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The news account begins, quote, short shrieks, high-pitched whelps, and drawn-out whales rang out at an international competition aimed at setting a new record for the loudest scream. Sergei Salovev chimed in at 116 .8 decibels, which is as loud as an ambulance siren to win the competition in Thailand.
Sadly, his effort fell short of breaking the 129-decibel Guinness World Record for the loudest scream set in London in 2000. He did walk away with 900 U .S. dollars. Strategies for yelling that loud, how do you rev up your vocal cords?
From twisting bodies to throwing themselves on the ground for the screaming contest. What kind of introduction is that? I know you were thinking that. This book, Hebrews, screams, Jesus is the eternal son, and he is the high priest, and you can trust in him.
Turn your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, please. This is such a great book. Jesus is the sufficient one. He is the one who is the uncreated one, even as we sang today in that song. What a great song. He is our high king of heaven.
We heard that song to us. This is a book that helps people who are languishing. It gives them kind of a jolt, a caffeine jolt, as it were, spiritually. This is like a protein shake. You're tempted because of trials and hardships and sufferings to go back.
To go back, in this particular case, to Judaism, but to go back to any religious system, any old way of doing things that's not Christ Jesus and him alone. That's something less than Jesus Christ, the exalted king who lived the perfect life and who died at Calvary.
Something's beckoning you back. I mean, wasn't life easier before when you weren't a Christian? It seemed like things just went better, and this book makes sure everyone understands. It screams, don't go back.
Jesus is enough, and you can entrust your eternal soul to who Jesus is. I don't know if you've been to Europe and seen Alpine mountains, but J. Sidlow Baxter said, out of all the mountains, Mont Blanc is the one, Mont Blanc.
And he said, this book, the letter of Hebrews, is like Mont Blanc. Whenever you see it, you cannot forget it. Well, why is this book written before we get into chapter 5? Just to help us a little bit.
I think here's mainly the issue. Christology, how you think about Jesus, determines how you live. What you think about Jesus determines how you live. And I could even flip it around a little bit and say, the way you live gives us insight on what you think about Jesus.
Say, well, I struggle with being content with money. That's Hebrews 13. So get the right view of Jesus, chapters 1 through 10. It helps you with your view of money. Well, I struggle with marriage and the purity of marriage.
That's Hebrews 13. And you don't get a view of chapter 13 until you see everything through the lens of Jesus as the sufficient high priest in chapters 1 through 10. Say, well, I struggle with leadership.
How do I submit to leadership? I struggle with chastisement and getting chastened by the Lord. That's all in chapters 12 and 13. And it takes a long time for the pastor to the Hebrews, to the writer of the book of Hebrews to get there.
What you think about Jesus matters. I mean, if we did that kind of game where I say a word and what's the first thing that pops into your mind, what's that called? Word association. Yeah, that's right.
What's the Greek word for that? When I say Jesus, here's what the writer of Hebrews wants you to do. High priest. Priest. And we don't really think about Jesus as priest like we ought to, but the writer of Hebrews won't let you stop.
How do you know Jesus is a priest? Well, you would never know unless God told you. You ever think about that? That's one of the greatest things about the Bible. God has two kinds of knowledge, or there's two kinds of knowledge that exist.
There's a knowledge that only God knows of himself, and there's a knowledge that God tells you about himself. Would you like the theological words? Archetypal, God only knows. Ectypal, God tells you. How would you like to get a little inside scoop from God about who he is?
As a matter of fact, this will be heaven for you, studying God forever and ever and ever. Could you ever study God too much? You can study statistics too much. You can study differential equations too much.
Or if you're like me, you cannot study them at all because you have no idea what they mean. I walk into Diffie-Cues with some kind of little TI calculator in 1980, and I thought I was going to pass the class.
I couldn't even cheat my way through that class and pass. Have you studied? Have you, I can put it this way, have you mastered the person and work of Christ Jesus? I've graduated beyond that. You know what?
I'm tired of learning about Jesus as prophet, priest, and king, savior, advocate, the eternal creator, purging my sins, raising himself from the dead. Could you please tell me how I can make it through tomorrow?
Now, this is a valid question, but this is more valid. So the writer of Hebrews, he just starts off at the very beginning. It's just kind of like, go, Jesus. He's better than prophets. He's better than Aaron.
