Systematic Theology (part 34)

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

I assume that in a group of people, there are going to be people that come in saying,

I wish I didn't have to get up this morning. I wish I didn't have to be here this morning. I'm not having a good day.

I think I'm going to Australia. But the most profound thing that you could say to yourself is,

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, this I know, for the

Bible tells me so. I'm on my way to heaven, this I know, for the

Bible tells me so. So the way that I feel comes in second, okay, because our emotions are transient and squirrely and nothing to hang on to as we consider how we're doing.

Okay, let's have a word of prayer and we'll jump into this. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the opportunity to come to your word.

As the hymn writer declared, in the book we see the Lord. We pray this morning that as we look at the book, that we would see you.

We pray this morning that as we look at the book, we would have some insight into how we are to proceed to maturity in Christ and to being conformed to His image.

It's in His name we pray, amen. All right, we're talking about progressive sanctification.

We understand. Somebody asked me just this last week from the

Bible study in Hardwick, now you said last week that when

I am justified, I am sanctified. But I always thought that I was justified and then

I am working on being sanctified. So which is it? To which

I answered, yes, okay, because there are two things going on.

When I am justified, when I am declared not guilty, when the righteousness of Christ is imputed to me and my sin is imputed to Him, when all of that happens,

I am said to be just. I am justified. I am declared not guilty, never declared innocent because I'm not innocent, but I am declared not guilty.

At that point, I am set aside as one of God's children, as one destined to be conformed to the image of Christ, all of those descriptions that we have in the

Scripture. That is sanctification, okay, to be set aside for God.

But then there is progressive sanctification, which we are talking about now, and our working definition is, anybody know,

I would be like all these other teachers that are more perceptive than I here.

And what is our working definition of sanctification? Class. Okay, you were not the guys that were here last week, you're the new guys that have come in this week.

All right, I get it. Okay, our working definition is, progressive sanctification is me learning to be over my lifetime what

God says I am already.

And so in progressive sanctification, in maturity in Christ, in growing in Christ, however you want to put that, we start from our position in Christ.

We do not start from our experience because our experience from day to day is often not good and doesn't look spiritual, doesn't feel spiritual or anything else that we might think is spiritual, whatever that feels like, all right?

And that's why this I know for the Bible tells me so, okay?

Now last week we looked at Galatians and Colossians as examples of the bottom line here about progressive sanctification.

The bottom line is that self -determined effort will not produce sanctified living.

Gritting your teeth, screwing up your courage, making a determination that you and I are going to be holy, that will not produce sanctified living.

The reason is, it is the Holy Spirit that dwells in every believer that produces sanctified living.

In fact, this week, I think it was

R .C. Sproul said, when people are interested in, when people are excited about the

Word of God, that is the Holy Spirit producing that interest and producing that excitement.

And I thought, R .C., you must have been in Sunday school last Sunday morning. Because what we said in Sunday school last

Sunday morning is, where am I most likely, where am I most likely to encounter the

Holy Spirit? In my feelings? In my experience? No. I am most likely to encounter the

Holy Spirit in the Word of God, which He has inspired and which He illumines.

And so we pray when we come to the Word to be born along by the Holy Spirit who has breathed it out and who has produced it through the prophets.

Okay. So, if determined effort will not produce sanctified living, then what am

I to do? Well, one of the things I am not to do is get on the Flake Out Before the

Father program. Oh, I do nothing. This is up to the Holy Spirit. And so I will just go on my way, and if the

Holy Spirit can do anything about that. But I am not going to do anything to get myself adjusted in this direction at all.

That's one end of how this is viewed. The other end, of course, we discussed in detail.

That's the self -determined effort end. So if I am not to do, if it's not

I do nothing, and on the other end of it, it's not I do everything or I try harder, then what is it

I'm to do? I am calling this the Romans 10 .10 principle, and I'm on the,

I think, third page of the outline that you have. When the

Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, people that he did not know, people to whom he was coming. And by the way, he was coming to the

Romans. Not to, he ends up delivering the greatest probably elucidation of the gospel in one place in the

New Testament in the book of Romans, but that was not the point. He was coming to the

Romans because he was headed on to Spain to preach the gospel because he said, I have preached the gospel all over this now known world.

