If you'd like to turn with me
back to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 18. Deuteronomy
chapter 18. I've titled this message God's
prophet. God's prophet. A prophet is one
who speaks on God's behalf. He has been called by God to
speak. This is how the Lord spoke to
the nation Israel. Prior to. Prior to the Lord coming
upon this Earth, Christ is the end of prophets. He is the last
prophet and all prophets pointed unto him. And that's what we're
gonna be looking at as God's prophet this morning. In order
to be qualified to be a prophet, you had to be raised up, you
had to be called. And so it was not something of
man's design or man's doing, it was something that the Lord
did. And he gives a promise here in Deuteronomy chapter 18 in
verse 15, says, the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a
prophet from the midst of thee. Notice that word prophet is a
capital P. That's indicative of it being
a name. It is the Lord Jesus Christ that
he's talking about right here. We'll raise up a prophet from
the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me, and to him ye shall
hearken according to all that thou desirest of the Lord thy
God. In Horeb, in the day of the assembly saying, let me not
hear Again, the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see
this great fire for anymore that I die not. And the Lord said
unto me, they have well spoken that which have spoken. I will
raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, likened
to thee and will put my words in his mouth. That's the qualification.
He puts the words in the man's mouth. I will put my words in his mouth,
and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto
my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it
of him. But the prophet which shall presume
to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak,
or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet
shall die. And if thou shalt And if thou
say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord
hath not spoken? This is how we know if it's of
the Lord or not. When a prophet speaketh in the
name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass,
that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet
hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him.
This is how the Lord spoke in the Old Testament to his people.
He raised up prophets in order to declare unto them the future,
future events that had not yet happened. Of course, that's what
future means, but understand the Lord gave them insight for
things that were going to happen. They were the spokesmen of the
Lord. They were called prophets. You
remember in the book of Samuel, whenever Hannah was desirous
to have a child, the book of Samuel opens with this. Hannah's
in the temple praying. Her womb has been shut up. She's
barren and the Lord has not allowed her to have children. And yet
she prays and asks the Lord to have a child. And Eli comes over
thinking that she was drunk because she was crying so heavily, desirous
of having a man child. Now, We know the reason that
she was crying is because the Lord had promised to send the
Savior through Israel, that he was going to send the Messiah.
Eve thought that Cain was the Messiah all the way back. So
she was desirous to have a child with the Lord in hope that it
would be the Messiah. She was desirous of a man child for that
reason. After she pleads her case with Eli, she's permitted
to stay and pray, and the Lord gives her a child. And she prays
and says, Lord, if you give me a child, I'll give him back to
you all the days of his life, and she does so. The scripture
says when he was weaned, when he was of the age, and the scripture
is not clear, so we don't presume what age he was whenever Hannah
dropped him off at the temple, but we do know that she brought
her son down to the temple and left him there with Eli, and
he was raised by Eli. Now in the fullness of time,
Samuel grew, scripture says, and one night he heard an audible
voice calling his name, saying unto him, Samuel. And he thinks
that it's Eli. So he runs into Eli and he says,
did you call for me? And Eli says, no, go back to
bed. It happened a second time, the same exact thing. Finally,
the third time Eli got wise to the, or the Lord calls to him.
I shouldn't even say he got anything. The Lord calls him to think,
Hey, maybe this is the Lord speaking unto Samuel. He says, next time
ask the Lord to speak. And so he does. And the Lord
calls Samuel then the Lord physically speaks to Samuel and tells him,
you're my prophet. That's how he calls his prophet.
So I want to establish that early on because anybody in this day
and time saying that they're a prophet is a liar. They're
not a prophet. The only way that the Lord speaks in this day and
age in which we live is by the preaching of the gospel. That's
it. By his God called preachers to preach his gospel, to proclaim
it. That's how he speaks to us, through his word. So if a man
tells you he's a prophet, that he has this, I remember back
in, It was a year of 1988 and it said, 88 reasons why God will
come back in 88. And this guy was a proclaimed
prophet said, I don't know, do any of y'all remember that book?