He's better than anybody you could think of. Moses was great. He was faithful, but he was just a servant. Jesus is the son. Moses was faithful. He was a builder of the house of God, but Jesus is the eternal son.
Jesus is greater than every person. Does that lend itself to devotional thinking? The writer of Hebrews says, yes. Chapter 12, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The most important thing about you, as Tozer would say, is what comes into your mind when you think about God.
And for the writer of the book of Hebrews, when you think about who Jesus is. So Hebrews chapter 5, verses 7 through 10 reads. This is our passage we've been working through the last couple of weeks. Hebrews 5, 7 to 10.
If you don't have a Bible, there should be one right in front of you. In the days of his flesh, we're talking about the incarnation, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, or literally out of death.
Was he resurrected? The answer is yes. And he was heard because of his reverence. Just how human is Jesus? That's the point. Could he be a good priest for you if he doesn't know anything about you? If he's just a transcendent God and not a friend that sits closer than a brother, how could he know your troubles?
If he's just far away and not close, could he be any help for you when you need sympathy? So this section is trying to drive home the point that Jesus is the high priest. He knows because he added humanity.
Although he was a son, he learned obedience. So far that doesn't surprise us. Sons have to obey. Even Jesus learns obedience. He grows in wisdom and knowledge and stature of God, Luke says. But here it's odd because he learned obedience through what he suffered.
And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Verse 10, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. This book wants you to rest in Jesus.
That's a synonym for trust. If you have to get to heaven by working, by being good, by doing ceremonial things, by doing religious things, it's going to be hard for you because it's impossible. You're tainted by sin.
Work, work, work. Keep the law, keep the law, keep the law. So what the writer of Hebrews wants you to do, what God wants you to do, is to rest in the work of another. You just think, oh, I cannot do that, but somebody has done it for me, and I'm to rest in that.
I'm to trust in Jesus. I'm to believe that he did the work. How do you get to heaven? Perfect obedience. Adam couldn't do it. I can't do it. Jesus perfectly obeyed, and I'm to trust in him and to rest in him, not just with knowledge, not with just a scent, but with a firm reliance on who Jesus is, taking him at his word.
How can I do that if he's not a sympathetic high priest? But since he is, verses 7 and 8, he's enough. You can rest in him. And he also eternally rescues his people. How could I trust in one if my salvation is in peril?
I didn't say anything yesterday. Maybe I should have. We were down at the Cape for a wedding, and I was walking past downtown Hyannis, and they've got the statue of JFK there at the JFK Memorial Museum.
And then they have kind of a little open common area, and there were some JWs there sitting in the sun. And I just thought, if I'm going to be associated with a religion, it's not going to be the one that says Jesus isn't God.
It's not going to be the one that says Jesus isn't a high priest, that Jesus was created, that Jesus isn't the ultimate one in terms of one you can rest in. To get to heaven, here's holy God. Here's us, sinful men and women.
We need somebody to bridge the gap. We need a mediator. We need somebody who's not just human to stand in our place, but God, so He can put His hand on God, as it were, and on mankind. This is a religion that helps you live, yes, but helps you die.
And what does the text say, verse 9? We were looking at two words last week. We only got to one. Were you surprised? And being made perfect. The word that we looked at last week was finished, that Jesus was a finisher.
And that's the idea, being made perfect. To come to completeness. He accomplished His job. He fulfilled the Father's work. It's got the Greek root in it, tele, like end. Remember when we looked at last week, John 19, what did Jesus say on the cross?
It is finished. What's the Greek word? Tetelestai. What's tele? Tele is end. So in the old days, we had phones. I guess we have cell phones now. But you'd pick up the phone and you can hear a voice, telephone, a voice at the end.
There's a voice at the end of this. That's telephone. Or you have a telescope. Scope is to see. Tele, the end. You see what's at the end. Jesus finished. He went to the end. He became obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
And at the very last second, before He had to drink the wrath of God, He didn't say, angels, rescue me. Father, I can't do this. No, because we need a sympathetic high priest, He went all the way to the end and He finished His work.
It is finished. He drank the full measure of the wrath of God. He became a sacrifice for our sins. This is something the Old Testament priests could never do, remember? Slay the sacrifice, slay the sacrifice, slay the sacrifice.