He says something like, I've preached the gospel all the way over to Illyricum, which is just across the, is it the

Adriatic Sea from Italy? Okay, so I've been all over preaching the gospel.

I'm going to Spain. Now you Romans whom I have not met, which church

I did not found, but your faith is known throughout the world,

I'm coming to you, and I'm coming to you for support. He was a missionary coming to that church for support.

I want you to send me on to Spain and I want you to support me in the process.

That's why the book of Romans is written. In the process, as he says, I have some things to share with you.

He gives us the greatest exposition of the gospel in one place, perhaps in the

New Testament. By the time he gets to Romans chapter 10, he has talked about all of salvation.

Now we have a tendency in evangelicalism to say, well, so -and -so got saved.

Now what that means is that they trusted Christ as Savior, okay, because they repented of their sin and because they repented about whatever they had thought about Christ prior to the time of receiving him as Savior, and so we say they got saved.

And for a lot of people in evangelicalism, if I can say it that way, for a lot of folks, that's the extent of it.

That means that person came to Christ. But as far as Paul's concerned and the New Testament is concerned, salvation encompasses far more than that, okay?

That's the beginning of salvation. We call it justification. Beginning of Romans chapter 4, after Paul goes through the indictment of the world, the

Gentiles, the Jews, and so on, beginning of Romans chapter 4, he begins to talk about justification where he says,

Abraham believed God, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. He talked about the basis of imputed righteousness in Christ, so he has talked about justification.

When he gets to Romans chapter 6, which begins, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

God forbid that we should do that. He begins to talk about what we're talking about.

Now what? Abraham believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness, that wasn't just written for him, it was written for us, he says, and so you have believed

God, it's credited to you as righteousness. Now what? Should you continue in sin that grace may abound?

God forbid. He's talking about, now what? Okay, which is what we're talking about.

And so in Romans chapter 6 and 7, down to 8 -1, the

Apostle Paul talks about the whole struggle with sin. You're familiar with Romans chapter 7.

If you're not familiar with Romans chapter 7 in your mind, you are certainly familiar with Romans chapter 7 in your experience, are you not?

Yes you are. You say, no I'm not, I don't think I am. Well, Romans chapter 7 is the chapter that contains things like this.

That which I hate, I do. That which I don't want to do, I do.

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And so on and so forth.

Okay? And that is the struggle with sin that every believer goes through.

We all have experienced that. We all continue to experience that. And the question is, how do we get adjusted in another direction?

The end of that, by the way, is not Romans 8 -1. The end of that is Romans 8 -1.

That shouldn't be the beginning of the next chapter in my view. Because at the end of all of that, my great struggle with sin, this business of progressive sanctification, some days

I win, some days I lose. It's a terrible thing.

I have this flesh, but it is crucified. It is a principle of sin that continues in me, and so on and so forth, that Paul writes.

The end of that is, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

The man that blurted out, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death, this body of sin, okay, the end of that is, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

This I know, for the Bible tells me so, all right?

And that's where Paul ends his discussion of sanctification. Then in Romans chapter 8, he continues on as he talks about life in the

Spirit. And at the end of chapter 8, 8 .30, which you're familiar with,

I'm sure, it ends this way. Those whom he predestined to be conformed to his image, that was in verse 29, to be conformed to the image of Christ, he also called.

And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

All right? Notice that missing in that verse is sanctification, progressive sanctification.

For those who are interested in growing in Christ, for those who are concerned about growing in Christ, progressive sanctification is the great occupation and sometimes preoccupation of our lives here, the life we are living between the time we came to Christ and the time that we will stand before Him when

John says, when we see Him, we shall be as He is. We are all concerned about how do

I grow in Christ. I'm not growing in Christ. Someone told me already this morning they had not had breakfast all week, you know?

