Thank you for tuning in to the Covenant Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the teaching and preaching of God's Word. The Covenant Podcast is a ministry of Covenant Baptist Church located in Indianapolis, Indiana. And now, here is today's speaker. Jesus, the only Son of God. There ought to be, there is, in true right Christianity, this focus upon one thing around which all other things align, and that is the Son of God. Men are not the focus. Preachers are not the focus. Buildings are not the focus. Lost people are not the focus. Feeding the hungry and clothing the poor is not the focus. None of these things, or anything else, is to be our focus. Our focus is to be on the Son of God. And make no mistake, those things I just listed, they'll be part of things perhaps. But they will come into alignment only, they'll come into right alignment only, when our focus is on the only Son of God. When God gave His Son to the world, He gave His only Son And in a sense then, He gave all. He gave all. It's the pattern for us. We are not to give God a part of us. We're not to give God part of our possessions. How many times have you heard somebody say, are we still supposed to tithe? The New Testament, didn't we get rid of that? We still have to give 10%? No. Like it's always been. You're to give Him 100%. All of it. He gave all. He gave His only Son. He gave all. We are not to give God a part of ourselves, a part of our possessions. We are not to give God some of ourselves. We are to give Him all, as He has given all to us in His only Son. Mark 12 30, You shall love the Lord your God. You know this. You've heard this with all your heart. all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, one verse, that one verse should occupy your thoughts every day of your life. I am to love God with everything because He loved me with everything. No part will not do. We've been given one life. The question is, will we give this one life back to the one who gave it in the first place? What about you? Can it be said of you that you are giving God all? All? Are you looking to Him as your only hope of heaven? Have you given Him the keys absolutely every room in your heart. Have you surrendered all to Him or are you holding something back? God did not when He gave His only Son to the world. He gave all. Next, He is the only source of grace and truth according to verses 16 and 17. For from His fullness We have all received grace upon grace. The law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Through Christ, we have the only source of grace and truth. There's various interpretations for this grace upon grace. There's a couple that seem to resonate with my own view here. There's this idea of accumulating grace. That when it says grace upon grace we have received through Christ, it is this idea that one gracious blessing follows another. The other way to look at this verse in the original language is in the commentators are divided on it and the word study folks are divided on it. But there's another sense in which people see in this scripture that is almost grace in place of grace. And by that they mean that the grace of Christ superseding and taking the place of the grace of the law, which verse 17 seems to support when it says that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth through Christ. I believe that either of these, in my own view, are acceptable. I don't believe either opinion does harm to the Scripture. I believe in Christ we indeed have received one gracious blessing after another. for us to list them would take too long, but to just begin in Christ we have received forgiveness, we have received peace, joy, fellowship, life, guidance, meaning, purpose, love, contentment, on and on and on we could go, grace upon grace, one blessing after another we have received alone in Christ. The Son of God who alone came and dwelt among men and became a man himself. And yet, there is also something to the idea in Christ we have received a grace that does supersede and replaces the grace received only in the Law. If we can look at this together, hopefully you'll understand what I am trying to say. The Law of God is grace. Don't misunderstand me. God's giving to us the law was an act of grace itself towards man. If you don't think so, just look at a society who does not live according to any understanding of law. It's chaos. It's chaos. There's no peace. There's no comfort. There's no certainty. understanding of and respect for law is that which separates us from lives that would otherwise be lived in complete and total chaos and as a society distances itself from the law giver God it at the same time distances itself from the law itself and disorder and darkness will begin to sweep over the land which is precisely why our nation is in such darkness we have distanced ourselves from the light of the law giver. And there is grace in the receiving of the law. When God gave it to Moses on Mount Sinai, and gave that nation of Israel a set of rules, ceremonial, civil, and religious, and all of these things, he gave them so that they could be a nation that lived in peace and harmony, and could prosper, and could see to the call that God had given to man in the first place, tend to this world that I've placed you in. You remove law and you remove that ability. So law is grace. Don't misunderstand. But it is in Jesus who you find the only source of grace and truth. The law will never spur a man to love another. It doesn't have that power. The law can prevent