[0:00] Well, please take your Bibles and turn to the New Testament book of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, chapter 6. We're going to begin reading in verse 25 and read through the end of the chapter.
[0:19] This is one of the longer extended passages in the book of John where Jesus is teaching his disciples and others.
[0:31] John, chapter 6, verse 25. When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, they asked Jesus, Rabbi, when did you get here?
[0:46] Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.
[1:03] On him, God the Father has placed his seal of approval. When they asked him, what must we do to do the works God requires?
[1:15] Jesus answered, the work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent. So they asked him, what miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you?
[1:28] What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert. As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth.
[1:41] It is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
[1:56] Sir, they said, from now on, give us this bread. Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
[2:11] But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never drive away.
[2:25] For I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
[2:40] For my father's will is that everyone who looks to the son and believes in him shall have eternal life. And I will raise him up at the last day.
[2:52] At this, the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?
[3:04] How can he now say I came down from heaven? Stop grumbling among yourselves, Jesus answered. No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day.
[3:19] It is written in the prophets. They will all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the father and learns from him comes to me. No one has seen the father except the one who is from God.
[3:33] Only he has seen the father. I tell you the truth. He who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life.
[3:45] Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.
[3:57] I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
[4:11] Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth.
[4:23] Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
[4:36] For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living father sent me, and I live because of the father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.
[4:54] This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.
[5:06] He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. On hearing it, many of his disciples said, This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?
[5:18] Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?
[5:31] The Spirit gives life. The flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit, and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe, and who would betray him.
[5:48] He went on to say, This is what I told you, or this is why I told you, that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him. From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
[6:06] You do not want to leave too, do you? Jesus asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
[6:19] We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. Then Jesus replied, Have I not chosen you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.
[6:32] He met Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who though one of the twelve, was later to betray him. Let's hear God's word preached. Two weeks ago today, we considered the fact that we have a crisis of truth in the world today.
[6:54] Everyone has their own truth, and we're told that the truly authentic life is just being true to your truth and being true to yourself. Well, this is a crisis of huge proportions.
[7:09] Individuals and society as a whole simply cannot go on existing and flourishing in such a void of truth. And so we're seeing it all unravel for lack of an unmovable standard of truth, what Francis Schaeffer called true truth.
[7:27] Excuse me, true truth. Truth unchanged and unchanging. Well, this crisis of truth is nothing new. We saw that it began back in the Garden of Eden with that old serpent, the devil, the father of lies.
[7:44] Telling Eve the first lie, he said, You will not surely die. What God has said is not true. You can sin and get away with it. And Eve bought the lie and Adam as well.
[7:57] And so all of their offspring, coming down to babies being born today, you and I, come into this world with a deceitful heart that believes the lie, the lies of the evil one.
[8:14] He's the spirit, we're told, that is at work in the children of disobedience. He's at work. In everyone who disobeys God, he holds the whole world under his control, blinding the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
[8:34] And it's come to the place where Satan's lies have become the world's truths. Now, it was into such a world of lies that the eternal Son of God came and declared, I am the truth.
[8:49] I am the truth. And no one comes to the Father except through me. He said, for this reason I was born and came into this world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth comes to me, listens to me.
[9:06] And he said to that crowd before him, the reason you do not believe me when I tell you the truth is because you do not belong to God. You don't belong to God as you claim.
[9:17] You belong to your father, the devil, who is a liar and is the father of lies. So given the nature of fallen man, given the fact of a lying devil in a world that is just echoing and repeating the devil's lies, our response should be the prayer of David found in Psalm 86 and verse 11a.
[9:41] It's our big text for this morning. If we can have it on here. And it is simply this. Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth.
[9:53] Teach me your way. Now there's a lot of teaching going on without real learning taking place. What parent has not bemoaned this?
[10:05] How many times do I have to tell you? There's teaching going on, but there's not learning equal to the teaching. I suppose it also takes place in every classroom, in every school, no matter how good the teacher.
[10:21] Teachers are teaching, but some students simply are not learning. But the most serious of all is the fact that it happens with the very truth of God.