It's one of those kinds of weeks, you know? And that is our preoccupation.

Notice here, it's not even in sight. It's not on the radar screen. Why? Because those

He called, He justified. And once you have been justified, the sanctified is your position in Christ.

You are seen at that point as in heaven already. Eternal life has begun already.

And so God sees you. He also glorified the past.

You are also glorified. You are as good as in heaven now, this second.

Paul says to the Ephesians, doesn't he, you're seated in the heavenlies. He says it twice in chapter 1.

That's how we are to set our minds. That's the mindset of the believer. Now, our mindset is very, very important.

Okay? You know, the famous Romans chapter 12,

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to Him, which is your reasonable service.

And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed.

And everybody goes, yes, that's me. I am getting on the transformation program. I want to be transformed.

Let's go for that. Okay, by what? By the renewing of your mind.

By changing the way you think. And the way you think has to be thinking that is in line with the

Scriptures. Because the Scriptures contain the truth about us having come to Christ.

The Scriptures contain the truth about us. Our experience does not contain the truth about us.

You say, wait a minute, I've got to go to work in the morning. Me too. All right?

But the experience that counts, the experience that lasts, the experience that is eternal, that's a different experience, which you won't get at work, which you won't get in the day -to -day at home, which you won't get in the day -to -day experience that people have.

That's not how it works. The experience that counts is revealed to us in the book.

And so we have to set our minds in a different direction. If we're not going to be conformed to the world, it will be by having our minds renewed according to the

Scriptures. To the Colossians, set your minds on things above. What? Set your minds on things above?

No, my mind's set on work, man. No, my mind's set on getting the mortgage paid next month, man.

My mind's set on, okay, that's good, I get it, you've got to pay attention to that stuff. But the mindset that we need to maintain, which comes from the

Scriptures, the mindset is set your minds on things above where your life, you say, well, wait, my life is at work.

My life is, you know, here, taking care of all that. My life is getting the leaves out of here before it snows one to three inches tonight.

Okay? That's my life, man. No, no. Your life is what? Your life is hid with Christ in God.

Set your mind on things above. So while we're getting the leaves out of here, so we don't have to shovel them out and can rake them out still, okay, we can still have our minds set on things above.

We can still have our minds renewed by what we know about the Scriptures. And that brings us to what

I'm calling the Romans 10, 10 principle. All right? How do I get my mind to head in that direction?

Here's Romans 10, 9, and 10, familiar passage of Scripture. Possibly, some commentators say, possibly a first century baptismal confession.

And so it includes that. In fact, when I have had the privilege of baptizing some new believers, sometimes

I will ask, do you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead?

To which they reply, yes, otherwise we wouldn't be there. Okay. All right.

Then on the basis of that, of your confession of faith, I baptize you into the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and so on. Okay. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is

Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, believe in your insides, you know, for us that's the heart.

For some tribal people, it's your liver. Believe in your liver that God has, you know, or it's your spleen, or it's whatever.

They take to be your insides, your innermost thoughts. You believe that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

Now, here's what I think that is. I think that's... I read a little invitation to salvation once that said this, you've got to be all in for Jesus.

Okay. Well, we're standing in the water, and I say, do you confess Jesus as Lord? That's not...

Well, you know, things were really going bad for me in my life, and so I, you know, I tried gazing at crystals, and I tried some

Hare Krishna, and I tried this. I think I'll try Jesus now, and see how that works out.

That is not the basis of any kind of salvation, all right?

All out for Jesus, or I should say all in for Jesus, is this. If all of this, if what is in this book is not true, if it is a lie, if it is a deception, if Jesus Himself is not true, if He was, as C .S.

Lewis said, either a con man, or a crazy person, or something like that, if any of that is true, if any of that is true, then

I am lost. You know why? Because I have no other thing going for me but Jesus.

That's it. All right? So when you stand in the water, and confess with your mouth,

Jesus is Lord. And by the way, it's hard for us sometimes to get our heads around that, because we live in a culture where we have a multiplicity of Christian congregations, and serious

Christian congregations. I'm not talking about book reports and counseling sessions, okay?