I praise God I'm not underneath the Old Testament covenant anymore, the Old Covenant, for lots of reasons. Number one, I don't like blood. And that would be my job. That baptismal would not be a baptismal, it would be the receptacle for blood that you would bring your sacrifices, and Steve and I and the rest would just kill them day after day after day after day.
But Jesus dies and He sits down. Well, He's not only the finisher, but we look at our second word in this section, and that's going to be source or cause. How can you rest in Jesus? How can you trust that He's going to take you to heaven?
How can you trust that your sins can really be forgiven? Through faith alone? Don't I have to do something? He's not just the finisher, we don't have to add anything, but He's the source. See that in verse 9?
He became the source of eternal salvation. He's the source. Now, if you have a King James Bible, what's it say instead of source? It says author. That's the same kind of idea. He caused something. If I write a book, I'm the cause of that book, I'm the author of that book.
I'm responsible for it. It's used in Acts 19 .40, for we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause, that's the word, that we can give to justify this commotion.
Who's the cause of salvation? Who's the source of salvation? The writer of Hebrews says, it is the Lord Jesus. I think it's a very similar concept in chapter 2, verse 10. Let's go back to chapter 2, verse 10, and there are all kinds of implications for this cause.
We'll get there in a minute. Hebrews 2, verse 10. This is the same idea. ESV said, for it was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, we're talking about Jesus, in bringing many sons to glory.
Here's the greatest news today, Bowmans. The opening intro for my sermon was on screaming, so you just let it go. This is scream as much as you want today, if you're under two. But please, just stay right there if you prefer.
No problem at all. When Andy starts screaming, you're out. The same concept, even though it might not be the exact same word, is found in Hebrews 2, verse 10. He shouldn't be the founder. That's the idea of their salvation, perfect through suffering.
NAS says, author. King James says, captain. NIV says, pioneer. He is the source. He is the author. He's the cause of eternal life. Angels aren't. We aren't. Jesus causes eternal life. The source of eternal life is Jesus, who fully lived and who died on the cross.
We receive eternal life from what He did. And the good thing is, it's not temporal. What does the text say? Source of not just salvation, but eternal salvation. Why would you go back to the old system?
I mean, for me, my old system was a kind of a work system where I would lay there in the night and think, if I have not confessed every one of my particular sins, if I die in the night, I'm going to go to hell.
When you trust in the One who's source of eternal salvation, when does that eternal salvation start? When you trust in Him. And so if I forget those sins at night, if I don't even know some of the sins because I'm just so sinful and in thought, word, and deed, and omission, commission, I have a great Savior who paid for all those sins.
I had a tonsillectomy when I was 21. And this was before cell phones and Internet and all that stuff. And they tell you not to cough after your tonsillectomy because there can be a serious problem with bleeding.
And they go in and cauterize everything. They tell you if you have to cough, cough from your stomach. Don't cough, cough. Well, I was sick and I had a cold. So during the day I would think, cough from your stomach.
Don't cough from your throat. Makes you want to throw your throat, doesn't it? Makes you want to scream. That's fine and dandy until you're sleeping and you're coughing, like you normally would, from your throat.
And I wake up and there's just blood everywhere. I'm like, I'm going to die. And I was thinking, confess your sins. Are there other sins? I'm not an atheist. Come on, I've got to be right with God. We know that we're created.
We'll stand before God. And then what on that day of reckoning? I thought, I don't know what to do. I don't want to go wake up Mom and Dad and all that stuff. It's probably 2 in the morning. I'm going to seem like a baby, you know.
A little blood here and there. So I got the yellow pages and I opened it up to hospitals. You would go to WebMD is what you would do. And I'm like, do I call, do I call? It's just like, you know, you got the rotary phone, the dial phone probably.
You know, 572112 and then do I dial that final number or not? I thought, I'm going to die if I don't call. It's either my pride or death. Then the next thing I know, I woke up at 8 o 'clock. Honey, are you okay?
I see some blood on the yellow pages. You know, fall asleep like that. I lived. Most Christian organizations give you a temporal provisional salvation. You have salvation until you sin again. But Colossians 2 says, past, present, and future.
All our sins are nailed to the tree. That debt is paid for. What kind of Jesus would it be if he did most of the work and we have to kind of complete it? He's the source, the cause of eternal salvation.