[10:33] The most important things that are being taught today in churches today, pastors are preaching, pastors are teaching, but some are not learning.
[10:45] The fact that somebody's teaching the truth does not guarantee that any real learning is taking place. People can be under the sound of true gospel preaching week after week.
[10:59] They can come under the sound of the pure word of God and yet go out no better than they were when they came in. unchanged by the truth that they've heard. Heard in the sense of sound waves bouncing off of their eardrum.
[11:16] Heard in that sense. But truth that never penetrated beyond the ear gate, down into the heart, and affected a changed life.
[11:29] But here's a teaching that is different. A teaching that is effective, where real learning actually takes place, where minds go away changed, where desires go away redirected, where the will affirms what God says and chooses what he demands.
[11:51] And this is what happens when God himself is the teacher. And it's this which David longs for and prays for in our text. Teach me your way, O Lord.
[12:05] O Lord, you teach me your way. You see what his prayer is? There is such a thing as having the Lord himself as the teacher. And wherever he's doing the teaching, learning takes place, regardless of who the human instrument may be.
[12:25] Now, David's very conscious that human teaching, human intellect, and human learning is not enough. David wants the Lord himself to be his teacher.
[12:41] Now, how do we know when the Lord himself is really teaching someone? Really teaching us his way? Well, the proof is in the pudding. We know it by the person's walk.
[12:52] Lord, when you teach me your way, I will walk in your truth. That's the proof of those whom God is teaching. They walk in his truth.
[13:03] Now, a man's walk is simply his prevailing disposition, his habitual way of life. When God is teaching, people walk in the truth.
[13:17] That means their thoughts, their affections, their will, are ordered in the way of his truth, such that their life takes on the very shape of God's truth. God's truth is the mold, and we're poured into it, and coming away from God's teaching, we take on the shape of that truth.
[13:38] The Apostle John says, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth. that my children, children in the faith, are actually walking in the truth, because that shows that God has taught their hearts to walk in the truth.
[14:03] You see, it means on this journey of life, through this wilderness, God's truth marks out the pathway, and to walk into the truth means that we put our feet down in the very footprints of him who went before us, who is himself the truth, and who lived the truth, and who spoke the truth, and who walked the truth, who is the truth.
[14:31] We walk in his footsteps, we walk in the truth of our Lord Jesus. And what I want us to see today is that nothing less will do than to be taught by the Lord himself.
[14:46] Something supernatural must happen. A God thing. Where God does come by his spirit and actually teaches us.
[15:00] That must happen if we're to learn the truth in such a way that we actually walk in it. And until we do walk in it, we haven't learned it. No matter how many Bible verses we memorize, and how many Bible doctrines that we are conversant with, do we live the truth?
[15:21] Does the truth live in us? Do we walk the truth? Is it dwelling in our hearts richly? Is it at home in my thoughts and in my desires?
[15:35] Is it ruling my responses to life's trials? Is it powerfully guiding my choices in line with his will? Is his word, his truth, at work within me?
[15:51] The apostle Paul rejoiced as he wrote to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 2.13. He says, we thank God continually because when you receive the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of man, but as it actually is the word of God which is at work in those who believe.
[16:15] It is at work in those who believe because God is teaching and they are walking in the truth. It's not a dead letter. It's powerfully at work. It's doing something in their lives.
[16:27] It's changing them, making them more like Jesus the truth. And so he says in chapter 1 of his letter, our gospel came to you not simply with words, not simply with air waves, sound waves bouncing off of your eardrum.
[16:47] No, not simply with words but also with power. What kind of power? With the Holy Spirit. The very God, third person of the Godhead coming in power and working in the heart with deep conviction such that you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven, even Jesus whom he raised from the dead who delivers us from the coming wrath.
[17:14] It changed their lives when the truth came in power and in the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. And so when God is teaching us, his word comes alive.
[17:28] Now, it's always alive. It's a living thing. My word is spirit. My word is life, Jesus says in John 6. But you know what I mean? It comes alive to us. We have it lay hold of us.
