Turn your Bibles to John chapter 1, where our focus today will be on verses 29-31. John chapter 1, verses 29-31 will be our focus. Last week we began to look at the Apostles' account of the testimony of John the Baptist. And we focused our attention especially upon what we could learn from him about how to be good witnesses for Christ. This week I want to continue with that theme, as John does here, I think, with his account of the Baptist teaching, and we'll be also dealing with that next week. as we look at the following verses. But today, our focus will be just on verses 29 through 31. I'm going to back up and read, however, all the way to verse 19. That's where the testimony of John begins to really be focused on. Beginning in verse 19 we read, Now this is the testimony of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you? He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, What then? Are you Elijah? And he said, I am not. Are you the prophet? And he answered, No. Then they said to him, Who are you that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself? And he said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the path of the Lord. There he was citing Isaiah 40, as you recall from last week. And that's important because I think Isaiah, the prophecies of Isaiah may still be in his mind the next day when he talks to them a little bit more about his role. And so he says, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. Now those who were sent were from the Pharisees, and they asked him, saying, Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? John answered them, saying, I baptize with water, but there stands one among you whom you do not know. It is he who, coming after me, is preferred before me, or some translations may say, ranks higher than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to lose. These things were done in Bethabara beyond the Jordan where John was baptizing. The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, after me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me. I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel. Therefore, I came baptizing with water." And in the following verses, he communicates to them, as we'll see next week, how it is he came to know that Jesus was the Messiah. He didn't know him, but he came to know that, and that was in connection with Jesus' baptism, which means that when he sees Jesus coming to him now, it's sometime after he first met Jesus at Jesus' baptism. And he may have met Jesus before that, they were related. But he already knew he was the Messiah. from before at his baptism. And so Jesus has gone away and come back. Maybe he's gone and spent his 40 days in the wilderness and then come back, back to where he was baptized. And at this point, John points him out as the Messiah. But that seems to be something like that. If we can put the events together, it seems to be going on here. Having said that, I'll try to give us the context, literarily here, and maybe historically, the events of Jesus' life here. Let's pray, and ask the Lord for His guidance. Holy Father, we do need You so desperately, each and every day. We're reminded through Pastor Dennis' teaching in Isaiah this morning, by the example of Isaiah, who said, I will wait on the Lord, and I and my family are assigned to this remnant in Judah that You are in control. You can be trusted. And Lord, you've called us to be like a sign to the world around us, this tumultuous world that you can be trusted, that we can wait on you. So I do pray, Lord, that you would help each one of us and our families to be that kind of sign to our generation of your faithfulness, that we would live up to the name of this church, Emmanuel, God with us, that we would show people we really believe that. It's not just a name we pick because it's in the Bible. We really believe that Christ came to this earth as God with us, died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead. And we trust that you are with us every day. Help us, Lord, to be a testimony of that to a lost and dying world. To that end, Lord, I pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear. what you want us to know from your word today, please speak to us. Please fill us with your spirit and with understanding, we pray, that we might become more like Christ, that you might be more fully glorified in our lives. We ask all of these things in the name of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Perhaps one of the most influential and popular books among Christians in the latter half of the 20th century and even into this century has been a book by T.S. Lewis called Mere Christianity. How many people have heard of at least that book, Mere Christianity? How many of you have read it? A number of you have read it. It's considered a classic, sort of apologetic, written toward really unbelievers to help them understand what basic Christianity is and to try to convince them that it's a reasonable faith to follow and so forth. And Lewis tries to set forth what he calls mere Christianity, and by that he means that Christianity is stripped down to the basics. What is it that the unbeliever really has to think about what Christianity is if he's going to be saved? And I would like to point out something about that book this morning that I think a lot of Christians miss about it. And it's going to set up one of the themes of the text this morning, which is why I want to do it. Here's what C.S. Lewis says about the atoning work of Christ in that book, He writes, and now, what was the purpose of it all? What did he, referred to Jesus, come to do? Well, to teach, of course, but as soon as you look into the New Testament or any other Christian writing, you will find they're constantly talking about something different, about his death and his coming to life again. It is obvious that Christians think the chief point of the story lies here. They think the main thing he came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed. Now before I became a Christian, I was under the impression that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of