Amen. All right, well, if you have your copy of God's word while you remain standing, you can just grab it and open it up to John chapter three. John chapter three, beginning in verse 31, and we'll continue to the end. of the chapter. This will be our last message in John three, God willing next Lord's day, we will be in John four. And I think just because of the nature of the narrative of John chapter four, that'll go a lot faster than the first three chapters of John went for us. So John chapter three, beginning in verse 31, this is the word of the Lord. He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the spirit without measure. The father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Let us pray. God, we praise you for your goodness in sending one from heaven, yourself, Lord, to give us the words of God. Lord, we thank you for the salvation brought to us in Jesus Christ, and we pray that right now that same spirit that you gave to Christ without measure would fill us anew, would give us a fresh sense of your love, of your truth, of what your word would have us believe and know and do. God, we thank you for your gospel. Lord, we pray right now that you would just speak straight to each heart in the sanctuary. God, that you would guide me, that I would only speak your truth, that I would only reflect your word, God, and that I would not be preaching myself. God, prevent me from saying anything contrary to your gospel, and bless us now as we approach the sermon. In Christ's name, amen. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we could have cut this text into a few sermons, to be honest, but I did not want to spend the first several years of King's Cross in the Gospel of John. So you have to make decisions at some point. Donald Gray Barnhouse preached for 12 years through Romans, and then he didn't even get done. He died. And that's why he wasn't able to finish Romans. I don't even know how long. he would have continued in Rome. And Martin Lloyd-Jones also took 12 years. He got through the entire epistle, but my goal is not to do that. Neither is my goal when I'm preparing our messages and planning how we should approach God's Word to run through it lightning fast. I talked to a pastor once and he said he was going to preach through Ephesians and He was excited to take a slow look at some of the passages. And I said, do you think you'll be able to get it done in a year? He said, a year? I said, I'm going to get it done in six weeks. I thought, oh, well, we're clearly different types of preachers. No approach is necessarily right or wrong. But just as a heads up, we won't be here 12 years, but I've been grateful that we've all, I think, really enjoyed and grown in walking slowly through these first few chapters of John. Well, the first thing I want to emphasize from our text today, the first thing that our text in fact is emphasizing today, is the superiority of Jesus over John, and indeed over everything in all of creation. Jesus is superior to John the Baptist, and indeed he is superior to everything and everyone in all of creation. God's word here in John 3 beginning in verse 1 tells us that he who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way, but he who comes from heaven is above all. This proclamation of the superiority of Christ has already been made abundantly clear by John the Baptist in his ministry in the wilderness. But he wants to make extra sure his disciples do not miss it. Because remember what we looked at previously, just last week, was that John's disciples are a little upset that Jesus is getting more popularity, we might say, that he's getting bigger crowds, that people are coming to Jesus to be baptized. So John's disciples still aren't quite getting that Jesus is superior. So John wants to make sure they do not miss it. He goes into some detail here. I've read before that when you're trying to help a large group of people really get a message, that you should keep in mind two sevens. Number one, you have to tell them what they need to know at least seven times. I don't know where, you know, what studies have been done, but I've read this a number of places. If you want people to know something, you have to tell them seven times. And the number two, you have to explain it to the large group as if they were all about seven years old. Now, this particular rule of sevens, this is just a modern business and sales approach. I don't know how precise it really is, like I said, but I think the sentiment behind this method of communicating was very much a part of John the Baptist's preaching as well as Jesus's preaching. John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, that's John the Evangelist, remember, that's the apostle who wrote this gospel, both of them have been repeating themselves quite a bit in these first three chapters that we've been working through. But they haven't just repeated the exact same words and phrases over and over and over, they've taken care to break things down for their listeners, to explain things, to say things different ways so that their followers don't have any excuse to not understand what they're talking about. So here, John says in John 3, verse 31, that the bridegroom comes from above. And because he's from above, he is therefore above all. And then in the same verse, he