And there's been many since then that said the same thing. This
is the year that God's, there's this prophet that was in Texas
and it was the year 2012. And he said, the Lord's going
to come back on July the such and such this time we need to
gather all our resources together. And they kind of had a cult thing
going on. The next, when that day happened and nothing happened,
they didn't stone him or kill him like they would have in the
Old Testament here. But he said, I made a mistake. It's actually
going to be this date. And they're still doing it right
now. They're still doing the same thing. Calls himself a prophet. That's not God's prophet. Jesus
Christ is the Lord's prophet. Samuel was the Lord's prophet.
But what did Samuel prophesy? He prophesied the coming of the
Messiah, the Savior. He was pointing Israel to Christ
even back then. That's exactly what Nathan did
to David. You remember whenever David sinned with Bathsheba,
he committed adultery with Bathsheba and then murders Uriah the Hittite.
So he commits adultery, he commits murder. The glorious news of
the gospel is David was called a man after God's own heart and
physically did those things. You and I may have not physically
done it, but we heard the first hour, we're definitely guilty
of it and we need a substitute. But David was called a man after
God's own heart. That is amazing to me. That's what grace and
mercy look like. That's what salvation and righteousness
look like in the Lord Jesus Christ. All he sees is his son. That's
our hope. After David had commit those
sins, David just goes on like nothing ever happened. He doesn't
do it. Scripture is not clear on what
exactly he was doing, but he had not been given repentance
at that point. I would imagine he continued to attempt to worship
God even then, thinking that he was okay, nothing happened.
So we know that it was about six months after that had taken
place, because the woman, she was with child, we find out.
And Nathan, the prophet, comes to David and he tells him this.
David, there was a man that had many flocks and many herds. And
there was another man that had one ewe lamb. And he raised it
up as one of his children, as a daughter unto him. And the
lamb would eat at the table with him. and the lamb would sleep
on his chest and the lamb would be was taken well care of by
this poor man that had the one you lamb. And it came to pass
that the rich man, having all the flocks and herds were going
to was going to have a feast and took that man's you lamb
and killed it and did eat that instead of taking one of his.
He said, David, what should be done to the man? David said he's
surely going to die. Made David angry. David was ready
to get vengeance upon this. This man understanding the love.
He was a shepherd. Now I want to say this, the Lord
knows exactly how to get you to look to him. He knows you.
He knows me. He knows everything about us.
David was a shepherd, and there is no doubt in my mind that David
had nurtured you lambs before. David had been there when they
were born. David understood the tenderness and the love that
this man must have had for this lamb, and so he was enraged because
of it. God knew that that's exactly what would transpire and told
Nathan to tell David that. David said, man's surely going
to die. He's going to be put to death. Boy, Nathan looks at
him, and I couldn't imagine what this would feel like. He says,
David, you are the man. You are the man that took the
lamb, Bathsheba. The Lord knows your sin, but
he tells him, fear not, for the Lord hath put away your sin.
There's grace. There's the mercy of the Lord.
Not getting what we deserve, not getting judgment and justice,
but because we're in the Lord Jesus Christ, presented perfectly
righteous unto him, seeing ourself as the man, the sinner, crying
out just like we read At the beginning of the service, I said,
Lord, hear my cry, Lord. Hear me when I pray unto you. That's our prayer. That's our
hope. God raised these men up to speak
on his behalf. They were known for their miracles.
They were known, if you had a problem, an infirmity, you would come
to a prophet. That would be one sure way, if the Lord was willing
for that prophet to heal you, they had the power by God to
heal you. You remember Naaman? He was captain
of the host of Syria. He was a mighty man of valor.
He was a strong man, but he was a leper, the scripture says.