this dying was. According to that theory, God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the great rebel. He seems to have Satan in mind there. But, he says, Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to. In other words, it still sounds kind of immoral and silly to me, just not quite so immoral and silly as it used to sound. Betty says, that is not the point I want to make. Well, I got to tell you, I wish you hadn't made it then. What I came to see later on was that neither this theory nor any other is Christianity. The central Christian belief is that Christ's death was somehow, has somehow, put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many different theories have been held as to how it works. What all Christians are agreed on is that it does work. I have to wonder, when he speaks of what all Christians are agreed on, how he defines what a Christian is, especially since he seems to be fuzzy at best on how to view the atonement. Somehow it worked, but... And so the Bible doesn't really say anything about how it worked. And I bring up this example for a reason. Even someone so influential, and helpful in leading, I think, many people to embrace Christ over the years. Even someone such as C.S. Lewis, that's revered by many evangelical Christians, can be really wrong on a really crucial point of doctrine. He treats the substitutionary atonement of Christ as though it's kind of immoral and silly, this theory of the atonement. And you can kind of take or leave it anyway if you want to believe in Jesus. And I would like to say to you this morning that I think if John the Baptist were here, he would disagree vehemently with C.S. Lewis about that. And I know for sure that the apostles would. And I want to help you to see this morning that this and several other crucial concepts of the Christian faith that have been under attack in quote-unquote evangelical Christianity these days shouldn't be. And that this idea of the substitutionary atonement is at the core of the Christian faith. and what the Bible has to say about what Jesus did. And I think John the Baptist testified to that very thing. Now, before I move on to that, let me say, I'm not saying don't read Mere Christianity. There's much good to be found in that book. I am saying, be careful when you read books like this. Eat the meat that spit out those terrible bones that are in there. And if you are tempted to come away when you read a book like that, thinking that the idea of substitution substitutionary atonement is just a little bit silly, perhaps a little immoral, then I would say don't read it, burn it. I think John the Baptist might agree with me. Let's look at the first of three things he testified about in this passage that I think are important for us to remember in our testimony as well. One, John testified that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He testified that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. My point is right there in verse 29. The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, or look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now it's safe to assume an Old Testament background for what John is saying here, but scholars have debated what precise passage he may have had in mind, or perhaps even if he just meant to refer to the entire Old Testament sacrificial system as a whole, as kind of foreshadowing the atoning work of Christ, which it did. Kent Hughes seems to hold to the latter perspective when he mentions at least three Old Testament passages, which he sees as kind of combining to provide the proper background for John's declaration here. Here's what he writes, for centuries Israel's consciousness has been programmed with the idea of the sacrificial lamb. with John's statement, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, their Jewish minds went as far back as Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, when Isaac said, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the Lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham replied, God Himself will provide the Lamb for the burnt offering, my son. John's heroes undoubtedly also thought of the Passover lamb, the application of its blood over the door, and those beautiful phrases from Isaiah 53, verses 6 and 7. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Now, what's that if it's not substitutionary atonement? Our sins were laid on Him. He died then in our place as a substitute. That's what all those sacrifices in the Old Testament, that was the concept behind them. That's what they pointed to. What Jesus would do as a substitutionary atonement. It was prophesied in Isaiah 53 that He would do this very thing. And He's referred to as being like a lamb there. In the next verse, He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb. to the slaughter. And as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth." It's interesting that in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, that was the common Bible of the Jews, many of them, most of them, in that day, the same word for lamb is used there in Isaiah 53, as John uses here when he says, Behold the Lamb of God, meaning this lamb is the lamb God himself provides. who takes away the sin of the world." Now, what does John mean when he says he takes away the sin of the world? I mean, John doesn't specify how, does he? But what else could he mean, alluding to this Old Testament prophecy, I believe, but that he takes away the sin of the world by dying in our place? God having placed all our iniquities on him. He is, after all, a Jew. He did just the day before quote Isaiah as the basis for saying he was the forerunner of Christ. Well, the Christ he's the forerunner of, from Isaiah 40, is the Christ that is spoken of in Isaiah 53, who has all of our iniquities laid on Him, who dies in our place as our substitute, like a lamb. this one being provided by God himself. This man turns out to be, as John will say in the verses that follow, the Son of God. So I would put to you that substitutionary atonement is crucial to our understanding of who