says, just to make sure his hearers understand, he says, when I say from above, what I really mean is from heaven. He who comes from heaven is above all. Jesus comes from heaven. And because of that fact, he is categorically above everyone and everything on earth. No one on earth can compete with someone from heaven. And Jesus is a real man though. It's not like Jesus is an angel or some type of spirit being. Jesus is just as much a real human being as you and I are. But not only is Jesus a man, as you know, he is also God. And because of that, because he is God, he outranks everyone on earth by an infinite degree. Think of King Charles III with his pomp and circumstance. King Charles III and the lowliest prisoner in the smallest commonwealth nation are far, far closer to each other in their standing in this world than Jesus and John the Baptist were. And remember, John the Baptist is the one who Jesus would go on to say, there is not a single person born of woman greater than he. that He is one of the greatest men who has ever walked the face of the earth or who ever will walk the face of the earth. And Christ has done only from heaven. He is the Sovereign Lord of Heaven and the Sovereign Lord of Earth. He is on the throne of David. He is at the right hand, as we confess each week, of God the Father Almighty. And as Paul says in Ephesians, he is far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. And God has put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. And this wonderful, high, superior, exalted Jesus, John tells us in verse 32 of our text today, he bears witness to what he has seen and heard. So he's obviously the greatest authority in general. He's also the greatest authority to tell us about heaven. He is infallible. He cannot lead anyone astray. Yet no one received his testimony. Whoever does receive his testimony, John tells us, sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the spirit without measure. The father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. So John tells us here that Jesus bears witness or testifies to what he has seen and heard, and that he utters the very words of God. Just like how John in these first three chapters of the gospel says several times and in several ways that Jesus is far above everyone, so also John and Jesus both have already said here that Jesus is the true witness who reveals God to us. John 1.18 says, no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him. No, only Jesus has been with God and can make him known infallibly. And Jesus says in John 3, 11 through 13, truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man. So Jesus is the one who can truly tell us about God. And he's the one who can in fact enable us to believe what he says and to trust in him. So what we're learning here in these last few verses of John chapter three, none of this is new information. None of this is brand new to the disciples, and I hope none of it is new to us. John is just summarizing and clarifying what we've already been over. First, he emphasizes that Jesus is superior. He's higher. He's exalted. And second here, we see John emphasizing that Jesus utters the Word of God and has been given the Spirit of God without measure. It isn't as clear here in the ESV that I'm reading or in most of the modern versions that I checked, but the King James Version, I think, more helpfully renders verse 34 of our text. This is what the KJV says. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God. For God giveth not the spirit by measure unto him. So our modern Bibles don't say unto him. The translators of the King James Version, they supplied those words. They're not in the original text, but they supplied those words unto him to make the truth of the text more clear in English. If we all were fluent in Greek, we would have a lot of these little translational ambiguities cleared up, but every translator has to make decisions at times. And unto Him is very helpful here. It's not just to anyone that God gives the Spirit without measure. That's not a blanket statement to all who trust in Christ. It is to the Son of God who is God Himself. Everyone else, everyone else gets a measure of the Spirit. As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians, we, God's adopted children, we know in part and we prophesy in part. Well, that's because we don't have the full unmeasured gift of the Spirit in the same way that Christ did. When we were born again, we received the same exact Spirit that Jesus received. It's not two different Spirits. We all have the Spirit of God within us if we are Christ's by faith. The same spirit, the Bible tells us, that raised Christ Jesus from the dead lives in each and every one of his children. But we only receive this spirit in measure, or partly, or in a comparatively small degree. But Jesus, God's word here tells us, receives the spirit without measure. When I was first thinking about God's giving of the Spirit in an unmeasured way, I thought to myself, this seems confusing to me. It seems like a strange way to put it. I didn't understand it. I thought God is all-knowing, God is all-powerful, God's in control of everything, but unmeasured or without measure, at first that sounded to my ears like kind of careless. unmeasured, why wouldn't you measure something? Like someone, like maybe