God, Abraham, and the Prince of Darkness | John 8:37-47

If you have your Bibles with you, please let me encourage you to turn in them to John chapter eight. John chapter eight.

If you’re visiting with us, you should know we’ve been moving slowly through the Gospel of John. This morning we’re going to be in verses 37 through 47 at Trinity Church. We believe in what we call expository preaching. What we mean by that is I get up here and I preach the Word of God, and the first task is to explain the text. Well, I want us to understand what this meant to the original audience and how this applies to our lives today.

It’s really important that you understand I’m not just teaching the Bible. That’s not what Christian preaching merely is. No, the Bible teaches that Christian preaching is to be speaking as the oracles of God. Preaching is God’s chosen means of the Word of Christ dwelling richly in our hearts and being spoken and received by his people. It is not an overstatement to say when true preaching is done correctly and faithfully, Christ speaks through preaching.

So we have a high understanding of what happens in the next 45 minutes or so, and this demands our attention today. This is not just a Bible lesson. It’s more than that. The Lord has words for us today.

Let me read today John eight verses 37 through 47.

This is Jesus speaking to the Jews in Jerusalem. He says this:

“I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We are not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

Let’s pray once more. Let’s all pray.

Blessed Father, you have caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning. Grant us that we may in such a way hear them read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word we might embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which you have given to us in our Savior Jesus Christ.

Father, we need your word today. We are sheep who are ready to hear your voice. Some of us are lazy. Some of us are slumbering. Some of us are wayward. For we all feel the stinging, remaining, clinging effects of sin. So would you own us now, in this moment? Speak to us. Change us. Make us responsive to your holy word. We ask you to teach us. Make us what we are not by the power of the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

If you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, you’ll believe in anything. An atheist is much more an omnitheist than anything else, because anything is capable of becoming his God. If you reject the one true and living God, if that’s what you’ve purposed to do, well, my friend, you’ve done nothing to erase God. You’ve done nothing to erase him, but only replace him with lesser objects of devotion.

You see, friends, mankind must worship something, whether career, family, pleasure, or politics. The human heart was made to worship. You’re going to worship something. If it’s not God, you have other gods to which you bow the knee. And just as the rejection of God breeds acceptance of gods, so rejection of truth breeds belief in lies.

You see, when men and women reject the truth of God and His Word, they don’t stop believing in things. Rather, they will inevitably believe in something. And as we see, they’ll believe in almost anything. Have you ever noticed how the so-called rational revolution has only ever made us dumber? We live in a time when it’s considered coherent for a man to change his biology based on his psychology. The notion of a man trapped in a woman’s body, or a woman trapped in a man’s body would have been absurd to all of our grandpas. Like none of us would have thought that. But people think we’re getting more rational. But we believe in more and more lies.

You reject ultimate truth. You’ll believe in any lie. The Australian moral philosopher—or really immoral philosopher—Peter Singer famously advocates for infanticide. This is a real person who has a job. He wears a coat and tie to an office every single day, and he advocates for infanticide based on the emotional well-being of parents. According to Singer, the right to life for both born and unborn people is contingent upon the subjective happiness of a mother. Small wonder Singer is not a God-fearing man.

You reject God and his truth. You’ll believe almost any lie. Last week, Atlanta hosted one of the largest furry conventions in the world. If you don’t know what a furry is, I envy you. These are adults with varying levels of mental illness who dress up in full body animal costumes. What starts as a hobby for some becomes a total identity for many. The furry community is largely male-dominated, but a significant portion of the community identifies as transgender or non-binary.

Friends, if you reject ultimate truth, you’ll believe any lie. Here’s yet another: God, you don’t stop worshiping things. No, you need to worship. Something’s going to fill that vacuum. Something’s going to fill that God vacuum, that belief vacuum. And we often fill it with lies.

Every person here today must believe in something. Every person worships a god or an idol. And every person—hear me out—every person has a father, and your father is either God in heaven or the Prince of Darkness. Either our Heavenly Father, the one true living God, or as the text says, you are of your father, the devil.

According to Jesus, you cannot have God as your father without Christ as your Savior. So everyone in this room, my friend, the question for you today is: Who is your father?