The Lord made him a leper. And he had a Jewish handmaiden
of his wife. His wife had a Jewish handmaiden
that said, well, there's a prophet in Israel named Elisha. You go
down there, he'll heal you. And Naaman says, well, this is
good news. And he loads up his wagons full
of goods to give unto Elisha. And you can see him parading
down. This is Naaman the Syrian. He's captain of the host. a whole
army behind him. They were parading theirself
down to the prophet and they were like, okay, now you get
to heal me. You see the attitude there, the
mentality that he had? You get to heal me. You've been
blessed today because you get to heal me. That's not how we
approach the Lord, is it? No, we certainly do not. We come
mercy beggars, mercy beggars. And the Lord humbled him. The
Lord humbled him and says that the servant went out from Elisha
and said, go dip in the river Jordan seven times. Jordan represents
death. He had to go die. Seven is the number of perfection,
the number of completion. It's the Sabbath day, the Lord's
day. That's what we rest all of our hope on is that number
seven of the Lord. He said, go dip seven times.
Well, Naaman was angry and Naaman's words, and brethren, you know,
these are your words and my words just the same. I thought, I thought
that he would come out and he would wave his hands. And he
would do all this magical stuff. He didn't say magical, but that's
what he was thinking. He was thinking mystical, you know,
that's what he presumed was gonna happen. And then I would be healed
of my leprosy. He was angry that God didn't heal him, he is way.
That's what we do by nature. We want our cake and eat it too,
so to speak. The law of the Lord points out
our sin and the gospel comes in and shows us there is no keeping
of the law. There is no good news for you
to produce anything It takes the substitution of the Lord
Jesus Christ for you not to be saved. And you will have to be
saved by dipping in Jordan, dying with Christ when he died, being
raised again as perfect. That's exactly what Naaman did.
The Lord healed him. He humbled him. And the servant said, if
you would have, if he had told you to do some great thing, you
would have done it. If he had told you to, I mean, you couldn't have,
all the things that he could have possibly done, the thousands of dollars
in materials that he had to give away, he could have done all
that. It took Him being abased. The Lord humbles His people. The Lord resisteth the proud,
but giveth grace to the humble. Scripture says, he that exalteth
himself shall be abased, but he that humbleth himself shall
be exalted. The Lord does the humbling. The
Lord brings us unto Him. And thankfully, the Lord cleanses
us of our leprosy and pronounces us as clean. This is how He used
His prophets in the Old Testament. God's very serious about this
position. If you look in verse 20. But the prophet, which shall
presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded
him to speak. Any gospel that is being declared
is a presumption on God. If it's not the true gospel,
any gospel that's not the gospel, it's not the good news of Christ
Jesus saving his people. It's not the good news of him
getting all the glory and salvation. If it's other than that, then
it's not the truth. They're presuming on God that
God will reward them for their works, that God will reward them
for their good deed. That's what he's referring to
here. Now, certainly this would have been a prophet prophesying,
but in today's time with preachers is what I'm talking about. If
they preach and it's not the true gospel, they're presuming just
like these false prophets were presuming that they're speaking
in the name of God, but they are not on his behalf. But the
prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which
I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name
of other gods, even that prophet shall die. God was very serious
about this position. Why? Because he was gonna raise
up his prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ. All the prophets before
pointed to Christ, and Christ was the fulfillment of the prophecy. Christ was the embodiment, the
fullness of the Godhead bodily. He was the fulfillment of the
prophecy, and He is our prophet, the Lord's prophet. Turn with me over to Deuteronomy
chapter 13, just a few pages back. Deuteronomy 13.1, if there arise
among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a
sign or a wonder. Now, do you remember when the
Pharisees came to the Lord, the Sadducees, and they said, show
us a sign and we'll believe? Do you remember that? The Lord
said unto them, there'll be no sign given. A wicked and adulterous
generation seeketh after sign, but there'll be no sign given
but that of the prophet Jonah. What was the sign of the prophet
Jonah? As Jonah was in the belly of
the well three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in
the heart of the earth three days and three nights. We have the
confirmation Our sign is that God hath highly exalted him and
resurrected him from the dead. He's given us faith to believe
him. That's the only sign that we're gonna get. Then the command
goes forth that says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We
don't have any other signs or any other wonders. We're not
trying to work something up whenever we come to church. We're not
trying to do something according to the flesh to become stimulated
or excited. We come to hear Christ. And what
happens when we hear Christ? The Lord sits us down and he
shuts us up and he gives us hope in the finished work of Christ,
that's what he does. Men say that they have dreams from the
Lord, they have signs, they have wonders, that's not true, brethren,
it's just not true. The Lord's only gonna give the
same sign, the gospel, that's all he's gonna give. Verse two,
and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto
thee, saying, let us go after other gods, which thou hast not
known, and let us serve them. Thou shalt not hearken unto the
words of that prophet or the dreamer of dreams. For the Lord
your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk
after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments. The only way we can keep the
Lord's commandments is what we heard the first hour. It has to be
in Christ. And obey his voice. Well, what does the Lord say?
