Just to touch on one of the announcements that we made this morning, it says here in the bulletin that we are having a class on church. first. And I just wanted to emphasize that because part of what we're doing here is we're coming together and reading Scripture and seeing what Scripture has to say about church membership. We're not talking about membership at a club or at anything else that you might think of. But really, we're going to see what the Bible has to say about that. And also, part of it has to do with the fact that As elders and leaders over this church, Ed, Earl, and myself, we have charge over the souls that come under our influence, and we just want to make sure who we are accountable for, right? Because at the end of the age, Christ is going to ask us how we have shepherded our people, and we just want to make sure who those people are. I'm excited for that and I hope that you'll be looking forward to that as well. And I'm gonna ask you now to stand for the reading of the Word of God. Our passage this morning comes from the second chapter of John. And that's going to be in verses 18 down to the end of the chapter. John chapter two. The Jews then said to him, what sign do you show us as your authority for doing these things? Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, it took 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up in three days? but he was speaking of the temple of his body. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, as we come to your holy word this morning, we acknowledge our need of your spirit to humble our pride, raise our affections, open our minds, and move our wills. Apart from you, we confess that we are nothing. Apart from you, we are but sin and dust, unable to do anything for ourselves. So we ask now that you would send your light and your truth. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we are obviously back to our exposition of the beloved Gospel of John. This is actually the tenth time that we come to this glorious book. And our goal, really, has been the same in every occasion. To walk away with a more exalted view of our Lord, Jesus Christ. That leads to salvation, to spiritual growth, and abundance of life in Him. Now, I am sure that you noticed that in our reading this morning, we dropped into the middle of a scene. In fact, you might even consider this part two from last week's message, which covered verses 12 to 17. These are the events surrounding Jesus's first Passover as a public person. And they are narrated in verses 12 and down to the end of the chapter. Last week, we saw that the Lord went to Jerusalem and the temple. And what he finds there in the temple is just utter corruption. The house of God has been defiled. It is polluted with hucksters who are taking advantage of people's faith for their own selfish gain. So he mounts a direct assault on their enterprise. And in doing so, he actually demonstrates his messiahship. We saw that the prophets of old had written and preached that the coming king of Israel was going to be a man who burned with zeal for God's house. They also had predicted, as we saw in Malachi 3, that he was going to perch the temple at his coming. And we see at least a symbolic fulfillment of that prophecy in verses 12 to 17. The Lord shows to the world that He is the Messiah. However, what follows is not the coronation of a king. You do not see people fall flat on their faces, worshiping the Son of God who has just been revealed to them. Instead, what you get is a direct challenge to Jesus's authority. And that comes from the religious leaders of Israel. So having confronted the merchants and the money changers, Christ now has to confront a second group, and that is the people for whom those money changers and merchants have been working for, the public authorities. Now the beauty of all of this is that in this confrontation, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to reveal a whole lot about Himself. He's going to let His divine glory shine forth by making it clear that He knows all that there is to know about absolutely everything. We would call that His omniscience, omniscience. And if you know it all, then you are God. And Christ demonstrates that He knows it all by the way in which He deals with His opponents here. He shows that He knows the motivations behind their actions and their questions. And although this is the first time that He is meeting them, He prophesies that they will ultimately kill Him. On the other hand, he also predicts that he will rise on the third day. And he knows that his response to the Jews on this day will actually strengthen their faith, the faith of the disciples, three years down the line. So again, he knows everything. And as a Christian, you need to come back to this doctrine every chance you get. Why? Because you are following the Lord Jesus Christ on a difficult journey. The Christian faith is a death march. Deny yourself, follow Jesus, pick up your cross, go to war against your own flesh and the world and the devil. And honestly, that is hard. It's a tall order. but it becomes much easier to keep pressing on when you get a good look at just how intelligent and great your king is. When you get a glimpse of the fact that his judgments and ways and works are perfect and he wisely arranges them so that at the end of the day you might say with the psalmist, oh Lord, how many are your works in wisdom You have made them all. So let's look at these verses in more detail. And the first thing that we're going to see here is Christ's perfect knowledge of the fallen heart. Christ's perfect knowledge of the fallen heart. And that starts