some of our children have made recipes before and you just start pouring and dumping flour and sugar into the dough and you're not measuring anything. Sounds careless. It can be fun when you're making a recipe in the kitchen, but that doesn't sound like how God would act. God is careful. He's abundant, but he's careful. And I looked up, in Greek the word just means like it means here, without measure. And I looked up in the dictionary, the English dictionary, to see what it had to say. Under unmeasured, it listed two words. It said limitless and immense. Limitless and immense. And I thought about, I thought back to when I wrestled in high school, actually. And when it came time for a match or a tournament that we were getting ready for, you really had to watch your weight very closely. Because if you're too heavy in wrestling for your particular weight class, you don't get to wrestle and your team loses a bunch of points. And we would weigh ourselves every single day on the wrestling team. And when you got close to your weight limit, I mean, guys would just start doing ridiculous things to try to lose the weight and just absurd. They would count every single calorie they possibly could count. People would literally stand on the scale with like a small portion of food to see how much weight the food would add if they ate it. And my training partner, when he was really trying to lose weight and he was just down to the wire, but he was just, I mean, dead feeling tired and he had to have something to drink. I still have this image in my mind, I can see him sitting next to me doing this. What he would do is he would take a bottle of water, he would open up the bottle of water, and he would pour a little bit of water into the bottle cap, and then he'd drink out of the bottle cap. And it's ridiculous, but the reason he did it is because he knew if he drank straight from the bottle, he would not have control to stop, that he would not measure, he would not know how much he was drinking, he would drink too much, it would not be measured out like he needed it. So you drink that little sip out of the bottle cap. We were obsessed, a bunch of 16 year old boys, obsessed with measuring things, measuring our way. And in our case, especially, we were measuring things so that we might limit ourselves appropriately. And that's the meaning of measure here is to limit, to limit, to not exceed. You don't wanna take in too much if you're measuring something. But the Father here, God the Father, He's taking the exact opposite approach of that with His Son. He does not limit anything, and He doesn't measure anything, because He gives all of Himself to His Son. There is no holding back, no partial amount, nothing is left over, pours everything into His Son. He gives the Spirit limitlessly, without measure. And as Paul says in Colossians 2, in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Christ has the Spirit without measure because He and the Father and the Spirit Himself are one, holy, undivided, and indivisible being. As verse 35 of our text today says, the father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. He has not deprived his son of anything. And this giving of the spirit, it was not something that happened at one particular moment in time. It wasn't like the son was ever lacking in the spirit or ever didn't have the spirit. Remember John 1.1, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Jesus was always God. He is eternally begotten of the Father. The Spirit, likewise, is eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. And so the Spirit is eternally given to the Son. There was never a time when the Son of God did not have the Spirit of God. And because the Spirit is given without measure, because of that, John is showing us here in John 3, 34, that Jesus has every ability and authority to utter the words of God. Because the Spirit is given to Christ without measure, he has every authority and ability to utter the very words of God. If you do not have a special filling and anointing from God by his spirit, then you do not have authority to utter his words. God's word tells us that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The apostles and prophets, they spoke God's very words, but only in a very limited, way. Not everything that Paul spoke in his life was the Word of God. Not everything that Isaiah spoke in his life was the Word of God. Now, every single word in our Bibles is the Word of God, no matter what human author wrote it or said it. If it is in your Bible, it is the Word of God. But Paul and Peter and Moses and all the others, they spoke and wrote a lot of things not included in the Bible. because they weren't the words of God. They were just the words of man. But every single word that Jesus ever spoke, whether it is in our Bibles or not, every word he ever spoke was the word of God. Every single word. Now, why is that? Why is that the case? Well, number one, it's because Jesus is the word of God. So obviously everything he speaks is God's word. And because, secondly, Jesus was not merely carried along by the Spirit for a limited time or task, but Jesus was and is one with the Spirit in eternity past, on earth 2,000 years ago, now today, and forevermore. Jesus doesn't say anything contrary to what God the Father would say. He doesn't