Come unto me, come unto me, look unto me and live. That's what
the Lord says. And ye shall serve him and cleave
unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer
of dreams, shall be put to death, because he hath spoken to turn
you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the
land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage,
to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded
thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away
from the midst of thee. Brethren, the Lord was very clear
on prophets, very clear, that if a man spoke, and it came to
pass, and he said it was of the Lord, and it came to pass, then
the man was a prophet of the Lord. But if the man spoke and
it didn't come to pass, he was to be put to death." Now I mentioned
this the first hour or two, that Christ as our prophet, all he
could say was truth because he was God and God cannot lie. But
everything that he said Everything didn't matter. It was instantly
truth because of who was speaking it. He had. I wish I could say
that the way that I'm trying to say it. It wasn't just because
he spoke it. It was because he spoke it because
of who he is, not because of it. He didn't have to say something
to make it truth. Whatever he said was the truth.
Whatever he said was the truth. He said I am the way the truth. So whatever he spoke was the
truth. Our prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ. His record was
sure. His record was true. And the
Lord honored his words. He kept the Lord's words. He
presented the Lord's words. And we believe on the words of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now back to chapter 20. I'm sorry,
chapter 18. Chapter 18. And verse 15 tells us, the Lord
thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet. Aren't you thankful
for the wills of the Lord? The wills of the Lord. In the
scripture, we see that every time the Lord says, I will, and
you shall, it comes to pass. Every time the Lord says, I will,
it comes to pass, no matter what it is. When the Lord says, I
will do something, it always happened. There's never been
an account where God said, I will, and it didn't happen. The Lord
Jesus Christ, successfully saved his people. The Lord Jesus Christ
is that prophet that the Lord said, I will raise up. He's a
prophet for us to look to. We don't look to men any longer
to tell us of the Lord. We get to, because of our high
priests, we can pray, we can speak to the Lord ourself. Think
about that. We can come boldly to the throne
of grace, having obtained mercy to find grace to help us in the
time of need. We're not listening for a man to tell us what God
says, we get to hear from heaven itself. We get to hear, we already
know what God says. We already know the fullness.
We already know the fullness in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, certainly we listen to preachers that preach the
gospel, but we have to have the Holy Spirit in order to be able
to hear them, or it's just words, am I right? We do hear of the
Lord. We get it straight from Him.
It comes through the preaching of the gospel, but God's preachers
just say the same thing over and over again. There's nothing
new. We're not making predictions of when the Lord's gonna return.
We know He's going to, but we don't prophesy. We preach Christ.