Jesus is. It's not just some theory concocted by creative theologians who have nothing better to do with their time but to come up with new ways of talking about what Jesus did. This didn't come from the mind of man. So you can take it or leave it, and you can view it as a silly thing and maybe a little bit immoral if you want to. This is central to the Christian faith, this idea. Now we may not understand it, And it may seem silly and foolish and maybe immoral to a worldly thinker, as it did to C.S. Lewis at least before he became a Christian, and a little bit even so afterwards apparently, but since when do we in our human reason have any idea of what's really moral or wise anyway? We only know what truly is moral or is truly wise because God revealed it to us. The God of all wisdom. The omniscient one. How dare we think that what he reveals at the core of our faith, a substitutionary atonement, that it is immoral or silly. If we think it is, it only shows that our minds have not yet been renewed by the word of God, as they should be. Now, I focused on that very strongly for a reason. Not only is it crucial to our faith, it's crucial to our testimony of who Jesus is, and it will be opposed by many people out there. It does seem silly and immoral to the world. They have no idea what is wise or moral to begin with. Or they'd be believing in God like they should. They'd be trusting in Christ already. So the application here to us is pretty obvious, isn't it? There's a lamb that God has provided, the Lord Jesus Christ. We have to tell the world about this Lamb who died for our sins. We should never forget that we're saved then only by the grace of God because of His sovereign action in giving His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. He did this. We didn't desert it. He laid on Him the iniquities of us all. Jesus willingly offered himself as that sacrifice. He says, later in John it's recorded, no man takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down and to take it up again. He made it very clear. What's going to happen to me? I want this to happen. I want to die on the cross for the sheep. I want to give my life. He wanted to be that wrath-ending sacrifice, to have all of our sins placed upon Him. However grievous or horrible a thing it was that He faced, when He wanted that, He wanted it. And we'll be praising Him for this very thing throughout eternity, even as I believe He's already being praised. Now, I think we get a glimpse of this in Revelation. In Revelation, for example, chapter 5, verses 11 through 13, we read, Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. get the impression he'd have kept on going if his vocabulary weren't so limited, right? And every creature which is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory of power be to him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever. So not only should This be a key aspect of our testimony, this idea of a substitutionary atonement. Jesus is our substitute, died on the cross in our place for our sins. It is something that should move us to praise him for what he's done. We should have the same kind of devotion and enthusiasm in our witness to this truth that the Lamb was slain for our sins as we read about in Revelation. as John had when he exclaimed, Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Do you get the impression he said that in a humdrum fashion? Oh, by the way, this guy kind of takes away the sin of the world. No, you get the idea that he's enthusiastic about this. This is what his life is about, pointing this Jesus out. There's a real sense in which that's what our life is about too. Isn't there? We've been given a great commission. And we should have enthusiasm, excitement, joy in preaching what the world views as a foolish, silly, maybe a little bit immoral idea. And in doing so, we should expect that they will mock us. We will encounter hostility and opposition, just as John the Baptist did. But we can't let go of this. This is central to the gospel message. Paul certainly thought so. The apostles certainly preached it as such. Just think of one example in 2 Corinthians 5, 20 and 21, where Paul says, now then we are ambassadors for Christ. He's talking about what gospel ministry consists of here. As though God were pleading through us, he says, we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God, for He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. Substitutionary atonement. That's how reconciliation comes to us. That, he says, we might become the righteousness of God in Him. There's that happy exchange. All our sin is imputed to Him. Through faith in what he's done, his righteousness is credited to us. There can be no salvation then apart from the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ for our sins. And Paul summarized gospel preaching as that very message. So let's be willing to take a stand for that, huh? Let's not shy away from declaring that truth. And let's recognize that God ought to be praised for what people think is so foolish. The second thing that John testifies to here, and this is the second time we have his testimony about this in John chapter 1, is that Jesus is the preeminent and preexistent one. It's another way of saying that in John's mind Jesus was God. It's in verse 30. This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who is preferred before me, or you could say ranks higher than me, for he was existing before me. We already have him saying this in chapter 1 verse 15, where we read, John bore witness of him and cried out, saying, This was he of whom I said. He who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was existing before me." In other words, Jesus is pre-existent, and he deserves the highest place. It's pre-eminent. So, why does John the Baptist repeat this? I have to assume that he does so to emphasize it. He wants everyone to see that these concepts are important. He doesn't want us to lose sight of the preeminence and preexistence of Christ, and therefore the deity of Christ. He will, after all, call him the Son of God in verse 34. We'll focus