God took a lamb. I suspect that that lamb may
have been Adam's pet lamb. I know it was a horror for him
to see the blood of that lamb shed, and took the skin of that
lamb, the fleece of that lamb, and covered the nakedness of
Adam. John says the lamb of God, that's
the lamb. And in the book of Revelation,
the scripture says that the Lord Jesus Christ is the lamb that
was slain before the foundation of the world. So in the covenant
of grace in eternity past, which we can't put time on, the Lord
Jesus entered into a covenant promise to his father and agreed
to shed his precious blood as a covering for their sins. and
to provide for them a righteousness that they could not provide for
themselves. That's the covering of the lamb. And now John identifies
the Lord Jesus. Look, behold, look there. There he is. The one that has
been promised from the beginning. The one that we've been waiting
for. the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world."
Now this is very important to this question that the Lord is
going to ask. And the two disciples heard him
speak in verse 37, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them
following and saith unto them, what seek ye? What are you looking for? The heart's deceitful, desperately
wicked if we're We can very easily deceive ourselves
as far as what we're looking for, what we want. But if the
Lord presses this question home to our hearts, we might could
lie to ourselves, we might could lie to each other. How many times
we've asked someone a question about something and they've given
an answer, no, that's not really what, how many times we've We
can't deceive God. Not when the Lord, in His grace
and in His mercy, as a loving Father, sits us down and expresses His love and His
grace toward us. We must, as that woman with the
issue of blood, tell Him all the truth. We must. We can't lie to God in those circumstances. And so the Lord looks at you
and he looks at me. And I've had to consider this
probing question. What are you seeking? What are
you looking for? If we're seeking anything other
than the Lord Jesus Christ, we'll quit seeking because we'll
become disappointed and disillusioned. And men seek a lot of things. People get involved in churches
because they're looking for community. They're looking for family. They're
looking for fellowship. But what happens in time? The
person that they thought was their friend, the person that
they thought would care about them, does something to disappoint
them or offend them. And in time, you know, I used
to say to our folks, there's the door, leave if you can. But
now I know that if you can, you eventually will. If you can,
you will. If you're seeking anything other
than Lord Jesus Christ, you'll leave eventually. We have a friend that sticketh
closer than a brother. We have one who said to his disciples,
no longer do I call you my servants, but I call you my friend. For
a servant doesn't know what his master's doing, but I've revealed
to you who I am and what I'm doing and what I've done for
you. And what a friendship we have with Christ. Oh, we value
the fellowship and the friendships that we have among believers,
no doubt about it. But if what we're seeking is
that, we're going to disappoint one another. But if our friendship
is Christ, you see, here's the question, what seek ye? What seek ye? If we're seeking personal peace in terms of the
absence of conflict, and life is filled with disappointments
and troubles, and the heart is often conflicted, and the promise
often is, you know, come. Experience the peace of God. I want to experience the peace
of God. But my brethren and my friends,
the peace of God is the byproduct of having peace with God. You
see, if you're just looking for the peace of God, you're going
to have times when you're not going to have that peace. You're
going to have great trouble, and great conflict, and great
affliction that God's going to send, and there's not going to
be any peace. And you're going to deal with
divorce, and death, and disappointment, and disease, and all those sorts
of things that come. And you think, well, all the
promise for peace is gone. I'm out of here. That's why the
Lord said, what seek ye? Are you seeking the peace of
God only or peace with God? The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Prince of Peace and we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus
Christ. He is the one who has reconciled
us to God by his own blood. And we can come boldly before
the throne of grace and find help in our time of need because
we've been reconciled. We've been reconciled with God.
We can come into the very presence of a holy God and know that he
has made peace for us. And if I have peace with God, I'll have times of enjoying the
peace of God, and I'm thankful for those times. You know, you've heard it said, oftentimes what's born in a storm
dies in a calm. And in 27 years, and I'm sure
you've seen it, Donnie, many more times than I have, people
get in trouble. They're going through a great
trial. They come to church. They get
very excited about things. Brother Henry used to tell the
church secretary when someone wanted to join the church, write
their name down in pencil. We'll see. We'll see. That's been my experience.
We'll see. Because if they can leave, they
eventually will leave. And a lot of times, when that
trouble goes away, they no longer need. I used to go into prison and preach
in Orlando, and the first thing the guard told me when I went
in there, he said, yeah, the guards were more cynical than
the inmates. And the guard said, yeah, you
can preach to them, but I'm going to tell you right now, the Bible's
the first book they pick up when they come in here and the first
book they throw down when they leave. And then they come back
and they do it again. Foxhole religion. Just seeking
some relief from their temporary problems. What seek ye? Well, I want to go to heaven.