Serious Christian congregations, some of whom say, well, you know, baptism, that's great if you want to be baptized, but if you don't want to be baptized, that's okay too.

You're welcome here, and so on and so forth. I get all that, except I'll say this to you.

Baptism will not save. We all know that. However, the

New Testament, perhaps with the exception of the thief on the cross, knows nothing among baptized believers.

And their first testimony of faith in Christ, which brought some of them into conflict with the

Roman government, which brought some of them into conflict with their Jewish families that regarded them as dead after that, that brought them into conflict with all that was going on around them, their first testimony of faith was to be baptized in water, okay?

It was true at the very beginning, wasn't it? Philip comes up to the Ethiopian, he gives them the gospel out of Isaiah, and the guy says, here's water.

What keeps me from being baptized? Nothing. Stop the chariot. Let's get out and be baptized. The Philippian jailers baptized before daybreak.

Why? It was their testimony of faith that they were all in for Jesus, okay?

And so that's Romans 10, 9. Now here's the principle. With the heart, with the liver, with the spleen, with the whatever in your tribe, okay?

With the heart, one believes and is justified. We get that. I believe in my heart that God has raised

Him from the dead. Jesus is Lord. If you believe that, you're justified. And with the mouth, notice with the mouth, one confesses and is saved.

With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. The voices in those verbs are interesting also.

With the heart, one believes, that's a middle voice, and oh, you can't tell and all that.

We talked about that. All right? But that's a middle voice. And what is the middle voice in a

Greek verb? The middle voice in a Greek verb says, I do something, but I am the recipient of the action.

I do something, some definitions say, I do something on my own behalf.

That's what's going on right here, okay? In the heart, one believes.

I believe. That is on my behalf, okay? It isn't Christ, but it's on my behalf because I become justified.

And with the mouth, I confess, also a middle voice verb. I confess to my own benefit.

I confess for myself. I confess so that the results are seen in me.

I confess and am saved. Now, the word saved at the end of that verse, because Paul has been through all of salvation, justification, sanctification, and glorification by this time.

This is salvation, period. With the mouth, confession is made unto justification.

And I'm going to say this. Now, if you don't want to write this in your commentary, okay. But I'm writing the commentary this morning, all right?

Salvation is made, confession with the mouth is made unto sanctification.

And one day, confession with the mouth will be made in glorification when the entire universe is at the feet of Jesus, confessing what?

That Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. And by the way, the irony of that will be, you remember that passage of Scripture which says, everybody on earth, everybody in heaven, everybody under the earth will confess

Jesus Christ. That under the earth, that's biblical talk for hell. The day comes.

If you think hell is bad, because hell is bad. The day comes when those who are separated from God in hell will bow their knee and confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God the Father, and it will be too late to be saved.

And that will be a bad day in hell indeed, when that day comes.

Okay. So, let's look at that word confess.

Next page. The word is homolegeo in Greek.

Alright. Two pieces to it. Homos, the same as. You know the prefix homo, meaning the same as.

Logos, you know that word. In the beginning was the logos. In the beginning was the word.

So it is a word or an idea. So confession, homolegeo, is to say the same word or to repeat the same idea as another.

In this case, to speak agreement with God's truth. You say, well, do

I have to speak it? With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.

Now here's the problem that we have, we North Americans. We are very cerebral people.

Okay. And that comes from early on. You come to class at school, sit down, shut up.

And we pour it into you. Okay. They don't shut up quite as much as they used to in school.

So we get to church. And Pastor Mike makes a great point, which he always does.

We hear great preaching. And we go, or maybe a, you know, perhaps a muttered amen.

All right. But we don't want to go too far with that kind of verbal expression about that thing.

And so the same thing happens to us when we are thinking about confession with the mouth unto salvation.

You mean you think I ought to say something out loud? Yeah, I think so.