If you're a Christian today, you have eternal salvation. You can't lose it. And by the way, if you could, you did. You already did. Now because of that, we should not want to sin. It doesn't lead us into licentiousness.
May it never be, Paul said in Romans 6. But how can you rest if you're one sin away? Well, the way you do it is you say, well, I'll concoct another scheme for these temporal sins and everything else. What does the text say?
He became the source of eternal salvation. This language is used in Isaiah 45. Israel is saved by Yahweh with everlasting salvation. This is a refrain, eternal, everlasting, eternal, everlasting. Let's look at a couple, Hebrews 9 .12.
Through the ages, through the eons. I mean, this is important for every person because we are so temporally driven, so much time focused. We are locked inside of time when there's an eternal destiny and life.
Even as Pastor Steve prayed today, we are pilgrims passing through. How good is your salvation if it isn't eternal? Chapter 9, verse 12. This is just a wonderful theme, a motif in the book of Hebrews, eternal.
Hebrews 9 .12. He entered once for all into the holy places. See the contrast between the Old Testament priests. Not by means of blood and goats and calves, but by means of His own blood, thus securing what?
How good was His salvation? How good was His redemption? We're slaves to sin and He redeems us, securing an eternal redemption. Verse 14, the same chapter. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Therefore, He is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
Hebrews 13 .20 goes on to talk about the blood of the eternal covenant. Christian, you have an eternal forgiveness. It is secured by the Source, Jesus. He bears the sins of many. Hebrews 9 .28. Without end.
Now if I just step back for a minute and say what might an implication of this text be? Here's an implication. If Jesus is the Source, nobody else is the Source. I'm telling you, we live in a culture where if you say Jesus is the only Savior, do they look at you like you're a bigot?
If they don't, they think it. This is a pluralistic, inclusivism world we live in. Many paths to God. And you know what? They're right. Every religion leads to God. Especially His judgment. But only one leads to a place of forgiveness and a place of security, and that is through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Do you hear a refrain in these verses? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. There is salvation in no one else, and there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved.
For God so loved the world, He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
These are all inclusive. No, they're all exclusive. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Is Jesus the only Savior? Yes. Is faith in Jesus necessary to be saved? Yes. The pluralist says, No, Jesus isn't the only way.
Faith you don't need. The person who's into inclusivism says, Yes, Jesus is the only Savior, but you can get to heaven besides faith. Who else is the high priest? Who else adds humanity? No one else. Jesus is the only Savior.
He alone lived the sinless life. That refrain in Hebrews 4, verse 15, yet without sin. If you need a mediator, you need one without sin. That pretty much narrows the field down. He alone qualifies as Savior.
Faith in Christ is necessary to be saved. That is why we go preach faith and repentance for forgiveness of sins to all nations. So I think I should stop. Not for the whole sermon, but to ask you the question.
If the only way to get eternal life as a sinner is by trusting in the work of another, have you trusted in Him? Do you trust in Him? Well, I tried that but it didn't work. I'm trusting in Him plus my baptism.
I'm trusting in Him plus I'm trying to be good. I'm trusting in Him because I go to church. I even go to a Bible teaching church. I'm even a daughter of one of the elders here. I'm trusting in those things.
It's faith in Christ alone. True or false? God will not give His glory to another. He will not give His glory to another. So any system that makes you think I'm going to get to heaven and high five God and fist bump God and say we did it is tragically flawed.
It might assuage your conscience on a Friday night while you're sinning, but it won't assuage the wrath of God. Do we need savings? Probably even a good question. Aren't we really good? Some of your children are wicked, but mine were all born good.
I can tell you that right now. It's just so crazy when I see people with kids. We had one couple come over to our house. This was a long, long time ago. I knew they weren't Christians, and I'm trying to tell them, well, why would we even need a Savior if we're not sinful?
So you start with sin these days because everybody's got self-esteem. I saw a little sticker yesterday down at the Cape and it says, Make Yourself Proud. I go, why do I need a sticker for that? I do that every day.
If we were good, we wouldn't need a Savior. When did everything fall off the track? If God creates in Genesis 1, how long does it take before there's a disaster worthy of worldwide flood? Genesis 6 -5, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart, man's heart, was only evil continually.