Christ is our prophet. Christ is our prophet. We look
to Him. Every prophet was a type and
shadow of Christ. Every one of them was pointing
unto Him, and He was the fulfillment. Every priest, every priest that
ministered daily was a representation of what Christ was going to do
for His people. By His own blood, He entered
once as our high priest, as being made prophet and priest and king
unto the Lord for His people. That's why He said in You know
this to be true all throughout the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John, it kept saying that it might be fulfilled, which
was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, that it might be fulfilled that
was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, that it might be fulfilled, that
it might be fulfilled. Everything that was spoken was
spoken about the Lord by the Lord to show us He is the one
that we hang all our hope on. He is the one. that we put our
complete trust in, not ourself, not our merits, but His work,
His merit. Every thought that He had, every
deed that He did, every word that He spoke was truth and good
and perfect and right and honoring to His Father. I need that substitution. I need to be found in Him because
He was right and I am not right in and of myself. Christ said this in Matthew 5,
verse 17, think not that I am come to destroy the law or to
destroy the prophets. I'm not come to destroy, but
to fulfill them. He fulfilled every prophecy. He fulfilled the law perfectly. Scripture says the law came by
Moses, but grace and truth came by the Lord Jesus Christ. The
law was given, and I mentioned this the first hour, so I don't
wanna keep going back to it, but the truth is, is the law
was given to expose that we cannot please God. We cannot please
God, but he did. It showed what we needed in a
Savior, and the Lord Jesus Christ is who it pointed to. The prophet
spoke and showed us that we cannot approach God on our own, that
we need a substitute, and the Lord Jesus Christ is that substitute,
and the prophets pointed to him. This is just the glorious truth
of our Lord's success in saving his people. John 1.45 says, Philip
findeth Nathanael and saith unto him, we have found him of whom
Moses and the law and the prophets did write. In the volume of the
book, it is written of the Lord. Everything that's been spoken
is of the Lord Jesus Christ. Philip told him, he said to Nathanael,
we found him, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Christ Jesus was the only one
qualified to be the prophet of God because he was perfect. No
matter what he said was truth. Now, yes, there was Old Testament
prophets, but they were sinners. Christ Jesus was not a sinner.
He was made sin for you and I. Christ Jesus was not a sinner.
It's very simple. He was made to be sin who knew
no sin. Some men would say, well, that
means he's a sinner. No, it means he was bearing my sin in his
body, but he was made to be sin. And the Lord saw that sin. And
he was the only one that qualified to be the savior because of his
perfection. He was the only one that was qualified to be the
prophet because of the truth that he spoke. He was the only
one qualified to be the lamb sacrifice, to be the offering
because of the purity of his blood. It was his father's blood. This is how he redeemed his people. In the Old Testament, God only
spoke through prophets. And as I read to us just before
the service, well, at the beginning of service, how David was afraid. He said, Lord, keep not silence. Don't be silent unto me. Let
me hear your voice. There were 400 years. There was
400 years that went by from the time of Malachi being written
to the time of Matthew. God didn't speak. All they had
to go off of is what had already been spoken. Did you know that
you and I are, let me put it to you like this. If you knew,
if you knew that Jesus Christ, if you had the affirmation from
the scripture that Jesus Christ was going to come to earth next
week, but it was going to be on the other side of the world
and you had the money and you had the means to get there, would
you go? You would want to go to see him, wouldn't you? If
you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's there. Brethren, this
is the place where Jesus Christ is seen. Right here, this is
how serious it is. If we would travel halfway across
the world, how much more certainly should we be here to see his
face? This is where he's promised to speak. We don't have to worry
about him not speaking. He said, where two or three are
gathered in my name, there I am in the midst. 400 years from
Malachi to Matthew, nothing was spoken. Let us not take for granted
that every Sunday, if the gospel is preached, if the truth of
God is preached, he promised he would be there. He would be
seen by his people. Ain't that glorious? He promised
he would be there. He promised he would be seen.
He promised he would speak by the foolishness of preaching
to his people. Listen to Hebrews chapter one. It says, God who at sundry times
and in diverse manners spake in times past unto the fathers
by the prophets. This is how God spoke, by the
prophets. But hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son. Now that word his is in italics.
The word son is his name. He's spoken to us by son, by
the one that put away our sin, by the Lord Jesus Christ, whom
he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made
the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express
image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his
power, when he hath by himself purged our sins, sat down on
the right hand of the majesty on high. His work was finished.