[17:40] It's living and active and it runs after us and it lays hold of us and it works in us and it reveals us. It's at work in us.
[17:53] Changing us. Isaiah says the same thing in Isaiah 2, 3. He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths. And that's the result whenever God is teaching.
[18:06] So much more than mere head knowledge added to our minds. Rather, the transformation of life. We're simply not the same people.
[18:19] After God has taught us, we go away changed. So what's the problem? Why is it that we need God himself as our teacher?
[18:31] Why is it not enough just to use our minds? To study with an open Bible before us? Why won't that do? Why is that not sufficient?
[18:41] Well, the Bible's own answer is that the fall happened. The fall of man. The fall into sin is left us totally depraved and that simply means not in part, but the whole of our being is shot through with sin.
[18:58] That there's not a faculty of the heart that has not been spoiled and corrupted by sin. So that means the mind as it thinks is corrupted. It means the affections as they desire is corrupted and it means the will, that thing that chooses is corrupted as well.
[19:18] And now these faculties of the heart are set against God and against his truth. That's why we need God as our teacher.
[19:31] So there's no such thing as a sinner honestly seeking the truth left to himself. No, his mind is biased against God. He proudly sits in judgment of God and his word.
[19:46] He's up here and God is beneath him. And yes, he hears God's word, but he decides what he agrees with. Well, then that's truth for me. But he sits in judgment upon God rather than humbling himself beneath God.
[20:02] That's the mind of the unconverted man. It only agrees with God's truth if it suits him and agrees with his ideas. And that's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 that this world by its wisdom did not know God, did not understand God.
[20:21] And that's not just speaking of unthinking people, uneducated people, but includes philosophers and the intellectual elites and those who make their living by thinking.
[20:32] And so he asked, where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? So I ask you, are our higher places of education, our elite Ivy League schools, by their wisdom, have they come and achieved and arrived at the true knowledge of God?
[21:03] No, they're going further and further from him. So that now at Harvard, the chaplain over all the chaplains, is an atheist.
[21:16] These are smart people. These are intelligent people. But that will not get you to God. Man's mind is fallen.
[21:27] It's anti-God. They're blind. They're in the dark about the most important things, God, Christ, salvation, eternal life. In fact, the statistics show that the more educated you are today, the more likely you are to not believe in the God of the Bible.
[21:45] That's Romans 1, professing themselves to be wise. They became fools. And they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
[21:57] They would rather believe a lie they love than the truth that they hate. man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God.
[22:10] They're foolishness to him. He can't understand them because the things of God are spiritually discerned. It takes the Spirit of God in a man, teaching a man to understand the things of God.
[22:24] And man without God does not have him as their teacher. Martin Lloyd Jones tells of the close relationship between two important men in 18th century Great Britain.
[22:38] Both high society men, both intelligent men given the best education, men of capable minds and great leaders. They both had the first name of William.
[22:50] William Pitt became the youngest prime minister of Great Britain at age 24. Some of you that age ready to be the next prime minister. That's quite a feat.
[23:01] He was one of the greatest that Great Britain has had, a man of great accomplishment. And his closest, one of his close friends from university days was William Wilberforce.
[23:14] And though he too was brilliant, he was more of a socialite. He was the life of the party. He loved to gamble, loved the crowd. And he too entered politics.
[23:27] a member of parliament working with his friend Pitt in government. And then one day William Wilberforce had God teach him about his need of a savior and of Jesus perfectly meeting his need.
[23:42] And he was gloriously converted. And he started walking in God's ways. And he dedicated the whole of his life to serving the Lord. And he used his influence in government to uphold the truth from that point on and was mightily used in abolishing slavery.
[24:04] A friend of John Newton's. But he remained friends with William Pitt. He remained his friendship with him and often asked him to go to church with him.
[24:15] But he always declined. And then one day he actually accepted the invitation, went to the church service with Wilberforce, who loved this preacher of the gospel.
[24:27] And as the man preached, his heart just soared to heaven and with love to Christ as the gospel was set before them and Christ was set before them. And then after the service, as they were walking out, before Wilberforce could even ask Pitt what he thought, Pitt said, you know, I tried my hardest to pay attention.
