♪ And I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I ♪ I shall watch you. ♪ The Lamb of God is come ♪ ♪ His blood will water me ♪ ♪ The blood of my heavenly King ♪ ♪ His love shall never fail me ♪ ♪ How I seek to see you ♪ ♪ You are my hope and my strength ♪ ♪ You carry all my needs ♪ ♪ The truth I never found ♪ ♪ I'll keep on loving you ♪ ♪ And I'll stand at your feet ♪ ♪ Till the last day of my life ♪ For the preaching of God's holy word, please turn in your Bibles to John chapter eight, verse 48 through 59. John chapter eight, 48 through the end of the chapter. And let us not forget that this is not human literature, but the word of the living and true God. Then the Jews answered and said to him, Do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me. And I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks and judges. Most assuredly I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death. Then the Jews said to him, now we know that you have a demon. Abraham is dead and the prophets. And you say, if anyone keeps my word, he shall never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Who do you make yourself out to be? Jesus answered, If I honor myself, my honor is nothing. It is my father who honors me, of whom you say that he is your God. Yet you have not known him, but I know him. And if I say I do not know him, I shall be a liar like you. But I do know him and keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Then the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Then they took up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them and so passed by. Congregation, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Amen, please be seated. Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, in our series, Through the Gospel of John, we are still at the third encounter in the temple between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, those hypocritical religious power brokers in Israel. And we are shortly after the Feast of Tabernacles, or some call it the Feast of Booths. And things between Jesus and the Pharisees, or the Jewish leaders, are escalating. At first, as we saw, it almost looked like many of the audience had become believers. As it said, as he spoke these things, many believed in him. But we soon found out that this belief that is mentioned here did not essentially or necessarily refer to saving faith in Jesus Christ, but only to the fact that he was who he claimed to be. And even that faith just lasted for a short while. And we took this opportunity to look at the different stages of faith in order to understand what saving faith is. And we realized that this is a very important question because people ask themselves, at least I hope so in churches, is my faith saving faith? And we also have to be careful because as we seek to lead people to Jesus Christ, we can become overeager. And as soon as somebody says, yes, yes, I believe in Jesus Christ, we think, oh, praise God, another believer. And that might be, but it also might not. And therefore, it is important for us to dissect in a way, what saving faith really is. And we looked at the three stages of faith that has been used, or is being used in the scriptures. I mean, there is, of course, a great difference between agreeing who Jesus is and fully surrendering to him in a saving way. And we have to know what is required for saving faith. And we looked at these three stages of faith in order for us to understand what saving faith really is. Now, the first stage, the lowest stage of faith, if you will, is what is called in Latin, notitia, or knowledge. Notitia refers to the content of the faith. It refers to intellectual knowledge. There's a lot of people in this country, I dare say, maybe a majority, who could somewhat explain to you the gospel of Jesus Christ, because still in this nation, you hear it. It's other than in Europe where, for example, I grew up in the heart of Europe and up to my 16th or 17th year of life, I had never heard the gospel. In this nation, as bad as it has become, considering what it was once, you at least still have access to the gospel. You hear the gospel. There are men who are faithful enough to go out into the streets and preach the gospel. You have those who on TV preach the gospel. Not all of them are crooks. Some of them still preach the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the question for us is, is this knowing of the faith, this knowing of the gospel alone, is this enough for us to be saved? And of course, it is not. Just knowing the facts is not enough because you can know the facts and then be against them. despise them, criticize them, so in this case you know the facts, but you do not like them, you do not follow them, you do not submit to them, so only knowing the gospel of Jesus Christ most certainly is not enough to be saved. It becomes a little bit more difficult with the second stage, which is the question of assent, or as the Latin term is, assensus. It's the Latin root of the word assent that we use, which is not only knowing the facts of the gospel, but the conviction that the gospel is true. So here is somebody who knows the gospel and he says, yes, I believe the gospel is true. I ascend to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, now it becomes difficult. Is this saving faith? And I sadly have to tell you it is not. merely assenting to the truth of the gospel, agreeing with it, does not make one a believer. And we are reminded of texts like James 2, verse 19. You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. That is demon belief. That is demon faith. The demons know that the gospel is true. but they will never submit to the gospel because of their extremely fallen condition. So there must be another stage, a