say anything sinful, and he doesn't rely on anyone else's testimony when he utters God's word. Verse 32 tells us that Christ bears witness or testifies to what he has seen and heard. That's the same as what Jesus said earlier when he was talking to Nicodemus. He says he speaks of what he knows and bears witness to what he has seen. Jesus can reveal God perfectly to us because he has been with God, because he is God, and thus he is above all things. All knowledge, all opinions of men, Jesus is above everything. And those that believe in their hearts, Jesus' testimony about himself, that believe these Spirit-empowered, God-breathed words, that Christ is Lord and God, it is they that have eternal life. The ESV here says in verse 36 of chapter three, that the ones who have eternal life are those that believe in the son. But once again, I much prefer the older reading here. The King James says that those who believe on the son are the ones that have eternal or everlasting life. The Christian faith is not just a set of doctrines to believe in, rather it is a person to believe on. to believe on. If we are to have eternal life, our lives must be founded on the rock of Christ. There is no other foundation, scripture tells us, that can be laid for everlasting life than that of Jesus. He's the chief cornerstone. As the old hymn reminds us, and I did not even plan this, but we're seeing this today, on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. There is no other way to eternal life than through believing on Jesus. Believing in Jesus is something you can do with your head and it's important, it's necessary, it's essential. You have to believe in Jesus. But believing on is something much more comprehensive, much more holistic. Has anyone in here, maybe some of our kids or maybe some of our former children, has anyone in here ever done a trust fall before? Just raise your hands if you've done one. Okay, okay. There's a large group of people that have done the trust fall. Well, if anyone doesn't know, a trust fall is where you stand facing in one particular direction and someone else stands directly behind you and you can't see them and you just, Your goal is to just fall straight backwards. You don't bend your knees. You don't put your arms out. You don't try to like turn midair and land on all fours. All you do is fall. And you trust that the person behind you, though you cannot see him with your eyes, you trust that that person behind you is going to catch you. That's believing on someone. You can observe someone else doing the trust fall. Even with your same friend, you can watch them and you can believe that if you did it yourself, your friend would be faithful and he would catch you and he wouldn't let you hit the floor. That's believing in. Yeah, I believe my friend would catch me. But believing on is when you actually fall backwards and you live out the truth that you know you are going to get caught. Your actions testify to the fact that you know your friend is going to catch you. The Protestant reformers very helpfully laid out that true living faith has three components. Three components, knowledge, you have to know about Jesus. You have to know certain facts like his life, his death, his resurrection. That's number one, knowledge. Number two, belief. That means you have to believe that those facts are true. You have to believe what the Bible says. You have to believe what Christ said of himself. That's number two, belief. And the number three is trust, trust. And that's that falling into the arms of your savior, knowing that he will catch you. You have to exercise that faith in trusting in Jesus Christ. So knowledge, belief, and trust, those are all components of faith. That's what believing on is. to not just have one of those and not the others, but to have that knowledge and that belief, and then to act in trust on those things. And you might say, that's a nice metaphor. I like the picture of my mind of the trust fall. I enjoy doing trust falls myself. But how does that actually work out in my day in, day out, ordinary life? What does it practically look like to fall into the arms of Jesus? Let's look at verse 36 again, but this time I want us to read all of it. John 3 and 36. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. So John tells us very clearly that we receive eternal life by believing on Jesus. And we receive the wrath of God by disobeying Jesus. So faith here is not contrasted. It's not set up against unbelief. It's set up against disobedience. Why is that? Faith on one side versus disobedience on the other side. There are a number of factors at work here. First, sin is what sends people to hell and sin is disobedience. All sin is disobedience. Second, No one can obey their way to heaven. You cannot obey enough to wipe out all your disobedience. If you go to hell, it's because you were disobedient. If you go to heaven, though, it's because by grace you had faith in the Son of God. But there's a third element as well. And this is easy for us to forget, or maybe it's just easy for us to ignore because we are afraid of the truth. And that is this, faith leads to obedience. Faith is worked out and lived out in obedience. And obedience is the evidence of faith. Of course, we still have the question, how then, even with that knowledge, how do we day