[24:53] But I don't have the foggiest idea what that man was talking about. He's an intelligent man. He's the prime minister. The best schools.
[25:06] But the natural man does not understand the things of the spirit of God. It takes the Lord teaching us his ways. if we are ever to walk in his truth.
[25:21] But our fallen mind is just the beginning of our problems that keep us from walking in the truth. Our problem isn't just that we don't get it up here, but that we don't like it.
[25:35] We don't like the truth. That's the dirty, rotten secret that our affections, our desires are also fallen and dead set against God in his ways and his truth.
[25:48] And so according to Jesus in John 3, 19 and 20, this is the verdict, he says. This is the bottom line. This is the decision that light truth has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of the light.
[26:08] Why? Because their deeds were evil and everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. And so you see, our trouble is not just our minds, but the trouble is our heart and our affections.
[26:25] By nature, we hate the light of truth. Because it exposes us. It lays us bare. It makes us naked before God and it convicts us as evildoers.
[26:37] And for all that we claim, we're not neutral toward the truth. We're truth haters. We're truth supplanters, truth suppressors, truth deniers, truth avoiders, and we have many strategies to do that with.
[26:54] The apostle Paul warned his understudy, Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4. Preach the word, he said. Be prepared in season and out of season.
[27:05] Correct, rebuke, and courage with great patience and careful instruction. Why? What's the big deal, Paul? For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.
[27:16] Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths, to lies, to stories.
[27:35] Again, they would rather believe the lie they love than the truth that they hate. It's a matter of the affections, the desires. So what drives and controls the remote control of the man looking for a preacher on TV?
[27:55] Or what drives the selection of a church if someone would go to a church? Not does he tell me what God's word says, but does he tell me what I want to hear?
[28:07] That's what Paul's warning him about. And he says they'll have no trouble finding a great number of teachers to tell them just that. King Ahab had itching ears and he was more honest about it than most are.
[28:24] You remember he wanted to go to war against Ramoth Gilead and so he invited the king of Judah, King Jehoshaphat, to come and join him. And Jehoshaphat said, well, that's all fine and good, but let's first seek the counsel of the Lord.
[28:39] No problem, says King Herod. He calls for his prophets, 400 of them. Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead or not? And they all answered, go, for the Lord will give it into the king's hand.
[28:56] There, Jehoshaphat, it's unanimous, let's go. But he sees right through the charades of these false prophets and what they're doing. and Jehoshaphat says to Ahab, is there not a prophet of the Lord from whom we may inquire?
[29:19] And in a moment of truth, King Ahab says, oh yes, there is still one prophet of the Lord from whom we may inquire, Micaiah, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me but only bad.
[29:36] I say a moment of truth because that's the truth of every one of us as we come into this world. we love to hear peace, peace when there is no peace.
[29:49] We love to hear the message you're just fine the way you are, you're wonderful, God accepts you as you are and makes no demands whatsoever that you repent, that you turn to his Savior, that you be saved in his way, nothing of that.
[30:03] There's no hell to flee, there's no God's wrath to be afraid of, there's just this wonderful God of love. And that's what King Ahab wanted to hear.
[30:16] That's what his itching ears, that's the natural man. We want teachers who will tell us what we want to hear. Job tells us, if you could hear what the wicked are saying to God by the way they live, not that they're saying this verbally, but this is what they're saying to God by the way they live, Job 1, 21, 14.
[30:39] They say to God, leave us alone. We have no desire to know your ways. No desire. You see, it's a problem of the affections. We don't desire the truth.
[30:52] We rather like the lies. I think one of the most fearful passages in the word of God is 2 Thessalonians 2, 9 through 12, where Paul's talking about the coming of the lawless one at the end of time, the man of sin, the antichrist.
[31:08] Christ. And he says that his coming will be in accordance with the work of Satan, displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.