third stage, and that final stage is fiducia, or trust. We would say fiducia, the Latin term. Trust. Faith is only effectual. Faith is only saving faith if one not only knows the truth, if one not only ascends to the claims of Jesus, but only if he also personally trusts in Him alone for salvation. if one bows their knees before the Lord Jesus Christ, if one declares himself morally absolutely and helplessly bankrupt and seeks his salvation only in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this, of course, demands that you abrogate your pride. You cannot become a Christian and keep your pride. You cannot dance into the presence of God as it were through Jesus Christ and say, yeah, I accept him. I want him to save me, but I still don't think I'm that bad. That is impossible. And I'm afraid in the churches in the Western world, there is a large number of people who try to slide by the true gospel, as it were, by saying, well, I'm pretty okay. I have the gospel. I have prayed the sinner's prayer. I'm pretty okay. No. Here is one thing that the West has not understood, and I see it especially in this country, which has been so blessed for so long with the gospel, that people think becoming a Christian means to add Jesus Christ to the many things that they already have. They have a certain profession, they have a certain membership in this or that organization. Their life is pretty okay, but there's one thing missing and that is Jesus Christ. And so they add Him too. Now they have taken care of eternity too. My dear friends, that is not the gospel. The gospel is not an adding of Jesus Christ. The gospel is a complete submission to Jesus Christ, including all these things. There is no other gospel, there's only a gospel of full surrender. And in this country becoming so blessed or having been so blessed for so long by applying Christian principles, we have become fat, dumb and happy, if I may say it, that we think we just add the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I have taken care not only of my retirement, I have not taken care only of my golf club membership, I have not taken care of my medical thing, but now I have taken care of eternity too by adding Jesus Christ. Well, if it doesn't work too bad. This is not the gospel. The gospel is complete surrender for Jesus Christ. You cannot serve two masters. There cannot be any competition to the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a ton of people in this country who went on to, as it were, wax nose Jesus Christ, according to their political radical ideas and think, now I have to merge the two because I don't want to give up this, but I still want eternity to be taken care of. It doesn't work. Jesus Christ does not accept anything short than complete surrender. There is nothing else. There is no other way into eternal life. There is no other way to the Father than completely surrendering to his son, Jesus Christ. And of course, I got to tell you, nothing gets you fired or in trouble more quick in the Church of Jesus Christ in the West than preaching exactly that. There's far too many honorable people in our churches, far too many upstanding members of society. I hope you don't misunderstand me. We ought to be upstanding members of society. We ought to be honorable, but that's not where our trust lies. That's not what brings us to God. That's not what earns us eternal life. It's rather the ramification of this total surrender, because here are now people who do not trust themselves anymore. Here are people who only trust Jesus Christ, people who do not live for themselves anymore because they live for the glory of God, and that's why they have integrity. You know how it pains me when I hear people talk about Mormons and they say as crazy as they might be, they're honest people. Or about the Jehovah's Witnesses. Oh, yeah, I would never become one, but you gotta say they work hard. And they talk about Christians. I heard it often about waiters and waitresses in this city. If they pray, they don't pay. That's one of the thing I hear. Or how angry the Christians are in this city. Well, I've seen it myself. This is not biblical Christianity. These are people who try to have it both ways. They try to have one foot in the world and one foot in heaven. It is not possible. How long, people, do you want to limp on both sides? Well, if Baal is God, then serve him. But if the living and true God is God, then serve him, but utterly and entirely and without mental reservations. That's the only gospel. God will not play games, and God will not be manipulated, and God will not endure or accept a half-baked commitment to Him. It must be trust. We must be rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ. And the Jewish leaders in our texts clearly lack this kind of faith, but they insist that genetic descent from Abraham is all that matters. Now, if you want to look at it this way, I don't like to use this word because everybody uses it for every problem, but this is actually racism. This is biblical racism because they say that salvation comes with a certain descendancy. Their descent of Abraham is that what saves them. And you have all kinds of modifications of this throughout church history. This is the real problem in this text that they trust in genetics and not in Jesus Christ. And Jesus explains to them that a true child does the works that their father does. He says it's not about descent. It's not about genetics. It's about faith and its fruit. But the works that they, the Jewish leaders, were doing were not the works of Abraham, but the works of the devil. And therefore, they were not the sons of Abraham, but the sons of the devil. You see, faith trumps genetics. And we too were warned that just being among the people of God, being among