in verse 18. Verse 18, the Jews then said to him, Notice the particle then, along with the verb to say, which in the Greek is actually the verb for to answer. So the sentence literally says, the Jews therefore answered him. In other words, this is a direct response to what he has just done, the cleansing of the temple. He cleanses the temple, and no one stops him from doing that, but when he is done, there is a reaction. And it comes to him in the form of a question. And that question is posed to him, as John says, by the Jews. We have mentioned before just how it is that John uses the term Jew in his gospel. He's not necessarily stressing an ethnicity. After all, Jesus himself is a Jew, and the disciples are Jews, and John, the writer, is Jew. But instead, he uses the term here for the representative leaders of the Jewish faith. These are the elite, the members of the Sanhedrin. You will remember that the Sanhedrin was the ruling body over the nation, and they ultimately were the ones who controlled the temple. In fact, they even held their regular meetings right there in the temple, somewhere in the court of the Gentiles. And they would have been actually the ones profiting from the commerce taking place right outside of those orders. But Jesus has just ended that commerce. And in doing so, not only has he hurt them financially, but he has also exposed their blasphemy. They had turned the father's house into a house of trade. They had defiled the temple. And maybe that had not been obvious to most people or even to them. The corruption probably grew worse and worse over time. This maybe was a situation like a frog in boiling water. But as soon as Christ comes and takes such decisive action, it is almost as though the collective blindfold comes off. The sin is fully on display. Everyone can see it for what it is. Now, of course, the appropriate response to this would have been remorse, repentance. You see, there are only two possible reactions when your sin is exposed. You either confess it and turn to God in repentance, Or else you harden your heart. You find a way to excuse your evil behavior. Or you divert the attention from the main issue so that you can persist in your wickedness. And usually sinners will do that by attacking the person who exposed their sin in the first place. That is what happens here. The Jews do not want to face the question of the temple corruption, so they decide to turn the tables over on Jesus. And they approach Him with a question. As we said, a question with an implied accusation. And that is right here in verse 18. What sign do you show us as your authority for doing these things? Now notice what they do not say here. They do not deny that the temple had been turned into a house of trade. That is too obvious. So in that sense, they are actually conceding that what Christ has done is right. They are witnessing against themselves, even without knowing it, perhaps. But again, their strategy here is to turn the spotlight away from them and onto Christ, so they turn this into an issue of authority. This is like when Lot tried to stop the men of Sodom from violating the angels, and their answer was, in Genesis 19, 9, this one came in as an alien, and already he is acting like a judge. Or else the Hebrew back in the book of Exodus. He's beating his friend and Moses comes up to him and says, stop doing this. And his answer in chapter two verse 14 is who made you a prince and a judge? How dare you judge me? Who gave you that right? You would think that it was modern people who came up with that tactic. But it has been used since the beginning of time, and that's because it works. It distracts people from the real issue at hand. And the Jews are trying to do exactly that by requesting a sign here, show us a miracle. Now that is, if you think about it, the height of insanity. The cleansing of the temple was itself a miracle. We saw that last week. And the fact that the Lord expelled all of those merchants out of there with such zeal and without any opposition was clear evidence that He had the authority to do it. That would be like watching an artist chisel the most beautiful sculpture out of a plain stone. And once he's done, you go ask him, what proof can you show me that you're a real artist? cleansing of the temple, show He was the Messiah, but still they want a sign. Show is one. The verb to show here has to do with exhibiting something that can be apprehended by the senses. So the Jews are asking to be presented with something that they can see and or hear. And once our Lord does that, then they will be able to render a verdict as to whether he is right or wrong in doing what he just did. Now, do you see the problem there? The problem is that the Jews are trying to set themselves as the judge over Christ. You show me the proof, and then I get to decide whether you are the real thing. And again, that's just undiluted arrogance. I mean, they have defiled the temple. Not Him. They are in the wrong. And yet, He must give them evidence so that they can then decide whether He was allowed to do that or not. Now, do you see why the Lord would have been perfectly right in not complying? However, the reality is that He does give them a sign, multiple. In fact, the cleansing of the temple was one, and he's actually going to perform other miracles during that week. In fact, look down at verse 23. John will say there, now, when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast, many believed in his name, observing his signs, which he was doing. So he did do other signs during that time period. But what he did not do was some on-demand trick for these arrogant