[31:22] Now listen, they perish because they refused to love the truth. they perished because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
[31:39] For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
[31:52] Why didn't they believe the truth? Because they love their wickedness and the truth was telling them they must leave their wickedness and come to Christ. And they didn't love that message about Jesus and repenting and believing on him and being saved from their wickedness and so God gives them over to believe the lie and be condemned.
[32:18] The love of the truth. How can a God hater, a truth hater, ever love the truth? That's the problem. That's why we need more than man's teaching.
[32:29] That's why you need more than my preaching. That's why you need more than an open Bible and your own mind looking at it, your own heart responding to it. And then there's the will, not only the mind, the affections, but the will.
[32:43] And what does the will do? It follows the mind and the desires wherever they lead, rejecting the truth, ignoring it, irrelevant to me. And so they decide against the truth.
[32:58] So there it is, the mind, the desires, the will are all against God and anti-truth as the flesh wars against the spirit, wars against the things of God.
[33:12] Now that's why we need more than human teachers, as I said. We need a teacher powerful enough to overcome the prejudice of our minds, to overcome the hatred of our affections for the truth, and the stubbornness of our will to refuse the truth.
[33:29] And left to ourselves, we would never, never love the truth. We would never embrace the truth, who is Jesus, to be saved by him.
[33:40] And that's where the good news of our text meets us, you see. I've given you the bad news that you might appreciate the fact that there is someone who can teach us. can cut right through that fallen mind, that fallen desire, that fallen will.
[33:59] There's one who can teach us so effectively and powerfully that we will actually walk in his truth. We will rejoice in the truth. We will love the truth. We will walk the truth.
[34:10] We'll talk the truth. We'll live the truth. He's the Lord. And he has access to our hearts. those rotten things that we've just been looking at, our hearts.
[34:26] He's a God in Psalm 51, 6, who not only desires truth in the inward parts, but he teaches wisdom in the inmost parts.
[34:37] That's what I need. I need somebody to shove it past my ear gate and to get it into my heart and where it will control my mind and my affections and my will.
[34:49] And there is such a one. It is the Lord. And that's what God promised to do for all of his people, everyone from the greatest to the least, who are in the new covenant that is sealed and established by Jesus blood.
[35:05] For all who are trusting in Jesus. This is promised to you in the new covenant. God announced it through Jeremiah chapter 31. This is the covenant I'll make with the house of Israel after that day.
[35:19] It's not going to be like the old covenant. Men broke the old covenant. They needed something better than the old covenant. So I'll give them a new covenant in Jesus Christ. And I'll do three things.
[35:30] I'll put my law in their minds, in their minds, and write it upon their hearts. Now, you see, God didn't do that for everyone in the old covenant.
[35:43] Most of them in the old covenant didn't have the law on the inside. All they had was on tables of stone. King Ahab was in the covenant. He didn't have the law of God in his heart.
[35:57] But in the new covenant, I will write my law in their mind and put it in their mind and write it on their hearts. Second, no longer will anyone need to teach his neighbor or his brother saying, know the Lord.
[36:10] Why not? Because in the new covenant, they all will know the Lord from the least of them to the greatest. There won't be any in the new covenant except those who know the Lord personally, savingly.
[36:21] Not everyone in the old covenant, the nation of Israel, knew the Lord savingly. It was a remnant that knew him. It was an Israel within Israel, a remnant of grace, but most of them didn't know the Lord.
[36:35] Remember that word in Judges 2.10? that a whole generation grew up that knew not the Lord? They were God's covenant people.
[36:46] They didn't know the Lord, but in the new covenant, they will all know the Lord. Why? Why will they all know the Lord? Because they will all be taught by God.
[37:00] They will all be taught by God. That's what Jesus said in John 6. You heard it. He's teaching there that I'm the bread of life and whoever partakes of me, believes in me, comes to me, looks to me, will have everlasting life.
[37:19] Because I've come down from heaven to do the will of my Father, and this is his will, that of all that he's given me, I should lose none. But raise them up at the last day, and they all start complaining. They're grumbling.
[37:30] How can this man say he's come from God? We know his mom and dad. We know his family. What's he talking about? He's come down from heaven. He's come from God. God sent him.