Maybe you need to roll the windows up on the car. No, we don't roll the windows up on the car, do we? I'll tell, since my relative who is involved in this is not here,

I'll tell you this little story. They got a car after one was wrecked.

We've talked about expiation and propitiation, right? There was no propitiation, only expiation in the case of this car.

So they ended up getting a car that the windows rolled up on.

You know, the little thing about that long, you turn it like that and the window goes up and down.

And so one of the kids got in the back seat and went, what's this? Whoa, look at that.

That's very cool. You know, you just turn this little crank and a window goes up.

That's really good. Okay. So you think we ought to say something out loud?

Push the button, pull the button, whatever, and let the windows go up. And we need to say something out loud.

I find one of the things, every morning, some of you may know, I've been doing a little school bus driving.

So every morning I drive from Barry to Paxton on this bus.

You know what? It's a great time to sing a hymn. I should sing a hymn out loud to myself.

Get serious. I think so. That's good. Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

See, you can sit there on the bus and go, it just loses it.

You know, it just sucks the life right out of that. Let me hide myself in thee.

Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin the double cure.

Save from wrath, propitiation, make me pure. Sanctification, I'm set aside for the

Lord. Those old hymn writers, they had it right. And by the way, I appreciate what we do with the guitars here, too.

I find the theology in these song books that we use to be quite good, as opposed to some other things.

But I'm not getting into that discussion today. All right? All right. So I think, yes, it is to speak the truth of God's Word.

We read about Jonathan Edwards, for example. Jonathan Edwards was given to walks about, and as he walked about, he quoted the

Word. And I don't know whether he sang hymns or what he did, but he thought much and talked much about what was going on between himself and God.

Sometimes he wrote that it brought him to tears when he did that. So I think there is a principle here.

With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. Now, let's look at this Word in the New Testament. 1

John 1, 9. If we confess our sins,

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we, and it's homily, or some derivative of it.

It's the verb. If we confess our sins, if we say the same word as God.

You know what? You can't be saved if you don't say that your sins are worthy of death and that you come to the great

Savior for His salvation. You can't be saved. So that confession is verbal.

We have a baptismal service. The people that are being baptized give their testimony.

And their testimony includes the time when they came to realize that all...

You know, you can say it in a hundred ways from the Scriptures. All my righteousness was as filthy rags and so on and so forth.

All of that is a confession. That is to be said. Now, in this particular case, it would be good maybe just to quickly get the context here.

This is John writing near the end of the first century.

What's happened is that the center of Christian... Ah, this isn't true.

Okay. A great center of Christian activity has moved north of Jerusalem into what we now call

Turkey. Which the New Testament terms Asia. Paul held forth at the school of Tyrannus for more than two years in Ephesus.

And the testimony of Acts is that all of Asia heard the Gospel. That means all of what we would...

What we older people would call Asia Minor. But which is Turkey today.

All of that part of the world heard the Gospel. We talked about that with the Colossians last week.

How Epaphras must have heard the Gospel in Ephesus. Went back, founded the churches at Colossae, Herapolis, and Laodicea and so on and so forth.

At the same time that that is going on, however, several things have happened.

One, Stephen has been persecuted. And so the church, the Christians run. It's okay to run if you're a

Christian and the bad guys are after you. It's okay. But if they catch you, you still have to say

Jesus is Lord. They ran and they went to Antioch, which is up in Syria.

But then in 70 A .D., the Romans came in, destroyed Jerusalem in fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy, tearing down the temple down to the last rock.

And at that time, there was a great movement of people out of Jerusalem, fleeing the

Romans. And many of them were Christians and they fled north, further than Antioch of Syria, into what is now

Turkey. By this time, all of the apostles were dead except one,

John, who lived to be an old man. Okay? By the end of the first century, the heresies had already begun.

Sorinthus, who said Jesus was, well, he wasn't a man, but he was just a spirit being.

And from Sorinthus, little branches of that that said, well, Jesus was really just an apparition.

These guys just saw him. Sounds like a German theologian. But anyway, those were the heresies that were going on, all right, at that time.