in and day out fall into the arms of Christ? Is it through believing in your heart that Jesus is Lord? Yes, it is. Is it through seeking Him in prayer and worship? Yes. But is it also through obeying the word of God? Yes, it is. It is through obedience that our faith is evidenced and our faith is strengthened. Now, I do not mean that you have to obey for Jesus to save you. God justifies or declares his children righteous through faith alone. And even that faith doesn't spring from within us. It is a gift of God, lest any man should boast. No one will be justified, Paul tells us, by works of the law. But as Martin Luther and John Calvin both said, we are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. Rather, we are saved by faith that works. And we work out our faith by obeying God. We evangelicals love the Great Commission. If you don't know what the Great Commission is, it is Christ's parting charge or his marching orders to his people. It can be found in Matthew chapter 28, and it reads like this. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world." That's the Great Commission, and we love it. I went to a self-professing, self-described Great Commission seminary. My home church growing up said that our mission as a church was to fulfill the Great Commission, and I'm grateful for those emphases. But so often what people in not just my seminary and my church, but all of us and so many people in evangelicalism, what they mean so often when they say Great Commission is that we need to do evangelism and especially we need to do overseas missions so that people in India and Africa and Asia can hear the gospel and be saved. And that is absolutely true. That is absolutely true, but that is only part of the Great Commission. We are to disciple the nations, not only by preaching the gospel to them that they might be saved, but also by teaching them to obey, to obey all things, all things that God has commanded. That's what we're to teach the nations. And who are the nations? The Great Commission was originally given to the apostles, 12 Jewish men. The nations are us. We're the nations. India and China and Ethiopia, all those are nations too, for sure. But we are the nations. The nations in scripture and to the Jewish mind was understood to be everyone that was not Jewish by blood. The Gentiles, the nations, the heathens. The apostles already knew that the Jews were to obey God's law. They weren't confused about that at all. But now the mission that Christ gives them is to preach to the nations, to preach to people like you and me, to preach to the whole world and to tell them that they have to obey God. And so this is how our faith is often worked out. It's not only in your quiet times and in your discussing theology with your family and in your evangelism and your prayer life. Those are all things that are very important. They're vital to the Christian life, but it's also in your obedience to the commands of scripture. And that sounds to us like a little more of a challenge, doesn't it? That sounds more challenging than just believing the facts of the gospel or even really internalizing those facts, believing in our hearts. I think it was Doug Wilson that said, everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to help mom with dishes. Simple obedience is tough. It's hard for our sin loving hearts to get in line with. The obedience part of the Great Commission seems to our flesh, also it seems far less glamorous than the going to the faraway nations part. We don't tend to have sending services for people just going into their homes and obeying and doing laundry for 12 children. We don't tend to have special moments like that. We have special moments in church for sending someone far, far away to preach the gospel. But is one more fulfilling the Great Commission than the other? I would challenge us on that point, that they are both part of the Great Commission. We must trust God's ways and we must trust God's words. And we know a lot of talk of obedience makes us start to feel like, oh, I have to do this and I have to do that and I have to make sure all my ducks are in a row. But we know that when Christ comes, he does not come to lay extra burdens on us. He takes our burdens away. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. And he always, always does what is best for us. God always has our best interest at heart. So when he tells us to obey, we shouldn't think, oh, that's boring. That's annoying. That's not fun at all. We shouldn't think that. We should think obedience. Ah, I have an opportunity for joy. I have an opportunity to glorify God here. I have an opportunity to love my neighbor. Obedience is the way to joy. And indeed, obedience isn't just a means to an end, it's a joy in itself. God wants his children to be happy, both in eternity and now. And he knows that obedience from the heart is how you get there. Have you noticed, children especially, I know it's hard to obey. And trust me, your parents struggle just as much as you do oftentimes to obey. But have you noticed that the more you obey your parents, the more you want to obey your parents? That once you get into a groove of obeying, it's not so hard as it was at first. You get into a habit of obedience. And when you start obeying from the heart, you start to feel good about it. That's not just fuzzy theology. That's not just coincidence. That's good theology. Obedience leads to blessing. And not just in the Old Testament, not just back in the time of the law, but now too. I'm confident that every parent in this room has quoted this verse that I'm about to read. Does anyone want to just guess what I'm going to say? Anyone? That's right, Ephesians six, Ephesians six, one through three. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. This is Paul saying, look kids, Look, three-year-old boys and girls. Look, children of all ages. Those old covenant commands and promises, they are for you just as much as they were for the little children 1,000 years ago. And when you obey them, when you obey, honor your father and your mother, you will be blessed in this life. The commandments of God, when obeyed through the empowerment of the Spirit of God, are gifts to us. Now, to those outside of Christ, they are a burden. They are a curse. They are a ministry of death to them because they condemn them. They convict them and condemn them. They are a judgment to them. But to those who have been born from above, the commands of God are a gracious, loving gift. There's a Sunday school song that our children learned a few years back. I'm not gonna sing it, but I'll read it. It goes like this. Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe. Doing exactly what the Lord commands, doing it happily. Action is the key, do it immediately. Joy you will receive. Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe. And that's not just something that some parents or Sunday school teachers made up in church to motivate all the children to behave. Listen to what the Bible says about disobedience. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul speaks of when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. That's one group of people. one group of people, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who believed because our testimony to you was believed. Those who did not know God are those who did not obey the gospel. Here, obey the gospel means they did not repent of their sins and call on Jesus as Lord. That's the chief thing to obey. The number one thing that we must obey is to repent and believe. That's our number one way that we love God and, in fact, also love our neighbor. That's the weightiest thing, but that's not all. That's the foundation that we trust in Christ, but that's not every detail. Jesus will later say in John's gospel, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And when Jesus refers to His commandments, He's not merely referring to a curated list of instructions we find in the New Testament. No, He means all of the moral law of God. All things, He says in the Great Commission, all things whatsoever I have commanded you, whether we read of it in the Old Testament or in the New Testament. Remember, both the Old and New Testaments are the words of Christ. Jesus doesn't only command us those things that appear in some of your Bibles in red letters that he spoke when he was on earth. No, Jesus's commands are God's commands. It's the Bible. Those are Jesus's commands. And the moral law is in fact summarized. We have a compact form of the moral law in the 10 commandments. So if we love Jesus, and if we trust Jesus, and if we trust Him alone for our righteous standing before God the Father, we will have no other gods before Him. We will not make and worship graven images or idols. We will not take the name of the Lord our God in vain. We will remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. We will honor our father and mother. We've already talked about that one. That's the first commandment of the promise. We will not kill. We will not commit adultery. We will not steal. We will not bear false witness against our neighbor, and we will not covet our neighbor's property. When we really believe on Jesus, we joyfully seek to obey everything that he has commanded us. And we won't only obey just to get the joy. The obedience itself, like we said, will be a joy to us. It will be a delight to honor God and to do His will. This is evangelical obedience. This is different than legalistic obedience, where you're trying to obey so that you can earn God's favor. This is obeying out of gratitude and out of desire to honor the Lord who saved you. Remember the Ten Commandments? This is the preeminent law text of the entire Bible. The Ten Commandments begins with the gospel. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the house of slavery. Now obey me. I have saved you and redeemed you. Now obey me. The law has no power to save you. It has no power to purify your heart. It has no power even to aid you to obey it. It can't get you anywhere. But the law shows us the path of holiness. It's a reflection of God's character. The law beckons us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling that we have received. The law is like train tracks, and we're like a train. A train has to have train tracks. It cannot drive without train tracks. If a train tried to drive without train tracks, the result would be catastrophic. There would be absolutely no controlling where the train went. It would just be an immediate crash. That's why when trains veer off the tracks, and there are videos of this you can go watch online, when they