You just play that against Jesus in Hebrews 4 -15, yet without sin, yet without sin. Ecclesiastes, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins. Romans, there is none righteous, not even one.
That's why we need a Savior. We are sinful people. And compared to other people, we're great in our own minds. But that's not going to be the judgment day, you and other people and bell curve. It'll be you standing there naked before God and God doesn't even have to kind of catalog all the things you've done because God doesn't learn things, He just knows things.
And everything in you will be desiring to cower, woe is me, I'm undone. My only hope is, can somebody stand in the middle? Can I have somebody represent me? Could I have a priest? I need a priest. That's why Hebrews is so important because Jesus is that priest, the source of eternal salvation.
Are there other implications here? Besides Jesus is the only way? Here's an implication. If you have a loved one who's not saved, what's your strategy? You're going to be contentious? You're going to, I don't know, maybe you make your spouse lunch and you just put gospel tracts inside the sandwich every day?
I don't know. Is that a good strategy? You know what the best strategy of all is? Let's see. God is the source of salvation. He's the author. He caused it. And He likes, because He's gracious, to bestow that on people.
He saves lots of people throughout history and He loves to save people to show His glory. So how about we pray that God would save them? Yes, we have to preach the gospel. Faith comes through hearing.
But we also have to pray that God would save them. We don't have to manipulate anything. How good is that? No manipulation. My background is sales. And people said, well, you know, unbelievers would say, man, that's going to be perfect.
You can go to the church and you've got that sales background. You can just persuade people to get into the kingdom and all that. It's not working so well. Matter of fact, we have a few visitors back.
I mean, some people who have left the church out of God's will finally have come back. Matthews, Bowmans, who else is here? Nelson. This is visitor day. I don't build a church. I don't cause anybody salvation and you should be glad because I sin.
I sin against God. I sin against you. But we go to the one who doesn't sin and we say, God, you're pleased to save people. You can save Nicodemus. You can save Matthew, the tax collector. You can save Rahab, the harlot.
You can save Ruth, the Moabitess. Would you please save my loved one? Now, there is a section here in the Scripture that is hard to understand if you read this verse and this verse alone. So let's take a look at it.
I'm sure you're wondering, what does this mean here in verse 9? He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. Now, if you first read that and you don't read the rest of the book, you're thinking, this smacks like works righteousness.
How am I going to get eternal salvation? If this is the only verse in the Bible, I've got to obey Him. By the way, how's that working out? Perfect obedience. You say, well, there's two ways to get to heaven.
There's the legal way, perfect obedience. There's the gospel way. Since we're sinful, we trust in the one who perfectly obeyed Jesus. But here it says, to all who obey Him. What's the idea? Well, it's found very simply in the context.
What has the writer... I almost said Paul. It could be Paul. What has the writer been talking about in chapter 3 and chapter 4 as a backdrop? How do we understand all this? It's been Israel's disobedience in the wilderness, has it not?
Let's see. I mean, this either tumbles our entire salvation theology thinking we have to obey to get to heaven because we're going to have to do one of two things. Either perfectly obey or change around obedience.
And I'll just try to do things and God will make up for my trying and I'm at least sincere so He'll make up for it. Neither of those work. Hebrews 3 .18. Remember, we're talking about Israel being disobedient.
What's the fruit of faith? Obedience. To whom did He swear? Chapter 3 .18. That they would not enter His rest but to those who were disobedient. What does it say in verse 19? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
The fruit, disobedience, is not the ground of salvation. Verse 6 of chapter 4. He's still talking in this section about Israel's disobedience. Don't do what they did. Since therefore it remains for some to enter and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience.
Verse 11. The warning refrain is there again in chapter 4. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. You're suffering. I know it, the writer says.
Persevere in your obedience as a fruit of your faith. If you read later in the book, what is chapter 11? The hall of what? Faith. Everything about this is faith. Hebrews 10 .38. The just shall live by what?
Faith. Here's another way you could look at it if you're confused between faith and works. John 6. Here's what Jesus said. This is the work of God. Okay, what's the work of God? Jesus said that you believe in Him whom He has sent.
What's the first step of obedience? Faith. You could say it that way. Acts 6 .7. And the word of God continued to increase and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.
That means they believed. Spurgeon said to obey Christ in its very essence is to trust Him or to believe in Him. And we might read our text as if it said the author of eternal salvation to all those who believe in Him.