And John was writing to refute those heresies as well as to encourage the

Christians. In fact, the apostle John was sort of the archbishop of Asia by the end of the first century.

And he made the rounds, it is said. He made the rounds of all of those churches. And he was sort of the leading thing.

Well, that would be correct because he was the last living apostle. And so he writes to refute the heresies.

And included in the heresies is the whole idea that I don't have any sin. So John writes, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

Those are present tense verbs, those first two. If we are confessing our sins. I didn't say this last week,

I don't think. It is hard for old guys to remember where they have been. Since last week, I have been to Hardwick and other places.

But anyway, when I was a youth pastor, I was a youth pastor once.

Pastoring youths. I would have kids come and say, okay,

I get it. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. I want to confess my sins.

But they were viewing that verse as a cosmic soap bar. And so you get this question.

What if I sinned 38 times last week, but I could only remember 29?

And then you have to go, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what it's all about. But you don't get what it's all about if you don't get the context of what's going on at the end of the first century.

And this idea that I have no sin, that Jesus didn't really come in the flesh. And by the way, here's an interesting little story.

The Apostle John. What did Jesus call James and John, by the way, when He first met them? Sons of thunder.

John was in a building one day, apparently a large auditorium up in Asia.

He was an old man by this time. And Serentis, the heretic, walked in to the same place.

And John cried out, I don't know if I'll hang around long enough to do this.

Although, you know, we worked on this, and I think we did okay. So probably it's not going to come done. But John cried out, flee, flee.

The building is going to come down. The heretic Serentis has come in. And that's kind of where he was, refuting these heresies.

In any case, so the idea is, if you are truly a believer, you will have a constant present tense, a constant confession that goes like this.

I am the great sinner. Jesus is the great Savior. And I am saved.

This I know, for the Bible tells me so. But there is no one who is a believer that says, hey,

I've gotten over sin. All right? I have known a few. We do have some brethren that teach sinless perfection.

You come to Jesus, then you don't sin anymore. In fact, I knew one in Bolivia. And I said to him, well,

Wendell, when you yell at your wife and kick the dog, what do you call that?

And he said, well, that's a mistake. Oh, I see. We're slicing the bologna really thin here.

Okay? John says, if we are really believers, we would never say we don't have sin.

In fact, he goes on to emphasize that, doesn't he, as he writes on. We say we have no sin. We make him a liar.

And so our confession, watch it. Our confession is, I am the great sinner. He is the great

Savior. And I am in him. It would be good to confess that with the mouth.

Because it would set the mind more easily in the right direction.

Yeah? Okay. Hebrews chapter 3.

Therefore, holy brothers who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.

I tell you, I can't wait until Mike gets into this whole, the details of the great high priest.

Okay? But to these Hebrews that were believers, and that were not thinking about wavering and pulling back, the writer says, consider

Jesus. You share in the heavenly calling. Consider Jesus. He is the apostle and high priest of our what?

Our confession. I think the old English, I think the King James says, of our profession. That's a big mistake.

Because the term profession has come to us to mean something phony. Oh, yeah, he's a professing

Christian. But we really know that he's a, you know, we think that he's not really a

Christian. And so on and so forth. But that's not the word. The word is homilgeo. He is,

Jesus is the apostle and high priest of our confession. So one of the questions would be for me this week, will

I confess Jesus with my mouth? Would I confess, for example,

Jesus is Lord. And I believe in my heart that he is raised from the dead.

That will help set the mind. That will help transform the mind. Okay? And we need to have our minds transformed because we'd never think of this stuff all by ourselves.

If we're left to our own devices, we will become worsey and think of some 18 rules that if we keep them, then we're okay.

Right? All right. Got to rush on for time's sake. Hebrews chapter 4, verse 14.

Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

Not our profession. Our confession. It's the same verb there. The same word there.

Hebrews chapter 13, verse 15. Through him then, now here we get back to the mouth.

This can be uncomfortable for some of us that are very cerebral. Through him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.