on that next week. And combining that with this statement clearly we have in the mind of John the Baptist that Jesus is God, and something of what that means. If he's God, he's eternally existent. He exists before any of us. And seeing as he was born as a man, and the incarnation happened after John was born, for John to say this means he existed before I was born, and before he was born in human flesh. That's the pre-existence and deity of Christ. And that's why he ranks higher than John. He ranks higher than everyone. Because God ranks higher than everyone. He wants us to know that. It also reminds us of how focused John was on Christ rather than on himself. He didn't want anybody to give him any kind of accolades that he thought belonged to God, to Christ. His whole life was about pointing to Jesus. And as we saw last week, he's a very good example for us in that. I would also say, then, that he's a good example of preaching the Lordship of Christ. If Christ is God, and he deserves the highest rank, he's Lord, is he not? And Lord of all. He's the Creator, as a matter of fact. The apostles later came to recognize this profoundly. They may have recognized it, as we'll see in John 1, some at first, but they didn't grasp fully what that really meant until later. We have the account of doubting Thomas later in John, where he really comes to have a really profound understanding of what it means that Jesus is this preeminent one. Later in John 20, verses 25 through 28, we're read that the other disciples therefore said to him, we have seen the Lord. So he said to them, unless I see in his hand the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. He's not believing Jesus really rose from the dead here. Poor Thomas. This is a bad day for him. It's one of the worst days of his life and one of the best days of his life, as it turns out. After eight days, his disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them, and then Jesus came, the doors being shut. He sort of miraculously appeared in there somehow. And he stood in their midst and said, Peace to you. And then he said to Thomas, he'd been listening, because God is always listening. Reach your finger here and look at my hands and reach your hand here and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing." And then Thomas reached out and put his hands in there like he said he was going to do. That's not what the next verse says. He didn't have to. He'd seen it with his own eyes. Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God. That should be our response. to Jesus, always, my Lord and my God. The apostles also preach this all-important theme as part of faithful gospel proclamation later on. For example, I'll give you one example from the preaching of Peter in Acts 2. In Acts 2, verses 32 through 36, we read, This Jesus God raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he poured out this which you now see and hear." Because he's preaching on the day of Pentecost, explaining how the Holy Spirit came upon them. And then he says, "...for David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself, the Lord said to my Lord, send at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool." Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." I would say that the concept of the Lordship of Christ is right there in John the Baptist's witness to him as a preeminent and preexistent one. This is what the disciples came to fully grasp later on as Thomas's example shows us, and this is what they preached about Jesus in the early church. But I emphasize this the way that I do because even this truth is being de-emphasized today. Not only is the substitutionary atonement falling on hard times among a lot of people who profess to be Christian, but so is this concept of the lordship of Christ as the one who is both God and man. In fact, there are some who say that we really don't need to have an understanding of Jesus as Lord and what that means when we come to Him as Savior. That you can kind of receive Christ as Savior from your sins, but the idea of submitting to Him as Lord, you know, that may or may not happen. But I mean, you're saved. Kind of like you have your fire insurance and you're saved and you're going to go to heaven, but you may never really become a disciple who's really submitted to Him as Lord. You may never even truly understand that. Does that sound at all like what John the Baptist thought? Or Thomas? Or Peter? He was preaching to an unbelieving crowd who was witnessing this great eschatological fulfillment of prophecy before their very eyes. And he said to them immediately, you must know that Jesus is Lord. And by that, he meant God. He meant the one you submit to, you surrender to. I tell you, if people are preaching a Jesus who is Savior but who is not Lord, they are not preaching the Jesus of the Bible. There is no other Jesus but the one who is Lord, for whom we must bow the knee. And that's why repentance is so important. See, the reason people want to de-emphasize His Lordship is they want to de-emphasize repentance. But that's the third thing that I want to show you about John the Baptist's testimony. He testified that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and that he is this preeminent and preexistent one. Therefore, he is God and Master and Lord. Conceptually, that's what we must say. But thirdly, he testified about the need for repentance in order to receive Christ. Now, where do I get this in this passage? Well, I think John presupposes that we understand, John the Apostle that is, when he mentions the baptismal ministry of John the Baptist. In verse 31, John the Baptist says, I did not know him. Earlier, the day before, he had said, there's one among you whom you do not know. Now he's saying, I confess, I didn't know him either. Not at first. Then he'll go on, as we'll see next, we can point out, as I said earlier, how he came to know who he was. God had a sign that he gave John, so he'd know exactly who Jesus was. He says, I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel. Therefore, he's saying, this is the reason that he's