I want to avoid hell. Well, the Lord Jesus had a conversation
with Martha in John chapter 10 after the death of her brother.
And she told the Lord, she said,
Lord, I know that my brother will rise in the resurrection.
Oh, Martha. Martha, I am the resurrection
and the life. He that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Martha, believest thou this?
Do you believe me? Do you believe who I am? I'm
the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life. This is not just a matter
of escaping hell and going to heaven. That's why the Lord said,
they just heard John say, behold, the Lamb of God, who taketh away
the sins of the world. And the first question the Lord
asked them, what seek ye? What do you really want? Those who are after the flesh
do mind the things of the flesh. They that are after the spirit
thinks of the spirit. That which is of flesh is flesh
and the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. Oh, left ourselves, we'll just
seek fleshly things. We'll seek fleshly peace. We'll
seek fleshly relationships. We'll seek fleshly comfort and
fleshly hope that somehow we're gonna escape hell and get to
heaven. The Lord said to the to the multitude
that he had just fed, the loaves and the fishes, he looked out
and he said, only reason you're following me is so that you can
have your bellies full. If you want to be my disciple,
three things, take up your cross, and yeah, there are some crosses
that we have to bear, troubles, but you know, I've been around
long enough to know that the troubles that believers bear
aren't really much different from the troubles that unbelievers
bear. Unbelievers oftentimes suffer greater circumstances
in their life. The way of the wicked is hard
and they bring things in their lives on them that believers,
the cross is not just bearing some burden in life. Everybody does that. No, taking up your cross is saying
with the Apostle Paul, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I
live. Yet not I, but it's Christ that
liveth in me, the life that I now live. I live by the faith of
the Son of God who loved me and died for me. That's what it means. It means to look to Christ and
his death on the cross and your union with him and what he did
to satisfy the demands of God's law and God's justice as the
only hope of your salvation. Deny yourself. Well, you know,
we can't buy that new car. That house is just too big for
us. You know, we need to live more modest because we want to
go to heaven and we, you know, we need to deny these things
to ourselves. That's not what that means. Deny
that you had anything to do with your salvation. Deny yourself any part of your
salvation. Declare that Christ is my salvation,
and he is my life, and he did it all from beginning to end,
and he gets all the glory. He put away my sins by the sacrifice
of himself. He ascended back into glory.
As the word of God, he returned not void. Having accomplished
what he came to do, he took with him the names of those for whom
he lived and died, and he ever lives at the right hand of the
majesty on high to make intercession for us. And I had nothing to
do with that. Matter of fact, My salvation
goes back before Adam was created. Before Adam was ever made, God
elected a people. Christ became their surety in
the covenant of grace. And the Lord and the Holy Spirit
agreed in time to go and make those that the Father chose and
Christ redeemed willing in the day of his power. What did you
have to do with that? As you said, Donnie, God's doing
business with God on Calvary's cross. The Lord Jesus didn't
die in order to make us an offer of salvation to accept or reject
him. The Lord Jesus died to make himself
an offering to his father for the sins of his people. And the
father saw the travail of his soul and the father said, I'm
satisfied. I'm satisfied. What seek ye? It's a good question,
isn't it? It's a good question. May our loving, merciful Lord
speak that question effectually to our hearts, not just now,
but always. When we find ourselves disappointed
and in trouble and in trials and doubting and fearing, may
the Lord say it again to our hearts, what are you looking
for? You're looking for some relief from this problem that
you have? Because I am thy shield and I
am thine exceeding great reward. Or are you seeking me? You're seeking me. You see, all the blessings of
God come in Christ. You got it right, Donnie. I know
I'm repeating your sermon, but you know, your message. All the blessings of God are
in heavenly places in Christ. And so we set our affections
on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of
God. Not on things of the earth. And all the blessings of God
come in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we need peace, we need comfort,
we need assurance, we need help, we need healing. All that comes in Christ. Let's
seek ye. And most of you have probably
heard this illustration, but I love it and it deserves repeating. There was a very wealthy man
who loved his son, and the two of them enjoyed traveling the
world and spending their wealth in purchasing very priceless,
very precious artwork all over the world. And they collected
it and put it in their mansion and would often sit together
and enjoy looking at that art. Before the father died, the son
died. The father loved his son and
grieved over his death. Eventually, the father died.