If you would be saved, your first act of obedience must be to trust Jesus wholly, simply, heartily, and alone. Recline your soul wholly on Jesus and you are saved now. Is that all? Certainly that is all.
But it says obey. Precisely so, Spurgeon said. And do you not know that every man who trusts Christ obeys Him? The moment you put yourself into Christ's hands, you must obey Him or you have not trusted Him.
We don't believe in works righteousness. To the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. This is an obedience that proceeds from faith.
This is an obedience with the backdrop of the desert. Chapter 5, verse 10. The writer rounds it off. Being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Now, Melchizedek talk is going to pick back up in chapter 7.
And just to give you briefly now what Melchizedek talk is, simply this. Jesus is a high priest, the writer says. How can He be a high priest if He's from Judah? You've got to be from Levi to be a high priest.
And the writer is saying, remember, before Mosaic Law, before Aaron, before the Levites, before Moses, before Mosaic Law, there was another kind of priest and he was Melchizedek. That's just where we're going to go.
The one thing to remember now is Jesus didn't just come up with this by Himself like Joseph Smith or any other false prophet. What does the text say in verse 10? Designated by God. The Father honored Him.
Now let's get to the crux of the matter. Most people in evangelicalism believe that God saves and we cooperate. There's probably three things that you could look at. You could say God alone saves, we alone save, or we work this thing together.
So God alone saving, the theological term is monergism. Mono, alone, erg, it's a unit of work. God alone works. When we combine God's work with our work, it's synergism, not S-I-N, although I think that's true, but it's S-Y-N.
I thought I was on the radio for a second. S-Y-N, together working with God. God is the cause, God is the author, God is the source. So what does that do when it comes to freedom of the will and my cooperation and God's done everything He can, now it's my turn to exercise my faith and is faith efficacious?
All these questions should come swirling around your mind now. Who causes salvation? God, you are a mixture. It will affect the way you pray, it will affect the way you evangelize. And by the way, shouldn't we even stop talking about this?
It's divisive. All these isms and people and so many disunified Christians and everything else, if we would just take this doctrine, like God's sovereignty and human responsibility and just tuck it over here, the church would be much better off.
At least people would get along. Turn to 1 Peter 1. Here's the wild thing. For Peter and for Paul in Ephesians 1, he says this very doctrine that God causes salvation should cause you to skyrocket in praise.
It should cause you to scream, God save me. I mean really, on that day when you stand before God, there will not be one little, I owe it to one little gram, one little nano something that you go, you know, you did most of it and I contributed.
You'll say with the book of Revelation in Revelation 5, worthy be the lamb who was slain. You did it all. If you have a theology that says God did most of it, you were kind enough to let Him save you, that's a wrong theology.
That is not the theology that says God caused it. You say, well, what about all these ramifications? Well, there are ramifications, but let's at least get it through our mind for the moment. 1 Peter 1.
What do you tell suffering Christians? Well, here's what Peter does. He models praise. 1 Peter 1, 3 to 5. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he just explodes with praise. Dave Copper's laying in the MRI and he's thinking through this verse.
What do you tell a suffering Christian? According to His great mercy. He has what? Really? Can we just like water that down a little bit so we can all get along? He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Who's caused you to be born again? God. You are a combination. The text says He caused you. And what does the writer do? I'm going to celebrate with praises. When my kids were little, I would always have them like do some sign language stuff.
And so, you know, this was thank you. No, wait, is this thank you or please? I don't know. I can't do this. It was a long time ago. Kim taught them sign language. And I just said, good job. And so sometimes when I would say to them, praise the Lord, that meant do this.
My charismatic friends loved that. My stoic fundamentalist hated it. Praise the Lord. Before you can even utter the words, you can say thank you or you can say please or you can say praise the Lord. Who caused your salvation?
This writer does not say, and Ephesians does not say, and Hebrews does not say, well, by the way, there's all this church problems and what about Augustine and Pelagius and what about Luther and Erasmus and what about Calvin and all these people and everything else.
What about my free will? What about my responsibility? What about my human agency? Before you ever think that, and I don't mind that you think it, but before you ever do, you should be saying, I deserve to split hell wide open and God caused me to be born again.