God's covenant children, doesn't make one a believer. And that even the covenant sign of baptism, however you understand it, doesn't matter, does not make one a true Christian. But the only appointed means to become God's child is through saving faith in Jesus Christ. And that was all introduction. That's where we left off the last time. And we are now in the last segment of this third confrontation in the temple between the Jewish leaders and Jesus. And now the gloves are really coming off as Christ's opponent now say outright, do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? That's about as much of a low blow that you can ever shoot. This is a vicious insult, at least in two respects. First, in calling Jesus demon-possessed. And the second, in calling him a Samaritan. To understand this, one has to understand the bitter enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans of that day. We talked about this enmity when we looked at Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in chapter four. So calling Jesus a Samaritan, a demon-possessed Samaritan, was an expression of utmost hostility. They are so convicted of being right that whoever disagrees with them must be a demon-possessed Samaritan. That's just the catch-all. You see, people who are confronted with the gospel often react like that. They might not call us demon-possessed Samaritans, but they call us other things. They call us legalists. They call us haters. They call us hypocrites. Now, let me say one thing. I have met plenty of people who were all that. who claim to be Christian, who claim to be sound reformed people, but in reality they truly were legalists. They were really haters. They were really hypocrites. But you also have to understand that that is not what a Christian is. A true Christian cannot be a legalist. He cannot be a hater. He cannot be a hypocrite at the same time. It's an either or. Now, it is one thing to say these things to us for an unbeliever, but it is a completely different thing to call the Lord Jesus Christ a demon-possessed Samaritan. Understand that these Jewish leaders are basically calling Jesus Christ a blasphemer, one who is trying to make himself God. Only then you will understand Jesus's reply when he says in verse 50, I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks and judges. He's saying that not only is he himself the right recipient of glory, but that it is exactly the one whom these men claim to serve, who seeks Christ's glory. And that is the father. You have to see the absurdity here. They say they serve God. And he says, that's my father. He gives me glory, the glory which you deny me while you claim at the same time of serving Him. This is an absolute absurdity. And then Jesus once again reveals the true gospel to them. He says, most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death. He comes to the core of the message again, the message that so upsets them, but also the message, which is the only message that can save them. He says, if anyone keeps my word, in other words, if anyone believes, he shall never see death. Because that is the message, right? That is the word. That who believes, who trusts, who surrenders to the Lord Jesus Christ, who puts all his trust on Jesus Christ and Him alone, he will live. Well, at this point, these Jews have found, they think they have found the ultimate proof. that Jesus has a demon. Verse 53. Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham is dead, and the prophets. And you say, if anyone keeps my word, he shall never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham, who is dead, and the prophets are dead? Who do you make yourself out to be? You see what they're saying here? They're saying here that you say that who believes will never see death and Abraham who was the greatest is dead. And you say he was an unbeliever. The prophets are dead. Are you saying they were unbelievers? Isn't it amazing how they're making the same mistake over and over and over again? They're utterly incapable of understanding spiritual things. And once again, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14 comes to mind, that the natural man, which means the unregenerated man, does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. And here we see that they were not regenerated people. They could not see the spiritual realities. They could not even understand them when Jesus talks about them. You have to understand when Jesus speaks, that's the best preaching there ever was and there ever will be. The best preacher on this world is a pathetic knockoff compared to the crystal clear teaching and preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they don't get a thing. which shows us that according to 1 Corinthians 2, they are natural men. They are not regenerated. They have not received this birth from above, this new birth that gives them a new heart, a new direction, a new principle in life. They don't understand it. That's exactly what's happening here. The Jews are saying, if you say that no believer will ever taste death, and you're at the same time telling us that Abraham was a true believer, how is he dead? They do not understand at all what Jesus has been telling them. They do not understand any spiritual realities. Everything they hear, they interpret in a physical way. This is the same mindset that we saw in chapter 3, when Nicodemus, this famous theologian, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, came to Jesus at night and said, well, which edges do I have to rub off to finally have peace with God? And Jesus tells him, look, there's no edges to be rubbed off. You've been born wrong. Nothing short of a new heart will make you right with God. Nothing short of complete surrender, complete renewal can make