people. And that is because he knows their heart. He knows that they are not just some neutral party with an open mind. They are not asking for a sign in order that they may believe. No, they are asking for a sign because if he failed to produce something that satisfied them, and trust me, nothing would have satisfied them, then they would use that to discredit him and to go back to their sin. And actually, that shows you that the root of unbelief is never a lack of evidence, never. The root of unbelief is never a lack of evidence. You hear people talk that way. I don't believe in God because I have never seen a miracle. Not true. The root of unbelief is always hardness of heart. Rebellion against God. Atheists are not atheists because they have not gotten enough proof. Romans 118 actually says that they are suppressing the truth in their unrighteousness. They do not believe in God because they do not want to. And you could show them the most impressive miracles in the world, and they would still turn their back against God. How do I know that? Well, what about Pharaoh? Back in Egypt, in the book of Exodus, he saw signs, he watched the Nile turn into blood and smelled the stench of the dead fish. He was distressed by the frogs and the gnats and the sores in the hill and the locusts. He sat in pitch darkness for three days. And then he even lost his firstborn son. He got a whole lot of evidence. And yet, was he ever converted? Did he ever bow the knee to God? No, it says repeatedly that He hardened His heart. In the face of all the evidence, He still decided that He was not going to humble Himself before the Creator. Now, on the other hand, what about most of the Israelites who saw those signs and were actually delivered by Him? Were they any better? Not at all. In fact, you might argue that they were even worse than Pharaoh They had even more evidence than He did. They saw miracles every day for 40 years when God was making water gush out of the rock and He was feeding them with the bread of angels. And yet, by the time that story is over, their corpses are littered all over the wilderness. All of them, except for two, killed by God. And those were the people who saw the most miracles. So again, the problem with man is not that he does not have enough evidence to know whether there is a God. In fact, if you are truly willing to obey, you will not even need a sign. Creation itself, Psalm 19, says that it declares the glory of God. And then you have the Scripture, which is more sure than any miracle you could ever see. In fact, Peter says in 2 Peter 1, 17-19, that the prophetic word, or the scripture, was better evidence to him than the transfiguration, when Christ pulled back the veil of his humanity and showed Peter, James, and John his deity. Peter saw his glory with his own eyes, and yet to him, scripture was more reliable, because he could not trust in his senses, but he could trust the word of God. That's why in Luke 16, 31, the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham says to the rich man concerning his unconverted brothers, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, in other words, if they do not believe the scripture, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. So the problem is never a lack of evidence. The Jews do not need a sign. They have more than enough. And Jesus knows that. So why become a trickster or a magician for these evil people who have already rejected him in their hearts? So instead of performing some flashy miracle for them, he actually gives them a piece of information that ensures that his redemptive plan is going to move forward. forward. And that brings me to the second point that I want to show you this morning. First, we saw Christ's knowledge of the fallen heart. And now we're moving on to His perfect knowledge of the future. His perfect knowledge of the future. And that starts right here in verse 19. The text says, Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Now, I want you to look down also at verse 21, because John is actually going to interpret verse 19 right there for us. Verse 21, but he was speaking of the temple of his body. So, when Christ says, destroy this temple, he means destroy this body. Now, as you know, this is not the only passage in Scripture that compares the body to a temple. In 1 Corinthians 6.19, for example, when Paul is instructing believers to flee sexual sin, he writes, In other words, if the Spirit lives in you, then that makes your body a temple. It's very simple logic. And by the way, that's an excellent proof text for the deity of the Holy Spirit, because cults like Jehovah Witnesses and the Mormons will actually deny that the Bible teaches that the Spirit is God. But the logic of a passage like 1 Corinthians 6.19 would actually not work if Paul were not assuming that the Spirit is God. Because it is the Spirit dwelling in you that makes you a temple, and you have to be God to dwell in a temple. But anyhow, if that is true of you and me, that our bodies are temples because God dwells in them, then how much more so of Christ? You see, you and I have had the Spirit come to live inside of us at regeneration. But Christ, on the other hand, He is the eternal Son, the second person of the Godhead, who is in the Father and in the Spirit, and He has taken on humanity, and even that humanity He fills with the Holy Spirit. No wonder Colossians 2.9 says that in Him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. His body truly is a temple. Now, notice in these verses, the Lord is not necessarily comparing Himself to some generic temple. Rather, He is comparing Himself specifically with the