There's no more work that needs to happen. No more prophecies
need to take place because they all pointed to the Lord's prophet,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Every prophecy that was ever
made pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't need any prophecies
anymore. We don't need them. We have the fullness, the brightness
of His glory, and the express image of His person. It came
to pass. It came to pass that the Lord was born, that the Lord
lived, that the Lord died for His people, and that the Lord
was resurrected. And now we have the affirmation that He has sat
down on the right hand of the majesty on high. God's prophet,
our substitute, purged our sins by His own blood. He now speaks
by His Son. Through the preaching of the
gospel, we hear directly from him. We don't need a prophet
anymore. We need the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't need a man.
We need the God man, the Lord Jesus Christ. The prophet of
God. How do we know if a man preaching?
Is sent of God or not? What is he saying? Is he preaching
the gospel clearly? See, if I add one work that you
have to do in order to be saved, I have tainted the Gospel. I've
tainted it. It's not the truth any longer.
The Lord will not save under a sound of false preaching. The
Lord will not save from a false prophet. He will not. The Lord
will not save if the man is not preaching the Gospel, called
of God, clear as he can, preaching the Gospel. If he's preaching
the truth, The believers know it. The believers see it. I've heard preachers be so close
to the truth, and yet there's something missing. And you can't
really even put your finger on it sometimes. You feel good when
you leave there, but you're like, we didn't feed. We didn't eat.
I didn't see Christ. That's our desire this morning.
And being here is seeing Him. That's my responsibility. That
we would see Him. The Lord warns us of false prophets. Turn with me to Matthew chapter
seven. You would. The Lord warns us of these false
prophets that are going out. Anyone that's not a gospel preacher
that stands in the in the place and says that they're of the
Lord is a false prophet, very simply put, very simply put. Matthew 7, verse 15 says, Beware
of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Do men gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles? Even so,
every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree
bringeth forth evil fruit. Now understand something, brethren,
this matter of bringing forth fruit, fruit is not something
we produce in and of ourselves. Fruit is the byproduct of salvation.
When the Lord saves you, he gives you repentance towards God, where
you see God as God and yourself as the center, and he gives you
faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ to put all your hope and
trust in him. Now the byproduct of that is the fruit of the Spirit. It's something that we do not
produce in and of ourself. It's something that the Lord
Jesus Christ produced and it's bestowed upon us. So those who
are bringing forth good fruit are confessing Christ is all,
Christ is all, Christ is all. That's the fruit. We bring forth
love and joy and peace. The scripture says, goodness,
meekness, temperance, faith, long suffering, all the things
that the Holy Spirit's bestowed upon us. I was mentioning this
just in between services with Jackie. If you forgive, it's
because you know you've been forgiven. When you love, it's
because you see that you've been loved. You've been loved by the
Lord. That's how, that's why we love
one another. is because we see that the Lord loves us. How could
he love me? How could he love me, the chief of sinners? That's
why we love. How can the Lord forgive me? That's why we forgive.
That's the fruit that he's referring to here, the good fruit. It's
all of the Lord, and he gets all the glory for it. Verse 18
says, a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can
a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth
forth not good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them, Not everyone
that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom
of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which
is in heaven. Now look at these next two verses,
pay close attention to this. Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, we have, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name, have we not
cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful
works. and then will I profess unto
them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Men believe that they are doing
God's work. Men believe that they're doing
God's work. In churches, men believe, we received an email
because we live in Florida about needing some help and wanting
donations and everything like that, and they put the name of
God on it like they're doing it for him. That's a humanitarian effort,
brethren. There's nothing wrong with helping
someone in need, but don't put the name of God on it. Don't
say that, that brings glory unto ourself. Do we see that? That's
not good. We need to not think that way. I mean, believe that they're
doing God's work, whether it's time, whether it's money, whether
it's preaching, whether it's whatever it may be. But the work of the Lord is found
in verse 21. He that doeth the will of the
Father What is the will of the Father? To believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the will of the Father.
He tells us that many antichrist spirits go out, so what do they
say? They say believe, they say the same words, don't they? They
do, they say believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but what they mean
by that is, is exercise your faith, do your part, pray this
prayer, shake the pastor's hand, join the church, get baptized,
whatever it may be. The Lord says, believe. And the
only ones that can believe are the ones that he has given faith
to believe. Those are the ones that believe.