you right with God and give you peace with God. And what did Nicodemus say before his eyes were opened? He would always talk about a natural birth. And then he starts mocking Jesus and talks about how shall I crawl back into my mother's womb and be born again? Everything's always natural. Everything's material. They do not understand the spiritual realities behind them. And this is exactly the mindset that we see in many people today when we confront them with the gospel. Man needs this birth from above. Man needs a new heart, which will turn him from a natural person into a regenerated and a new person that can finally even see the kingdom of God and then embrace it. Without this change from above, which is sovereignly worked by God, he will see nothing and he will remain an enemy of the gospel. Only God can grant this change from above. Only God can grant this new birth, this regeneration. And only God can make man see and embrace it. But let us now look at Jesus's remarkable answer to the foolish reasoning of the Jewish leaders. Verse 54. If I honor myself, Jesus says, my honor is nothing. It is my father who honors me, of whom you say that he is your God. Yet you have not known him, but I know him. And if I say I do not know him, I shall be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. He again refers to the father, the same father whom these Jewish leaders claim to serve. And once again, he explains to them that by refusing him, they're showing that they don't know the father. And he's saying, look, you want me to say I don't know the father, but if I would say I don't know the father, I would be lying. And then I would be a liar like you. Now imagine you preach this way today. Oh, how unloving. He's not uplifting. He's not petting us and cuddling us. There's a place for that. There's no doubt. But preaching also has to have this dimension that you catch people in their sin so they can have a chance to see and to repent. And the way that we are representing and sometimes thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ is us making up an idol, which is not the true Jesus Christ, because the Jesus Christ that America has embraced is not the Jesus Christ of the Bible, but the Mr. Rogers from TV. And that's the passage that we want today. We don't want pastors like the Lord Jesus Christ. We do not want to have pastors like Elijah or like Jeremiah or like Isaiah. We want Mr. Rogers. He always smiles. He always affirms us. He always agrees with everything we say and he never offends us. You want to be a famous pastor in a large church these days? And I'm not excluding the super conservative churches. You gotta be Mr. Rogers. but then you will pick a fight with the living and true God for not serving his people well. Jesus never did that, of course, because Jesus never sinned. But these Jewish leaders are just showing that they do not know the Father. Is Jesus not the one of whom scripture says in Colossians that in him dwells the fullness, the whole fullness of the deity bodily? Christ is God. He's the second person of the Trinity. And here they say that he blasphemes God. And then Jesus makes a remarkable statement in verse 56. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Now, this statement must have completely thrown off the Jews, completely puzzled them. Abraham lived about 2,000 years earlier. How could he have seen Jesus' day? What does Christ mean here when he says that Abraham saw his day and was glad? Well, first of all, let us note here that when Jesus calls Abraham their father, he's referring to their own interpretation of father in a genetic way. Almost sarcastically, Jesus is saying, Abraham is your father, let's see. Let me tell you something about your perceived father Abraham. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he was glad. How about that? But we ask, of course, how did Abraham see Jesus' day and was glad? Did he see Jesus' day from paradise and rejoiced? What did Abraham first rejoice about that he would see and then saw it and was glad? Well, it was the birth of his son, Isaac, at very old age, that miraculous event that God first promised and then brought about exactly in the way that he had promised it. But the next question we ask is, why does he call Isaac's birth my day? Well, Abraham did not only rejoice that he had received a son miraculously in very old age, but that he received a son through whom the nations would be blessed. Abraham saw that and he was glad. As one commentator writes, then and there, in that event, Abraham saw with his own eyes what Jesus calls my own day. Then and there the day of Jesus began in that wonderful gift of Isaac. The very person now speaking to the Jews began by an action of his deed, both astounding and infinitely blessed, his own saving manifestation. Promises had preceded, only promises. Here the first great fulfillment was wrought about, a fulfillment that one could see. It was, as Jesus said, my own day. Abraham, though a hundred years old, had lived to see it. He saw it and was glad." Abraham knew that the birth of Isaac had much more significance than just him receiving a son. He knew that in the birth of this son, all the families of the earth would be blessed, that this son would be a picture for a much greater son to come, the Lord Jesus Christ. He understood that it wasn't Isaac himself who would be this blessing, but that he would pave the way for the coming of that real Messiah, the Messiah of whom Isaac was a picture. And that made Abraham glad. We see this explained, by the way, in the book of Hebrews, after the cloud of witnesses is presented to us. Right after the faith of Abraham and Sarah has been described, it says in Hebrews 11, verse 13, these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. You