Guess what? An offered up sacrifice of praise to God almost is assuredly allowed.

Out loud. Okay? In fact, when we sing hymns in here, and by the way, may

I commend Bethlehem Bible Church for the quality and the pretty enthusiastic hymn singing that goes on here.

You know, I preach in a few other places from time to time. And I've got to tell you, the hymn singing is just pitiful.

It makes you want to jump up and go, wait! What are we doing? Who do you think the audience is here?

Well, it's us. We've got to do this at this time because then we go on to the next thing. Okay. No, the audience is not us.

When a sinner is saved, what does the Bible say? When a sinner is saved, the angels rejoice.

You think they're not looking at Bethlehem Bible Church this morning? You think heaven is not aware that we are meeting this morning?

Heaven is aware that we are meeting this morning. And I think someone in heaven is looking to say, okay, we'll see how they do this morning when the hymn singing starts.

Okay? We'll see if they really believe what they're singing and so on. And so we need to really sing it.

Okay? A sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that ESV says acknowledge.

Now, we can do this. Yes, I acknowledge Jesus. No, no, no. The word is homiligeo.

It is lips that confess His name.

Lips that confess His name. Did you get it? Lips. Not neurons. Okay? Lips that confess

His name. 1 John 1, 9 is there again because the guy that was operating the computer does not operate it as well as he ought.

Okay? So we'll go right to 1 John chapter 4, 2 and 3. By this you know the

Spirit of God. That was me, by the way. All right. By this you know the Spirit of God. You know the

Spirit of God. I know the Spirit of God. His Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God.

Here's how you can know that the Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you are a child of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

And every spirit that does not confess, there's the word again, Jesus is not from God.

Will I confess Jesus this week? I need to confess Jesus this week because it is where I connect with the

Spirit who bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. Okay? Whoever does not confess

Jesus is not from God. This is the Spirit of the Antichrist which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

You know what? Emotionally, experience -wise and all of that, we can start getting sucked in by everything that is

Antichrist. And you know what the antidote to it is? Jesus is Lord.

I confess it with my mouth. Okay? 1 John 4 .15

Whoever confesses, same word, that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

What do you confess this morning? What do I confess this morning? Say, I confess Jesus is Lord.

Jesus abides in you. That's what John wrote right there. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

By this, by this, you notice I have emphasized that? By what?

By this is love perfected with us. By what is love perfected?

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, by that, by the confession, is love perfected.

So that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in the world.

Which ought to be part of our confession. Philippians 2 .9 -11

Already referred to that this morning. Therefore God is highly exalted and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

So that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess

Jesus is Lord. To the glory of God the Father. So here is the bottom line. We begin in Christ by belief in truth confessed.

You confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord. And believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead.

You will be saved. We proceed in Christ by confession of the truth which is believed.

And which is revealed in the scriptures I might add. And we end in his presence confessing

Jesus is Lord. So here is what I say. We confess our way along until we see

Jesus. John Gill. The old Puritan that preceded

C .H. Spurgeon at Metropolitan Tabernacle by about a hundred years. John Gill says all of the

Christian life is a confession. Is a confession. Okay. Questions?

I don't really mean that. Okay. Alright. If there are any questions do it now.

Or forever hold your peace. Okay. Alright. Next week here is what we want to do.

And it starts there with what we want to consider. So what does this look like? And I'll tell you the story of Anthony.

But that's next week. Not this week. Alright. Let's pray. Thank you Lord for your word.

We're grateful for it. We pray that it would be on our lips every day. We pray that we would confess our way along this week.

Not just think about who we are, where we are, what we are. But that we would confess what you have revealed we are.

And who you are in the word. We commit ourselves to that. For this week

Lord. And we commit ourselves to you again.

And we pray that this week we might find your name often on our lips.

Even aloud. You know what kind of people we are Lord. We're kind of embarrassed to do that.

But we pray that we would find a place and a time when we could speak of you. And rehearse the great things that you have done for us.

We pray you would be between us now until we meet together next Sunday morning around your word.