And the believer, I think you say it this way, the believer
cannot not believe. We have to believe. We have to,
just because he has made us thus. I mentioned about prophets in this
day and time. I looked, I was just curious,
and I don't know why I do this, but I suppose I know what I'm
going to find every time I search the internet for something. You're
going to find exactly what you're looking for most of the time,
but I was kind of surprised at this. I looked up prophet today. Is there any prophets in today's
time? And I got names, just boo-coos of names. And I found one, it
says Dr. Prophet so and so. Had like three titles after it,
whatever else. Dr. Prophet. I thought, man, that's,
this guy loves his titles. You know, this, this guy's the
Pharisee of Pharisees for sure. But the most interesting part
is what he was representing. He's the CEO of Our Voice Matters
International Peace Coalition. Do you find that interesting?
This man is saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. Do you
know what the Lord said they're gonna prophesy? Peace, peace, when
there is no peace. That's come to pass. That floored
me to see that we're living in that prophecy that came to pass.
The Lord said, they're gonna say peace, peace, when there
is no peace. And this guy is the CEO of Our Voice Matters
International Peace Coalition. He's going around telling everybody
peace, trying to advocate peace. The only peace that we're gonna
have in this world, brethren, is in the Lord Jesus Christ and
his finished work. That's the only peace that we can have.
Matter of fact, Christ was the one that said, I came to set
variants, father and mother, sister and brother. That means
to split in two, to cut asunder. The Lord didn't come that we
would have peace in this life with our fellow man. The scripture
says, live peaceably as much as within you, live peaceably
with your fellow man. But the Lord came to have peace
with God. He came so that we could have peace with God in
him, in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why he tells us in John
four, verse one, Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits,
whether they are of God, because many false prophets are going
out into the world. God gives us the authority to
try the spirits. These are these are the preachers
that are running around saying that Jesus loves everybody. Jesus
died for everybody. And all you have to do is do
your part. These are the false prophets. They're lying on God.
God loves. Yes, he loves his bride, though.
If I was to tell, I mentioned this at Al's wife's celebration
of life, Lord gave me this on the spot. I don't know that I
never said this before, but if I was to look at every woman
in this room and tell you, I love you just as much as I love my
wife, my love wouldn't mean a whole lot to my wife, would it? The
Lord Jesus Christ doesn't love everybody the way that he loves
his bride. He only has one love and it's to his bride. He doesn't
genuinely love everybody. He doesn't love the trees. He
doesn't love the birds. He loves his people. And he died
for his people. He redeemed his people. How do
I know that he don't love the trees and the birds and the land
because it's going to burn up? And anything that the Lord loves,
he's going to keep. He's going to save. And he did that for
his people, didn't he? We are commanded, brethren, to
reprove, rebuke, and exhort. And I thought that that meant
something totally different than it meant. Reprove means tell each
other that you're sinners. Rebuke means remind you that
Christ is all. And exhort means encourage you
in Christ that He successfully saved His people. So what does
reprove, rebuke, and exhort mean? Preach the Gospel, Timothy. That's
what he was telling me. Preach the Gospel. We don't cut
each other down, but in love we come to each other and remind
each other we're sinners. We have a Savior, a successful
Savior of sinners. This is what Gospel preachers
preach is Christ is all. That's how you know whether one
is of the Lord or not. If he doesn't point you to Christ,
he's not of the Lord. It's that simple. It's that simple.
We do all this by hoping that the Lord causes us to look under
Christ, the Lord's prophet. Remember the woman at the well? I love that when the Lord passes
by, and the scripture says, and the Lord was passing by, he knew
exactly where he was supposed to be exactly when he did it.
Martha got angry at him because she said, well, you four days
late. Lord's the only one that can be four days late and be
right on time. And as the Lord passes by this woman at the well,
he goes up to her. They're having a conversation
and she begins to talk to him. And he said, go call your husband.
She says, I have not a husband. He said, that's well-spoken.