Jerusalem temple. And there are a few similarities between those two. The first of those is that God is the designer, so to speak, of both the Jerusalem temple and Christ's body. If you remember, in the book of Exodus, God handed over the design of the tabernacle directly to Moses. And in Hebrews 10, 5, the Lord Jesus is quoted saying, So, on the one hand, you have God directly involved in the making of the tabernacle, and on the other, you have Him weaving Christ's body together in his mother's womb because she was a virgin. So, as God designed the Jerusalem temple, so does he prepare Christ's human body. Does that make sense? Yes? Now, the second similarity between the Jerusalem temple and the Lord Jesus Christ is in the fact that God called the Jerusalem temple his house. The majesty of the Godhead was dwelling in that place, and so it was dwelling in Christ. In fact, the temple was the meeting place between God and His people, and that is a third similarity between Christ and the temple at Jerusalem. In the Old Covenant, God's people had to come to that building in order to meet with God, but in the New Covenant, all we have to do is come to Christ. we worship at His feet. So, there are some strong similarities between the Lord Jesus and the Jerusalem temple, but you do have to ask why. Why would God want us to draw such a strong connection between Christ and the temple? And that is because the purpose for the temple in the first place was to point to the coming of Christ. What the temple did in housing God and providing a meeting place between God and his people, the Son of God did by taking on humanity, by becoming the God man, the one mediator. So the temple was the type, Christ was the anti-type. The temple was the shadow, and Christ was the substance. Now the truth is that some people do get lost in the types and the shadows and never actually arrive at the reality. If you have a carnal mind, you will never be able to move from the symbol to the substance and you will actually become enamored with the symbol. That's a religion that becomes external. That happens in churches like the Roman Catholic Eastern Orthodox, all the focus there is on the external, the rituals and the bells and the whistles. It's not, it's all about the symbols there, not the reality. In fact, they don't care about the truth. They become hostile to it. And the same happened with the Jews. They are dead. They are the, and the only one who could actually come and infuse life into them comes around and they end up killing him. And He knows that they will do that from the start. In fact, He predicts it right here in verse 19. Now, the verb destroy here literally means to loosen. To loosen. They are going to kill Him and thereby loosen His soul from His body. And that is put in the imperative destroy. But it is clear that Christ is not commanding them or giving them permission to kill him. Instead, he is prophesying what they are going to do. He knows the future, right? So not only does Jesus know what the Jews are thinking, he also knows what they will do three years later. They will kill him. in the same way that they had defiled one temple, so they were going to destroy another. Now, all of this is necessary, of course. This is part of an eternal decree. These men were going to crucify Christ because that is the way in which He was going to bring sinners back to God. That was the plan all along. Isaiah 53, 11 says, by His knowledge, His counsel, His wisdom, by His knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify the many, and He will bear their iniquities. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ had a perfect plan. By His knowledge, He was going to accomplish our redemption. So every moment on this earth was an execution of an eternal decree. He was living a life of obedience that could then be imputed unto the elect. And then He was going to the cross to satisfy the Father's wrath in behalf of the elect. There was a design to all of this, and it will not fail. Because not only are the counsels of Christ perfect, but He can actually bring them to fruition. After all, He is omnipotent, or all-powerful. And He makes that clear right here in verse 19. In other words, I am the Lord of death. You will kill me, but I will rise. And He even says in how long? Three days. Notice, not after three days, but in three days, in the space of three days. Friday night was one day, Saturday, Saturday the whole day, counts as the second day, and Sunday morning, that is the third. In the space of three days, Christ is going to raise Himself. So people do get confused with that because they're counting the time the way that you and I would count time in our culture. So they say then that Christ had to die on Thursday so that they can get to three days. But clearly, He died on a Friday because it says that He died the day before, the Sabbath. So, in the space of three days, He says, I am going to raise Myself. Now, isn't it interesting that He's taking full credit of the resurrection here? Because you read elsewhere that it was the Father who raised Him, right? Here He's saying, I'm going to raise Myself. So you have to ask, who raised Jesus? Was it the Father? Was it Jesus? Well, Paul actually answers that question in Romans 8, in chapter 8, verse 9, he refers to the Holy Spirit first as the Spirit of the Father. And then in the same verse, he calls him the Spirit of Christ. So the Holy Spirit is, at the same time, the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of Christ. And then Paul adds in verse 11 that it was the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead. So let's make sense of it