I get to go to heaven. He did the work. I'm trusting in the work. God said, you have eternal life and no one can take it away from you. He celebrates with praises. He praises the Lord. He is worthy to be praised.
And what kind of mercy is there? What's the text say? Hey, I've got great sins. He's got great mercy. That word mercy means God sees our state and He takes pity on us. Have you ever seen something, maybe a dog that's hit by a car or something, you just want to go do something.
You just pity that dog. Or a person, they're a drug addict and you just pity them or they've got themselves in all kinds of sin and messed up, even self-righteous sin, even though their life might be good and you just go, I would like to take pity on them.
They need pity. That's the word mercy. It's great mercy. God sees how wretched we are and He has, as the writers would say, theological writers, He has an impulse to do something freely, graciously, sovereignly, cause us to be born again.
By the way, if you're a Christian, you're born again. I live in the world. Here's the world. There are Christians and there are the born-againers. There's no such thing. There's no difference. If you are not born again, you can't even see the kingdom, Jesus says in John 3.
How do you make yourself alive? How do you get out of the womb? He uses that idea of born again to emphasize God caused it. You were passive. If you were born, what was your contribution? Nothing. That's a celebration for praise.
The same terminology is used in Ephesians 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Now let's make sure we leave predestination and choosing and causing later.
That might split a church, so let's leave it later. Paul says no way. Did the Holy Spirit make a mistake when He said, why do you praise God? Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
The person that you love who's not saved cannot thwart God's power. How could anybody ever get saved? People say, Mike, do you believe in election? Yes. Do you believe in predestination? Yes. Then why would you ever evangelize?
Why do you evangelize? Answer, because there's no hope without it. Everybody's going to slam that door in my face unless God turns their mind and heart just like He did us. How can there be any hope if God sees us and He sees us as sinful, He's waiting for sinful people to somehow become righteous and excise all their unrighteousness before that?
Isn't it one of the Reformers that said, God chose us, but not because we're handsome. You say, well, my God looks down the corridor of time and sees what I will do and then does something. A, that's a figment of your imagination.
B, He will look down the corridor of time and see nothing but sin. And C, you will be the cause of your salvation because He responds to you instead of causes something to you. When I was growing up in Nebraska, we had a sportscaster.
You know, you have sportscasters here. And when I was in Los Angeles, we had somebody for the Lakers and his name was Chick Hearn and he was smooth like Los Angeles. No, no, hang in there with me, Bertrand.
He was Showtime, Hollywood. And I respected the Celtics, I still do. LeBron's coming here. And you had an announcer too and his name was Johnny Most. And he was Boston. He was blue collar. He was everything Chick Hearn wasn't but in his own way, in his own Boston way, in his own mob way, might I say.
And he would scream. He'd scream about Rodman doing something, Lambir doing something. He didn't really scream about the Lakers because they, you know, Worthy was too fast to touch. But he would scream, Johnny Most was, he's getting hurt.
Detroit was dirty. Tom's been sleeping the whole sermon, now he's awake. That's why God has to cause you to be born again. You won't do it on your own. Yes, there are issues to be worked through. Sovereignty, responsibility, duty.
What kind of will do we have? How does God see all that? That's all true. You can work through those. But if you work through those and it takes away your celebration and your joy and your praise. And when I grew up, it was a little transistor radio, K-O-I-L, 11, 10 a .m., Nebraska football.
And there was a man named Lyle Bremser who did the color, who did the sports. And when Johnny Rogers, the Heisman Trophy winner, would return a punt against Oklahoma and we would win, his refrain was, screaming, man, woman, and child.
If you think biblically about predestination and salvation and source and finish, you say, man, woman, and child, salvation. Let's pray. Thank You, Father, for today and Your Word. How can we receive righteousness through faith?
And it's all been planned by You. We would acknowledge we don't contribute anything except our sin. And even the faith You give us, it's a gift. Thank You for that. I pray for the Christians today. I know there's some really difficult things going on in our church.
I pray that You would give them the fruit of the Spirit, which includes joy, because they know something about You. You have determined to reveal it, what Your plans are. We think about the plan of salvation.
It had a start and it was an eternity past. And it doesn't have an end, eternal salvation. And for those that are here today, not wanting to bend the knee, not wanting to confess Jesus as the only Lord, I pray that You would cause them to be born again and trust in the living Savior.
In His name we pray, amen.