She said, you've had five and the one you have now is not your
own. She said, oh, I perceive you're a prophet. That was the
accusation of our Lord right there. And that's our affirmation
that he was a prophet. He was the prophet of God. He
was the prophet of God. As soon as she said that and
realized that, then she starts giving a confession of her God.
And it wasn't the same confession of who the Lord Jesus Christ
was, but the Lord revealed unto her that the Messiah that she
was speaking about I am He, and she believed on Him. He changed
her confession. That was the fruit that she brought
forth after that. Come see a man that showed me
all things I ever did. Is this not Christ? And she left
her water pot behind. Everything that she believed
before that, she left it behind. That's exactly what the Lord's
people do, because we know that only the Lord Jesus Christ, God's
prophet, can set us free. Only God's prophet is the truth
at all times. That's where we rest. We renounce
everything that we've ever known before. Every time we hear the
gospel, we're just renouncing ourself all over again. Lord,
I'm the sinner, have mercy. Lord, I'm false and full of sin,
save me. That's what we do every time we come and gather. Completely
renounce ourself just like that woman did. Peter declares Christ as God's
prophet in Acts chapter three. Turn there with me in closing. Acts 3.19, repent ye therefore
and be converted. Now, brethren, repentance, it's
important that I mention this. In religion, men believe that
repentance is something that you do where you're contrite
and you cry and you beg and you pray. That's not repentance.
Repentance is a changed mind. And only God can give repentance.
You can't change your mind and decide. I can't change my mind
and decide that God is God. There's, it's not possible. It's
just not possible. So why does the preacher here,
why does Peter say repent? Because it's a declaration. And
if you can, you will, you've been made to. He says, repent
you therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted
out. And the times of refreshing shall come from the presence
of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was
preached to you. whom the heaven must receive
until the times of restitution. Now restitution means the restoration
of something lost or stolen to its proper owner. This is the
only time this word restitution is written in the New Testament.
And that's exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ did as our prophet.
He restored us, we were lost, we were stolen, we were dead
in trespasses and in sin, and he restored us to its proper
owner, the Father. That's what he did. the restitution
of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his
holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said unto
the fathers, a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto
you of your brethren like unto me. Him shall ye hear in all
things whatsoever he shall say unto you. It shall come to pass
that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed
from among the people. Every soul which will not hear
that prophet. What are we to hear? We have
to know what he said, right? What do we hear? What did our
prophet say? What did our prophet say? It
is finished. That's what our prophet said.
And you better believe that if he said it, it's truth and it's
right and it's done. He said, Father, into thy hands
I commit my spirit. What else did he say? Father,
glorify me. Glorify. Turn with me to John
17. Christ's very first words to
his to his parents were. Wished you not that I must be
about my father's business, the very first words that he said,
he said, I'm here to do the will of God, the father. John 17. Oh, I'm in the wrong place. John 17. In verse six, I have manifested
thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine
they were, and thou gavest them to me, and thou have kept thy
word. Now they have known that all
things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given
unto them the words which thou gavest me. That's all that the
Lord Jesus Christ could give because he's truth. The same
words spoken by the father as our prophet, he gave us the word
from God. He gave us the word from God.
He is the word of God. For I have given unto them the
words which thou gavest me. They have received them and have
known surely that I came out from thee and they have believed
that thou didst send me. I pray for them. I pray not for
the world, but I pray for them which thou hast given me, for
they are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine,
and I am glorified in them. I am glorified in them. The Lord
Jesus Christ gave us his word. He is the Word of God. He gave
us His Word. And as God's prophet, as the
Word of God, He spoke nothing but truth. He fulfilled the law
in word, in deed, and in thought unto the Father. Our prophet,
the Lord Jesus Christ, spoke with the most glorious words
that's ever been spoken. It is finished. Salvation accomplished
for God's people. It is finished. Father, bless your word as you
promised you would. Cause us to rest in Christ, our
prophet, your prophet unto us. It's in his name we pray, amen.