I have three points this morning. I’m really just moving through the text. My goal is to first assert what the basic argument of the text is. What is Jesus arguing in verses 37 through 47? And we’re going to see. He talks about children of God and children of Abraham, and children of God and children of the devil. And after that argument, we’re going to see what marks children of Satan and what marks true children of God.

So first let’s look at the argument of the text. Look at verse 37. Jesus says, “I know that you are offspring of Abraham. Yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.”

So, brethren, the argument and flow of this text is not complicated. It flows from this one essential truth: Not all physical offspring of Abraham are spiritual offspring of Abraham. Not all physical offspring. Not all Jews are spiritual offspring of Abraham. Or if you want maybe a more concise way of saying this: genealogy is no guarantee of God’s grace. Genealogy. Who your mommy and your daddy are. What line of descendants you come from is no guarantee of God’s grace. It comes with great privilege, but is not a guarantee of the grace of God, according to Jesus.

That you is either merely a physical descendant of Abraham or a physical and spiritual descendant of Abraham. Being the offspring of Abraham was of no ultimate advantage unless it produced Abraham’s faith and obedience. Genealogy is no guarantee of the grace of God.

Now listen, this does not mean being a Jew in the first century was without advantage, because so much of the Bible stays. Clearly it came with great advantage to be a Jew in the first century. Paul would say, you have the oracles of God. You have the covenants of promise. You have had all the teaching and the historical traditions that were to point you to Christ and lead you to salvation. That’s not nothing.

So, brethren, if we’re to draw a corollary, today is not that different from having children in Christian homes today. So we do not subscribe to the philosophy that we are Baptist Church. We do subscribe to that philosophy. But by being a Baptist church and believing that all of our children are, as best we can tell, born as sinners and need the grace of God. Well, we don’t subscribe to this idea that all kids are vipers in diapers, and being born as a child of a Christian doesn’t have any advantage. There are some advantages in growing in a Christian home.

Kids, listen to me. If your parents are believers, they take you to church on Sunday. Do you know you’re like at the 1% of the entire world? Like that’s just not normal. To belong to a Christian family. And that is a stewardship that God wants you to do something with. He wants you to have that lead you to the Lord Jesus Christ. You have to steward that great privilege that he has given you.

We should raise, brothers and sisters, our children with great expectancy. I think a godly optimism that the Lord will be pleased, as he so often is, to lead our children to the fear and instruction of him and the saving faith and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Paul makes this plain when he talks about the Jews and the advantages that came with being Jewish. He says in Romans 1, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The gospel came first to the Jews.

Romans 3, verse 1: “What then? What advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.”

Paul might say to Christian children at Trinity Church, to the children of Trinity Church: Your parents brought you to church. They bought you a Bible. They did family devotions with you. They told you about Jesus. Supreme advantage comes with being in such a family.

Paul says in Romans 9 of the Jews he says, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.”

Brethren, which we learn then from what we see in John 8, we see that the Jews in Jesus’ day were footed with spectacular spiritual advantage. Yet in large part they rejected their promised Messiah.

Now, if we were to draw a modern day corollary to the John 8 Jews, you could point to modern day Jews, and that would be a fair comparison. But friends, I think the type of John 8 rejection so far more prominently in most of our context. It resembles a Christian subculture like our own. I’ve called this many things. This is the sin of familiarity. Being close to Christian things yet having nothing of the actual substance. Toxic proximity to Jesus. Yeah, we know who he is, but no actual saving faith.

Yeah, my grandfather was a Methodist preacher. Therefore I’m okay. I go to church. Therefore I’m okay. God loves me. I’m a Christian. I’m around Christian things. Maybe you walked down an aisle one day. Maybe you actually been baptized as we’re going to see people baptized later in this service. Maybe you have experienced all the external rites of Christianity. The question is, do you know Jesus Christ? Are your sins forgiven? Have you repented of them? Have you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? Where is your faith at the end of the day? Have you trusted in him? Do you love the Savior? Do you follow the Savior? Has that borne out any meaningful repentance in your life? Do you bear the works that Abraham did?

That’s the argument of Jesus. Otherwise, the argument is you are still in your sins. And to say it frankly and to say it how the Lord does: you’re a child of Satan, and you do not know the Lord.