veer off the tracks, they don't just like calmly keep going in the same direction and slow down to a stop in due time. Without the tracks, it's impossible for the train to travel in anything close to a safe or predictable manner. It just goes haywire, it slides around, it crashes, it destroys everything in its path. That's what we're like without the law. We would be like a train without train tracks. But the tracks don't actually help the train go anywhere. They guide its path, but they don't give it the ability to go. They're essential to the train going in the right place, but they don't have any power within them. It is the engine that makes the train go. A train could sit on the best, most finely crafted tracks known to man, but without an engine, it would not move an inch. but the tracks guide the path that the engine drives the train on. So it is with us. God pours out his Holy Spirit in all those who have been born again through faith in Christ. All those who believe on Christ get God's Spirit. Not without measure, like Christ had it, but really and truly nonetheless. And when we are filled with the Spirit, we are no longer dead. We are alive. We are like a train who has been given the best engine. And that engine, God's very spirit, empowers us to live godly lives in Christ Jesus. And the law, powerless on its own to create life or righteousness in us, nevertheless is God's gracious and loving means to guide us in the right path of the Christian life. So that all who believe on Christ will obey Christ. That engine is going to help you drive on the right tracks. Now, we won't obey Christ perfectly in this life. We won't, we will fail him. But God makes provision for our disobedience. John says later, the same John in the first epistle that he writes, he says, my little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. Whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked, which was in perfect obedience to the law of God. When we disobey, Jesus is our advocate. He is our propitiation. That means he's the one who takes away our sin, and therefore he takes away God's wrath, and he brings us back to God. Even though we will disobey many, many times in this life, even after coming to Christ, God will look at us as obedient children in Jesus Christ if we have his spirit. Nevertheless, if we make a practice of continuing unrepentantly in sin, of our manner of life being characterized as one of disobedience to the law of God rather than obedience. It shows us, John tells us and Jesus tells us, that we do not truly love or trust God. We may have watched other people fall into Christ's arms, but if we have no continual repentance, no continual seeking after righteousness, then that is evidence that we have merely stood on the sidelines and watched other people take that trust fall. Let us not be onlookers at trains going on the right tracks or onlookers at people falling into their friends' arms, but let us be those who have living and active faith in Christ, seeking to obey him from our hearts. I want to make one final note as we close out our sermon today. John says in the last verse of our text, John 3, 36, he says, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. All those who trust Christ in their hearts and spend eternity glorifying and enjoying God, they're the ones, that's eternal life. They will have everlasting life. But also, all those who believe on the Son have eternal life. eternal life here and now. If you were trusting in Jesus, you right now have eternal life. It is in your possession. You're not only waiting for the eternal life. That's not only something future in the age to come. That's something you begin to experience now. Paul says that we who have believed on Jesus have been seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That we have begun to enjoy heaven even here on earth. we can have sweet communion with God, true heavenly joy, and an assurance of Christ's love even while we are still here in this life and in this world. You have eternal life right now if you are Christ by faith. You have eternity in your heart. You have a guarantee of your inheritance, and you have not acquired full possession of it, but you have begun to enjoy the goodness of the powers of the age to come. And you can live as one who is with Christ even now, because spiritually, that's where you are. You're with Christ. You do not have to wait until after death to begin to experience the joy and comforts of eternity. So walk in obedience in the newness of life that Christ gives to every single one of his children. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your goodness to us. Lord, we thank you that you are a God who gives eternal life here and now to all who believe on your perfect, holy Son, Jesus Christ. We thank you that you've given us these guide rails, that you've given us this lamp for our feet, this light into our path through your law. And we thank you, Lord, though, that you, Jesus, have satisfied the righteous requirement of the law for us. So no longer is the law a curse and a death sentence, God, but it's a wonderful, glorious rule of life. We thank you for the joy that you give when we obey you from the heart, and we pray that you would give us strength to honor and obey you today and throughout this week. In Christ's name, amen.