one from committing murder or can punish one for doing so, but the law can never put love into a man's heart. The law will never spur this kind of thing in our hearts, but knowing the only Son of God, Christ Jesus, coming to know Him, it will put this in our heart. And again, verse 17 seems to support the replacement interpretation of verse 16, when we are told that it is through Jesus Christ that grace and truth have come. The law brought the truth of God. Because the law of God is truth. And while it was grace in and of itself that God gave us the law, the law itself is just that, truth. But through Christ, we not only have the truth, We have grace manifested. We have in Christ grace and truth. And only in Christ are these things brought together. We have in this another example of the uniqueness of Christianity among all other religions. And a refutation of this statement, all religions are the same. No. No, indeed, they are not. Not by any distance. Not close. Not at all. You can try and try and try. But you cannot come up with a satisfying answer to the coming together of the law of God and grace outside of Jesus Christ. You can't do it. God is either righteous or He is gracious. Without Christ, He could be neither, unless He damned all of us to hell. Because that is the wages of sin. How can God be just and the justifier of the wicked? The answer is the only Son of God, the Word of God. A focus on law apart from grace. And by the way, before we get there, religions typically do this. False religion. typically is one of two flavors. You can identify it because it doesn't have law and grace. It has one or the other, or a claim to one or the other, but not both, because they don't have Christ, the only source of grace and truth. Typically, false religions come in these two flavors. One, a focus on law apart from grace, or the things that a man must do to inherit eternal life. But again, you can try and you can try and you can try. but you will never reach heaven by climbing the mountain of good works. You will never reach heaven by climbing the mountain of your own good works. The only thing you are going to do is climb one peak and look over and get to that peak and realize that there's yet another peak after that one. To focus only on the law apart from grace is to depend upon your works, but you'll never be good enough. You'll never do enough good works. You'll not walk into heaven on the strength of your own goodness. And I think, inwardly, you already know this. George Whitefield said it this way, with an exclamation at one point. He said, what? Get to heaven on your own strength? Well, you might as well try to climb to the moon on a rope of sand. Can't do it. False religion will either focus on the law separate from grace or the other side. They'll slingshot to the other place. They'll focus on grace apart from the law. Seeing the futility of climbing the mountain of good works, the futility of trying to reach heaven by a focus on the law, men often slingshot to the other extreme. And that extreme is a focus only on grace without a proper understanding of the law, without a proper understanding of the only source of grace and truth, Jesus Christ. And so they say, they see in God only grace. This view sees God as such that he will allow all to enter through the gates of heaven because his kindness and benevolence is so great that he's not gonna turn anyone away. Maybe he'll turn the worst of us away. Maybe Hitler and Stalin and Mao and these others that we read about in history, Genghis Khan and these others that just were horrible, terrible men, maybe he'll turn them away. But this focus on God of grace without law, without Christ, leads to this understanding or this belief that God's going to let me into heaven because He's such a loving God. This is not what the Word of God tells us. This is not what the Word of God tells us. Matthew 7, 13 and 14. Enter by the narrow gate. Who's speaking? Jesus. So many people say we don't want to hear about the law. We don't want to hear about do's and don'ts. We just want to hear about Jesus and talk about Jesus. Well, then let's do that. Jesus says this enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few. We can try to explain this verse away. We can try to ignore it, we can try to make it about faceless, nameless others in the world, but it's there all the same, immovable, undeniable, and its implications are massive for all of us. Do you hear? The only son of God has himself said that many go the broad way that leads to destruction and few go the narrow way that leads to life. I did not say that. Jesus, the son of the God said that. I didn't say it, another preacher didn't say it who's more eloquent and more gifted than I. It is it is a legalistic religious do-gooder that said it. It is Jesus who said it. According to data from the United Nations, I looked this up, 7,452 people will die today in the United States. That's one every 12 seconds, all day long, all week long, all month long, all year. Every 12 seconds, someone in the United States steps into eternity. And according to what Jesus just said, many of them, having walked the broad way through their life, step into eternity, and that broad way led them to destruction. We hope you have enjoyed listening to today's program. Please visit us at www.covenantmbc.com to access our podcast archive and learn more about the ministry of Covenant Baptist Church. Visit us on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com slash Covenant in Indie.