see, these heroes of old, they saw what the Jewish leaders in our text couldn't see, although it was right before their eyes. They saw beyond the physical realm. They saw beyond the timelines. They saw beyond the temporary promises. They saw Christ and the gospel from afar. They saw the ultimate promise and they put their hope in him. Now compare this great faith of the fathers of old with the dumb response of the man in our text. who being confronted with Abraham's faith now say, you're not yet 50 years old? And have you seen Abraham? Talk about the saying, just give him enough rope and they will hang themselves every single time. Do you see the difference between the faith of Abraham and the spiritual blindness of these Jewish leaders who claim him as their father? True faith looks beyond what we can see with our eyes, and it relates everything to Jesus Christ and the hope that we have in Him. On both accounts, these Jewish leaders fail. On both accounts, they are locked out from the kingdom of salvation. But let us now look at the glorious answer that Jesus gives them, an answer that will push the Jews over the edge, 58. Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. I don't consider myself a child of great fear, but I think at this point, I would have had Jesus' arm and say, I think we gotta go now. But Jesus is not gonna compromise. Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Now the Jews only see the man Jesus Christ before them and they don't know who he really is. They only see his human manifestation in history. They don't see the eternal person, the second person of the Trinity. Abraham was born and lived 175 years and then he went home, a finite human being, clearly. But Christ is the eternal Son of God, who was before Abraham. That's what they don't see, and therefore they must suffer eternal death. But there's more in this text. The phrase, I am, refers to something that we talked about before. It is the living God's I am of self-revelation, frequently used in the Old Testament, and the Jews undoubtedly got that. They got that message, as we can clearly see in their reaction in verse 59. Then they took up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. Away with due process. They thought they were justified in stoning him right there and then, because he now has claimed to be God. Nobody is allowed to use this I am other than the living and true God. The I am of self-revelation of this God who always is, always has been, and always will be. And once again, we see how enemies of the gospel react to the truth as they are seeking to suppress the truth in unrighteousness, as we read in the book of Romans in chapter one. That's just what they do. And we see the same reaction here among the Jewish leaders, religious leaders, mind you. These were the bloggers, the authors, the conference speakers of the day. And they seek to stone the son of God who tells them the true gospel. That's just what enemies of the gospel do. Nothing new under the sun. It's the same today. But now the question, what does this mean for us at Westminster here today in the months of June, the year 2024? It means that as children of God, we must by no means be like these Jewish leaders, seeing only what is before our eyes, but we must be like Abraham and see Christ. And we must see him as the one who he really is, the center of the universe and our eternal hope. In other words, we must walk through life by faith and not by sight, with our hopes fixed on Him who is our only hope in life and death. The last month and even years, I have been increasingly confronted with the reality of death, people who got terminally ill, pets who died, and some scares about my own health. And then you begin to think something that you don't think much when you're younger. that death is actually a reality that could come any day for any one of us. A child or a youngster doesn't think like this. His life's going to last forever. He's never going to get old, because there will always be a next summer break. There will always be the next thing to look forward to. But suddenly, you reach the age when you think, or when you see some of your friends suddenly pass away, and you realize, and you ask yourself, well, we're still youngsters. And then you realize, no, actually not. In my mind, I'm still in my 20s. And when people call me, sir, I want to look around if my father's around. But I'm now the father, you know. There's generations after me. And I'm telling you, death will come. It might come sooner, it might come later. You better take this message seriously. You better begin now to walk and to live by faith and not by sight, because if circumstances are your hope, they can be gone very, very quickly. As a church, we have to look unto him who builds and upholds his church. We have to look away from the temporal, from the mortal, unto the eternal Son of God who says, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Beloved, he will build his church and he will build it on the rock that he is. I get around much through my travels. And I've preached in many countries and in many churches. I never speak at real big conferences. Other people do that. I enjoy the smaller ones that others maybe don't want to go. But I've preached in churches where I would say, well, the worship is very different to the way that we worship, that people dress differently, they behave differently. But the older I get and the more I see, I'm not discarding the necessity of a biblical view of worship. I don't discard the necessity of a certain understanding of the truth and all of that. But the older I get, it becomes more important to me to major in the majors and not in the minors. That God is far more gracious than we are. And the more I see our friend.