And they had an auction. They had an auction at this mansion. And the auctioneer stood up and
he, first piece of art they put up to sell, was a plain portrait,
unknown to anybody, wasn't a famous picture at all, of the father's
son. And everybody, you know, he asked
for a bid, nobody bid anything. Nobody said, bring the good stuff
out, bring the good stuff out. And finally, there was a man
in the back of the room. He knew who that portrait was because
he was the butler of the house. And the butler raised his hand
and offered a dollar for that portrait. Auctioneer dropped
the gavel, said, the auction's over. All these wealthy people
from all over the world looked at one another and looked at,
what do you mean it's over? Yep, it's right here in the father's
will that whoever got the picture of the sun, the portrait of the
sun, got it all. Everything here goes to the butler. What seek ye? I'd like to have
that, I'd like to have that, I'd like to, you get the sun,
you got it all. Got it all. Quickly, there's one more question
in our text. And it's a good question. And
it's a question that I hope that our response will be to the question that the Lord
asked. Lord, where dwellest thou? Where dwellest thou? And that
word dwellest is abide. Lord, where are you abiding?
We just want to be where you are. Wherever you are is where
we want to be. Lord, where do you abide? We know God, the Lord Jesus abides
in his word. In the volume of the book it
is written of me. We look to scriptures. The Lord Jesus is revealed on
every page, on every page. So we go to God's word. The Pharisees
were diligent Bible students. They knew the Bible, they could
quote it. I met a man one time when I was
in seminary, he was a Jewish rabbi, and he had committed to
memory the entire Old Testament of the Bible in Hebrew. There was a man by the name of
Jack Van Impey. I don't know if you all ever heard about him.
They called him the walking Bible. He had committed to memory the
entire Bible. I heard him preach several times
and never preached the gospel. That Jewish rabbi didn't know
Christ. And the Lord said to those Pharisees,
you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal
life. But these are they which testify
of me." You've missed the whole meaning of the Bible. You've missed me. Where dwellest
thou, Lord? I'm in my word. I'm among my people. Where two
or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the
midst of them. where the gospels preached, that's
where I'm at. And I, if I be lifted up, will draw men to myself. So God's people, that's what
we're doing right now, isn't it? We're opening God's word. By the way, those disciples on
the road to Emmaus, you know when their eyes were opened,
when they got to the disciples' house, And the Lord acted as
if he would have gone on. The scripture says that. He said,
see you, fellas. It's been nice talking to you.
I'm going to continue on my journey. And they begged him to stay.
Lord, come. No, please, we want to spend
some more time with you. And the scripture says, in the
breaking of the bread, their eyes were opened, and they saw
him. And so it is when we break open
the bread of life and we preach Christ. God, the Holy Spirit,
the seeing eye and the hearing ear is both of the Lord. And
God opens the eyes of his children and he enables them to set their
affections on Christ. Whom seek ye? Lord, where abidest
thou? Where dwellest thou? And the
Lord's in the heavens. He's seated at the right hand
of God. He is a successful savior. He actually accomplished the
purpose for which he came. You shall call his name Jesus
for he shall save his people from their sins. And when the
Lord Jesus ascended back into glory, he took his rightful place
at the right hand of the majesty on high. If we could put it this way,
God rewarded him. God honored the promise that
he had made to his son that when he finished the work that he
was sent to do and ascended back into glory that he would be made
Lord over the living and the dead. And now what do we do? We look up. Whom seek ye? Lord, where do
you dwell? You dwell in your word? You dwell
among your people? You dwell in the heavens? Lord,
give me the grace to seek you where you are. You know, in the Old Testament
temple, There's candlesticks, and there's tables, and there's
altars, and there's mercy seats, and there's arcs, and the priest
worked daily making sacrifice in the temple. There's one piece
of furniture that is conspicuously missing in the Old Testament
temple. There's no mention anywhere in
the Bible that there was a chair anywhere in that temple or in
that tabernacle. Why? Because the work was never
finished. The priests couldn't sit down. They were never finished
with their work. And when the Lord Jesus bowed
his mighty head on Calvary's cross and he said, it is finished. God Almighty, his father, rent
the veil from top to bottom. The work of redemption's finished. And the evidence of that is that
in heaven, the one piece of furniture that is most conspicuous is a
throne. And the Lord Jesus is seated
on that throne. He finished his work. Nothing more to be done. Can't
add anything to it. Can't take anything away from
it. It's finished. the law thou shalt not." Oh what a blessing it is when a loving father sits down
with a child and probes their hearts with questions to bring
them to their