going to be revealed to Israel, because he's the forerunner. He cited Isaiah 40, remember, about his ministry. See, this is the reason I came baptizing with water. Now, as I pointed out earlier, given that John the Baptist was a relative of Jesus, I don't think we need to assume that he'd never met him before. When he says, I didn't know him, he probably means, in this context, just that he didn't know that he was the Messiah. He didn't know him as the Messiah. He didn't know him as this preexistent and preeminent one, who this one was going to be yet, until God pointed it out to him. that he knew all along it was his role to point this person out at some point. And he indicates that this is the reason that he came baptizing with water. But why should his ministry of baptism be necessary as a precursor to the revelation of the Messiah to the people of Israel? What has baptizing people got to do with preparing their hearts to hear about and receive the Messiah? Well, I think The Apostle John assumes his readers already know. Throughout this account, he presupposes a knowledge of at least one, maybe all, of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Because they'd all been written many years before he wrote his gospel. I think he's assuming a knowledge of John the Baptist's ministry. He's assuming a knowledge of what had already been revealed about his ministry. And so I want to just highlight for you what one of those gospel writers says. And I think that John is presupposing that we know. so that we'll understand what it means when John the Baptist says, therefore I came baptizing with water. I knew that he was going to be revealed to Israel, that's the reason for my ministry, and that's the reason for my baptismal ministry. Well, how is it that that ministry prepares people? How does being dipped in water prepare you for Jesus? You hear about it in John's ministry. Well, it says how. For example, in Mark 1, I'll read verses 1 through 5 of Mark 1. Well, Mark says, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophets, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you. There's the prophecy from Isaiah. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance. for remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea and those from Jerusalem went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins." In other words, John's ministry as the forerunner of Christ was to help prepare the people's hearts to receive him by leading them to repent of their sins. He was trying to help Israel recognize that they're all sinners. who need to turn from their sins. Because to receive Christ, you've got to recognize you're a sinner and be willing to turn from your sins. To confess your sins. I would put to you, it wasn't just true of John the Baptist's ministry. It was true of the apostles' ministry later on that this was the case. They saw this idea of repentance in coming to Christ as essential as well. That we're not ready to receive Him unless we recognize we're sinners and need therefore to repent of, to turn away from our sins, to desire to be forgiven and change. That's what repentance is. I'll give you another example from the apostles' preaching. Again, from the preaching of Peter in Acts 3. In Acts 3, verses 18-20, Peter said that those things which God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets, that the Christ would suffer, he is thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and be converted, he preached, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ, who has preached to you before. What's he telling these people? You can't have Christ without repentance. You've got to see you're a sinner and you've got to want to turn from your sins. Not just be forgiven of them. There are some people who view salvation that way. I mentioned them earlier. They want to separate the idea of Lordship from Savior and Christ because they want to say repentance has nothing to do with being saved. If you believe that your sins are forgiven in Christ, that's it. But you know, you can want to have your sins forgiven and never really want to turn from them. People do that all the time. Well, if I can have my sins forgiven forever and be right with God, and I have to actually quit sinning, I'll take that deal every time, people would say. Simple man wants a deal like that. And there's a gospel like that being preached, a false gospel, all across our land. John the Baptist would have had none of that. And neither would Peter. Neither would Paul. None of the apostles would. To them, the idea that you could trust in Christ as your Savior and not repent of your sins in doing so was ludicrous. And so we have a strong encouragement here. Remember when Peter went to Cornelius' house and he preached for the first time to Agenda on purpose? He had to give an account of what he'd done to the church in Jerusalem. We're told in Acts 11.18 what the Jerusalem church thought when they heard these things. They became silent and they worked by God saying, then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life. In other words, we know when God saves someone and gives them life in Christ, He gives them repentance. He leads them to repentance. That's how you know the work of God. That's what convinced them that what had happened to Cornelius and his family was real. Not just that they had received the Spirit, which was very convincing to Peter, and I'm sure to them, but in the end, what did they say? They repented. They saw they were sinners. God did that. That has to be real. When that happens, so not only was it a key to their message, it was a key in their understanding who was saved. We've got people running all over our land who claim to be Christians and never repent. That's not the work of God when that happens. When God saves someone, as I like to say, He does it right. He changes them. Of course, this means for us that we too must repent of our sins if we're going to be ready to receive Christ and the forgiveness of sins that He will offer us through his atoning work, and does offer us. We have to repent. After all, how can