this way. The resurrection is accomplished immediately by the Holy Spirit. In fact, you might even call the Holy Spirit the immediate cause of the resurrection. However, you also need to keep in mind, as Paul just said, that He is the Spirit of the Father, and He is the Spirit of Christ. He proceeds from the Father and the Son. So, even though the Spirit is the immediate cause of the resurrection, He still comes from the Father and the Son. And for that reason, you can say that the Father raised Jesus, you can say that the Spirit raised Jesus, and you can say that Jesus raised Himself. All three statements would be correct. And that goes back to the fact that the three persons of the Godhead have the same spiritual, infinite, eternal, and simple essence. They are one God. Three persons, one God, and therefore they have one power. So when Christ says He is going to raise Himself, what He's doing is He's stressing His deity. He wants you to be aware of the fact that He accomplishes whatever He says will happen. And he shows that here, because in saying, destroy this temple in three days, and in three days I will raise it up, he's actually doing two things at the same time. In the first place, he is prophesying his own death, we just noted that, but secondly, in issuing this prophecy, he is ensuring that the prophecy itself will be fulfilled. Why do I say that? Well, because ironically, These are the same words that the Jews will use to indict him at his trial. You remember, when he is being tried, the Jews pull up this statement to condemn him of blasphemy. And that is recorded in Matthew 26, verses 59 to 61. Let me read that. Now, the chief priests and the whole council kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus so that they might put him to death. They did not find any, even though many false witnesses came forward. But later on, two came forward and said, this man stated, I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days. And that is the statement that they're going to hang on to, to condemn Christ. But notice, they don't even really get his words right. He did not actually say that he was able to destroy God's temple. As a matter of fact, he said that they would destroy God's temple. And even at that, he was not even talking about the temple in Jerusalem. He was talking about his own body. But still, the point is that his prediction occasions its own accomplishment. In other words, his saying the prophecy ensures that the prophecy is fulfilled. Because those words are going to become a stumbling block for the Jews. Notice, even at this point, they are offended by his words. Look at verse 20, that's their response. The Jews then said, it took 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?" Of course, they missed the analogy. They assumed that he's speaking about the physical temple that they were all standing in. Now, to be sure, it is true that that temple in Jerusalem was impressive. We talked about it last week. It was this grand structure made out of white marble. It looked like a mountain of snow when you were coming up to it. plates of gold in its eastern front reflecting the sunrise. Luke 21 5 says that it was adorned with noble stones. And in Mark 13 1, one of the disciples runs up to Jesus and says, look teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings. So no doubt this was a spectacular achievement. And we mentioned last week that it was Herod the Great who started this project. It took him only a year and a half to finish the sanctuary, the house itself, but the surrounding buildings and the court actually took a total of 80 years to build. And it is not going to be finished until the year 64 AD. That's a mere six years before the Romans come and destroy it. But the point is that during Christ's life, the temple was still under construction. And that means that when the Jews say, it took 46 years to build this temple, they do not mean that it was completely done. The construction is still ongoing. But what they already have is very impressive. And they think that Christ's saying that if all of that were to be destroyed, He could raise it up in three days. That sounds ridiculous. But of course he could. He had shown that by cleansing the temple and the other signs that he did that week, but they will not believe him. They have already rejected him. And that is because he did not fit their idea of what the Messiah that they were expecting should look like or what he should stand for. They were expecting some great political leader who was outwardly full of majesty and who loved them, by the way, but before them was a Galilean deplorable. And he hated their desecration of the temple. He was everything they despised. And you can feel that in their response. It took 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up? The you here is emphatic. You, a nobody, will accomplish anything? So they mocked him. They looked down on him and thereby tripped over the stumbling block. In fact, notice that they do not even ask him to clarify himself. I'm sure that if they would have asked him to ask what he meant, by temple, he would have given them a straight answer. But that would not have contributed to his purposes. So in his wisdom, he frames this entire scene so that they will not ask him to clarify himself. And in leaving them in the dark like that, he is actually ensuring that his prophecy is going to be fulfilled. And it happened, just as he said, they did kill him and he did rise. And when the disciples saw that, their faith was strengthened. And that brings me to a closing point. So, so far we've seen Christ's perfect knowledge of the fallen heart and his perfect knowledge of the future. And now we are going to come to his perfect knowledge of the redeemed heart. his perfect knowledge of the redeemed heart. And that starts in verse 22. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this. Notice John is done talking about the Jews at this point. He is switching over to the experience of the disciples after the resurrection. He says that when Christ was raised from the dead, in other words, when his prophecy, his sign was finally fulfilled, his disciples remembered that he had said this. Now the truth is that the disciples had probably been as confused as the Jews when he first said what he said. They probably also thought that the temple he was referring to was the Jerusalem temple. After all, they had not even known him for long, and they did not know that he spoke in parables, and they barely understood any spiritual realities. Nevertheless, the difference between them and the Jews is that the Jews mocked and rejected Christ when he said these things, whereas they stored them up in their own hearts. That's the humility that saving faith is always adorned with. You are the kind of person who says, you know what? I don't really understand it, but I'm going to trust Him. He's given me every reason to do it. And the beauty of it all is that Christ will one day open your mind, and you will remember, and everything is going to make sense to you. And that is precisely what happens to the disciples. They remember His words. He had been storing grains in their barn so that one day He could open them up and make them instantly rich. And that wealth is going to be more perfect confidence in the Scripture and in His words. That's where God wants to take you. He wants you to believe His Word more and more. He wants you to have greater and greater confidence in the Bible. That's what the next part of verse 22 says. They believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken. Now the term scripture here refers to what we would call the Old Testament. And notice that John puts it in the singular, not the scriptures, but the scripture. Now by that, he does not mean that there is only one passage, one scripture that prophesies about the Messiah's death and resurrection. In fact, There are prophecies about His death and resurrection all over the place. The Old Testament predicted that Christ was going to be killed. Psalm 22 and Zechariah 12, 10 talk about Him being pierced. And Isaiah 53 says that He was going to be crushed for our iniquities. Daniel 9, 26 says that the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing. His death is all over the place. Now, on the other hand, the Old Testament had prophesied also that He was going to rise again. Psalm 1610 says that God was not going to let His Holy One see corruption. And then you have Isaiah 5310 that says that after offering up His soul for the guilt of His people, Christ is going to finally see them. He's going to prolong His days. In other words, He is going to rise up from the grave. So there's plenty in the Old Testament about the death and resurrection of Christ. In fact, I believe that the reason why John writes Scripture in the singular rather than the plural is because he wants to emphasize here that all of Scripture sounds one note. Jesus Christ. All of those books are the Scripture united around the central theme that is Jesus Christ. And the disciples figured that out after the resurrection, when they saw his sign come true, and they matched it with the Old Testament, when he gave them to see that. And you can read about that in Luke 24, verses 44 to 47. The text says, then he said to them, this is the risen Christ speaking. These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then the next verse says, then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations." In other words, all of Scripture is about Christ. And when the disciples saw that and perceived His power, their faith grew strong. They believed the Scripture. Not for the first time, they were already believers, but they believed again. Their faith was invigorated, it was renewed. Now, on the other hand, this verse makes it clear that if you have the Scripture, but you do not have Christ, you have nothing. That was the problem with the Jews, right? They knew their Bibles, but they missed the message. And that's because they refused to believe it. John 5 verses 39 to 40, the Lord Jesus will say, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me. And you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. So if you want the scripture, You have to come to Christ. If you want divine revelation, you have to come to Christ. Do you have Him? Yes, maybe you know the Bible well. Maybe you are convinced and have convinced everyone around you that you are a good Christian. But if you were to stand before the Master today, would He say that you were unwilling to come to Him? Don't let that happen. Come to Him, He says, and have life. Take refuge in Him. Because He is an amazing Savior, isn't He? It's easy to devote all of your time and your resources and take up a cross and die. for a king who is so great in power and so wise and so perfect. Yes, life is hard. The Christian life is tough. But one look at the Savior, and that brings you back to the place where you say, oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. and unfathomable His ways. Let's pray. Great King of the Covenant, You are the immortal, invisible, and only wise God. And we thank You that we get to follow after You. We would ask now that You would remember our weakness. Please help us. I really want to help you guys.