[37:42] And Jesus says to them, stop grumbling against yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
[37:56] It is written in the prophets, they will all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.
[38:07] No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. Only he has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.
[38:20] The reason that everyone in the new covenant will know the Lord is because all of them will be taught by the Lord and taught in a way where God puts his truth in our inward parts and causes us to walk in his ways.
[38:40] Oh, they grumbled. They complained. This is a hard saying. We can't handle this. We're done. We're done with you, Jesus. And from that point on, many of them never followed him again.
[38:53] Do you want to leave too? Peter speaks up. Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We know and believe that you are the Holy One of God.
[39:11] You know what Jesus says to him on another occasion? Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven, he's been teaching you. Because no one knows that savingly and personally apart from the teaching of God to the heart.
[39:29] To know who Jesus is, has the Father showed you his Son? Has he said to your heart, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased? Has he showed you the amazing glory of his Son such that your attraction to him has brought you to him and you throw yourself upon him to save you?
[39:52] Has the Father shown you the preciousness of Jesus and his love? Has he made an amazing grace to you? Has he astonished you? in such a way that you run to him and you walk in his truth.
[40:06] It takes the Father to tell us and teach us effectively about the Son. Now in another place it's just the switch. It's the Son saying you don't know the Father because you're rejecting what I'm teaching you about him.
[40:24] Jesus was qualified to teach us about the Father. Won't you say? John 1 he's the word who was with God face to face for all eternity.
[40:37] He was in the bosom of the Father in the closest intimate way for all eternity past. And then he was made flesh and he came to give us an understanding of his Father. He is God.
[40:51] He says if you've seen me you've seen the Father. How many of you have been married to your spouse for at least 40 years? Let me see your hand. Okay. Good. You probably know each other pretty well then.
[41:02] You've been introduced and you can probably finish each other's sentences and you know what each other likes and what they don't like. What they think.
[41:16] You're probably an expert on your husband or wife. You could teach us about your spouse. How about Jesus?
[41:28] Jesus. Is he qualified to be an expert to teach us about the Father? Not 40 years but eternity past.
[41:39] Face to face with the Father loving each other pouring their hearts out to each other in that glorious fellowship of the Trinity and he's come to earth to give us an understanding of him who is true and we are in him who is true and in his son Jesus Christ.
[41:58] But they didn't believe him. You see there can be a teaching of the Son of God himself that is not the Lord coming and teaching and putting the truth into the heart.
[42:10] That's why so few followed him. All they had was the truth bouncing off of their ears but there is another teaching. There is an effectual teaching and effective teaching that penetrates into the heart and that's the good news of my text this morning.
[42:25] A penetration and a teaching that will actually make us followers of the Lord Jesus who walk in his truth. You know God has many ways to teach us the truth.
[42:43] He can get right into our minds, our hearts and our wills. You know he teaches us by affliction. We sang of it didn't we? These inward trials. He teaches us through hard knocks and adversity.
[42:58] So David can say it was good for me to be afflicted. Why David? Well that I might learn your decrees. Because you teach me. You actually teach me in a way that leaves me different.
[43:13] So it was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your ways. Because before I was afflicted I went astray. But now, now, I obey your word.
[43:27] You see he teaches us through affliction. He teaches us through failures. There's self-confident Peter. I'll follow you Lord wherever you go.
[43:38] I'm ready to die for you. Oh are you? You will deny me three times before the cock crows. Oh not I. Maybe these guys but not me. Never me. And the Lord lets him fail.
[43:50] Leaves him to his strength. His self-confidence. And down he goes three times. I don't even know the man with curses. And that Peter is changed by that.
[44:04] He weeps. He goes out and he repents. He says to his brethren afterwards clothe yourselves with humility because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
[44:19] So humble yourself under God's mighty hand that he may restore you in due time. Humility. It's an absolute attribute to learning isn't it?
[44:31] Psalm 25 good and upright is the Lord therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right. He teaches them his ways. Do you know people that are too proud to learn?