we say that we're truly sorry for our sins? How can we say that we genuinely desire forgiveness of the sins we've committed without repenting of having sinned? This also means that we have to be very careful that we don't fail to communicate the necessity of repentance to others as well, however unpopular this may be. As I've already said, there are many teachers out there who say that repentance has nothing to do with salvation. They either redefine repentance, well you have to repent, but it doesn't mean turn from your sins. Or they say, well it means turning from your sins, but you just don't have to do it. Probably, the heretic Zayn Hodges is probably the one who pushes that latter view the most. Though he sounds very convincing when he does it. Listen to what he says in a book called Absolutely Free. Faith alone, he says, not repentance and faith, is the sole condition for justification in eternal life. He goes on to assert that there can be no compromise on this point if we wish to preserve and to proclaim the biblical truth of sola fidei, which means faith alone. To make repentance a condition for eternal salvation is nothing less than a regression toward Roman Catholic dogma. There you have it, Peter was a Roman Catholic, a classic Catholic, even before Catholics existed, according to this guy. Because he said repent and be converted, if you want to know Jesus. At first, what Hodges says sounds quite biblical and orthodox, doesn't it? After all, don't we all want to preserve the true gospel that salvation is by grace through faith alone, apart from works? Of course we do, don't we? But the problem with Hodge's view here is that it avoids the possibility that a biblical understanding of faith includes and even presupposes repentance. That therefore when the apostles spoke of faith alone, they had in mind a repentant faith. So the issue isn't whether it's faith alone, it's how you define faith. The idea that you can have faith without repentance in the eyes of the apostles was, again, ludicrous. That's why sometimes they said to believe, and sometimes they said to repent. Because for them, you're really saying the same thing. You can't really repent without believing. And you can't really believe without repenting. None of what you have is a biblical understanding of believing in Christ, trusting in Him. See, in the Bible, faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. There is no true repentance without faith. There is no true faith without repentance. And I've taken all the time to focus on this this morning, because I think when he said, therefore, that's why I came baptizing with water. It wasn't just dumping people in water that mattered. It was repentance that mattered. That's what his baptism was about. And it still matters. It was fundamental to being prepared to receive Christ then, and it is now. At one's heart, be repentant. In fact, that's how you can tell who people who have really been saved are. They don't just say they believe in Jesus so they can go to heaven and not have to die and go to hell. And then, you know, sin all they want, knowing they get to be forgiven. It doesn't matter if their life changes to them at all. Well, there is no such animal in the Bible who's a true Christian. You tell who they are by seeing if they repented. They may still sin, but they don't like it. And they're trying not to, and they're asking God by His grace to continue to change them. That's what repentance means. And so, we've come to the end of our study. having been reminded anew, I hope, of the centrality of the deity and lordship of Christ to the Christian faith, having been reminded as well of the centrality and importance of a proper view of the substitutionary atonement of Christ and the true meaning of saving faith in Him. And I hope our study will result in such saving faith in those here today who may not yet have come to know Christ. Perhaps there are one or more here who believe these things I said before. And they're calling themselves a Christian, but their life has not changed at all. And they haven't particularly cared about it. So how they could sit under my teaching for very long and be that way is shocking to me. But we all know how hard the human heart can be, don't we? The human heart is a heart that thinks substitutionary atonement is sinful and immoral. That's how hard the human heart can be. But I hope, in my job as the forerunner of Christ, to the extent that it can be paralleled with that of John, and your job is that, that as we share these truths from Scripture, we'll see hearts change too. Just like Jesus' disciples were changed, not through John, but through what he preached, the Word of God. And I hope As we go forth this morning, we'll be more fully resolved by the example of John, to preach the truth, come what may. To communicate these truths to others, even though they find them distasteful, so often. Silly. Something to be mocked. There will be those, though, in whom the Spirit of God is at work, who have been taught of the Father, who will hear these things and believe. Let's pray. Holy Father, I hope that once again I try to be faithful to your Word and bring out of it the application that I think fits. I think it's from this passage, from what we understand about John's ministry, but it also fits our context. The kinds of errors we see creeping into the church really are not new. There is nothing new under the sun. Sinful men have always tried to find a way to dilute the gospel and its demands of us. They don't like a demanding gospel. A gospel that says you really have to trust Christ and turn from your sins. to be saved. But Lord, we know it says it in your word. Lord, I pray that you'll strengthen us to be faithful to true gospel proclamation in our lives. And Lord, do for us what you did for John and the early apostles. You gave them boldness to speak. You filled them with your Spirit and gave them boldness to speak. Lord, we need this boldness that only your Spirit can give. Please give it to us, I pray. In the name of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, I ask it. Amen.