[44:46] Peter was. So God taught him through his failure. You see God has a way to even teach humility. Humility that is so important to learning. God can humble us and bring us low before him.
[45:02] Pride puts ourselves above the truth again as I said. And we sit in judgment upon God's truth and we say well this teaching about God creating all things come on that just doesn't fit with my science.
[45:16] And we disallow it. This doctrine of election that God has mercy on whom he will have mercy I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's just.
[45:28] This doctrine of hell I just can't see a God of love sending people to hell doesn't doesn't seem right to me or this this God who's sovereign over all things good and evil I don't like that.
[45:45] That means that he's the one in charge of the atrocities that I see and he rules over it and for some reason is permitting. I don't like the way you're governing my life by the way.
[45:59] You know God has an answer for that. Who are you oh man that you reply against God? Job complained about God's government of his world and his life.
[46:15] He got the same questions didn't he? Where were you Job when I made the world? And when he was done questioning Job he was on his face and he was confessing how foolish he was.
[46:33] You're God. I'm I was born yesterday. You're the eternal God. What do I know? God humbled him.
[46:45] Isaiah 40 who's understood the mind of the Lord? Who's instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult? to enlighten him? And who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?
[46:58] You see God has many ways to teach us, to humble us and teach us his way that we might walk in it. And here in our text is the humble response we need.
[47:12] Have you ever had to teach someone a job? Maybe your kids, maybe a new fellow that came to work and your job was to teach him. And as soon as you started to open your mouth and say now you need to do, I know, I know, can you teach him anything?
[47:28] Not as long as he knows everything. He needs to be humbled. He needs to be brought down. And this is it. This is it. We don't come to the word of God and I trust every time we pick up the precious book of God's truth.
[47:41] Or we hear it preached. God's trust. It will come with humility that says, teach me. I'm ignorant. My mind is still foggy and that's why David, even the regenerate David, prays, open my eyes that I might see wonderful things in your law.
[48:02] There's still enough cataracts of sin that I won't see things clearly. There's still enough prejudice in me toward evil that I won't see things clearly. So open my eyes, Lord, enlighten the eyes of my heart that I might see you as you really are and receive your truth.
[48:20] That's the humble cry. Teach me. Teach me. I'm ignorant. I have affections that are roaming. I have a will that's stubborn. You come and teach me in such a way that I will walk in your truth.
[48:35] And that's the glory of the gospel that there is such a teacher and he is able to put the truth inside us. And so Lydia is down by the riverside and Paul's there and he's preaching to a little group of ladies and Paul's teaching but somebody else is teaching.
[48:55] And the Bible says that Lydia believed on the Lord and was baptized. But it also tells us why she believed. It was because the Lord opened her heart to receive the teaching.
[49:09] there was more than Paul preaching at that riverside. God himself was the teacher opening the heart, putting his truth into the heart.
[49:22] A ship builder went to George Whitfield after hearing him preach and said, you know, while the preacher is preaching, I'm usually building a ship.
[49:34] and I found that in the length of my pastor's sermons, I can get the whole ship built in my mind. But this morning I wasn't able to lay the first board.
[49:48] You see, God met him. God convicted him of himself, of his sin, of his need for Savior and the beauty of this Lord Jesus who welcomes us.
[50:00] You know, he says, come to me. He says, learn from me. Just come from me and learn from me. I'll teach you.
[50:12] And who am I? I'm gentle and lowly. You don't need to be afraid. Some teachers, you need to be afraid of what they might teach you. You come to me and you learn from me.
[50:23] I'm gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your soul. Well, let's pray and seek the Lord.
[50:36] We've heard again, oh Lord, your invitation and we're thankful that with that invitation we know that you are present. We pray you would by your spirit send it home to hearts this morning that don't know you and cause their minds to see things straight and cause their hearts to be changed whereby they would love you and your ways and move their wills that they might be made willing in the day of your power.
[51:10] And thank you for your word. Thank you for your son who is the truth. Thank you that you, Lord Jesus, welcome us to put our neck in the yoke with you and to learn from you and how gentle and lowly you are to us.
[51:24] We give you thanks. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.