Some of you young people are living in this situation right now. You sit under faithful preaching every week. Many of you are raised in Christian homes. Maybe you go to a Christian school and you eat Christian breakfast cereal in the morning. Those are enormous privileges. Everything about what we should do as parents should be Christian. It should be tinkered with the grace and the message and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want it all to be set apart from the world, but it can produce a false security within our children.

And kids, don’t just think that because your mom and dad were baptized, or because they take the Lord’s Supper, or that they bring you to a church that practices expositional preaching, that that means anything to God? If it doesn’t bring about saving faith in your heart, who’s your father? Do you know Jesus Christ? Have you repented of your sins? Do you trust in him? Has that borne in your heart any sort of love for him and affection for the people of God?

Closeness to Christian things and people is not the same thing as communion with Christ. Until you repent and believe in Jesus, you remain dead in your sins and exposed to the judgment of God. You’re like a dying man of thirst who stands next to a fountain from which you never drink. The source of life is right there, but you choose to perish.

My friend, you can sing our songs. You can eat our meals and know nothing of the Savior we love. You can come so close to the things of God and still remain unchanged. We see it all the time. All the time. Unless you have the faith of Abraham, the kind that bears the fruit of Abraham, you’re miles away from the kingdom and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that’s the argument of the text. I think at this point, it’s crucial that we understand what marks children of Satan, what marks the children of the devil? Because I don’t want to be that. And what marks the children of God?

So let’s look first. What marks the children of the devil? I want to highlight four things from our text. I’m going to be bouncing all over our text. We’re gonna see four marks of children of the devil.

First, children of the devil reject the truth. Children of the devil reject the truth. Look at verse 42. Jesus said to them, “If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.” Look at verse 46. “Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

Children of the devil reject the truth. They will not abide the truth. They do not hear the truth. They block their ears so that they cannot hear the Word of God.

G.K. Chesterton said—I think I’ve quoted this before—he says, “The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.” The problem is not that there aren’t glorious things to be seen. The problem is our blindness to those glorious things. The problem is not the absence of wonders, but blindness to them.

We sang Psalm 19. You know how it begins. “The heavens declare the glory of God. The sky above proclaims his handiwork.” The glory of God is screaming at all times. Every time the sun rises, every time the sun sets, every time the moon is in the sky, God is screaming his glory. And yet people reject him. They do not acknowledge Him as God. They do not behold his glory. They don’t give him the honor that the first commandment requires.

It’s so obvious. He’s right there. He tells you everything about him, not just in that general revelation of creation, but supremely in the person and work of Jesus Christ. God reveals himself. We confess it not long ago, Hebrews 1: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Jesus is the supreme revelation of the Father. He speaks to us. He came into the world because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. My friend, Jesus Christ is the ultimate display of the glory of God. And yet you’re rejecting him. You’ve not received him. You’ve not honored him as your Lord. You have not recognized him as your Savior. Whether that’s due to familiarity or flat out contempt. You are blinded to the glory of God and therefore you reject the truth.

So, children of the devil, they reject the truth.

Secondly, children of the devil desire and practice evil. Jesus says in John 3, they reject me because their deeds are wicked and they don’t want the light. They rather walk in darkness. Why? Because they love darkness and their deeds are wicked. So they’re not just blind? No. This is what they want.

The sinner, the child of the devil, desires and practices evil. Look at verse 44. He says, “You’re of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning.”

One of the things that’s just true about Christian life and Christian experience and what the goal of the Christian life and the goal of Christian preaching and the church is: greater conformance to the will of Christ. So one of the things I pray for myself and I pray for every Christian, every member of Trinity Church almost daily, is that their mind and their desires would be in conformance with the will of Christ. Like, one of the ways we want to grow as Christians is wanting what God wants, desiring what God desires. And the reason for that is because I belong to a new dominion. I’m no longer shackled in the dominion of darkness. I’m no longer a child of Satan. No, I’m a child of God. And because I’m a child of God, I’m to resemble him such that I love what he loves. I want what he wants. And I think like Jesus on things.

Do you realize the other side of that coin? The other side of that coin is you want what the devil wants. And that’s the destruction of your very soul. It’s sin. And a lack of conformity or violation of the law of God. You love that because that’s what the devil wants. And you’re either a disciple of Jesus Christ or you’re a disciple of the devil. Who are you following today? What do you love today? What are your desires? What is your will?

Matthew 7 says you will recognize them by their fruits. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 1 John 3. This is John on John. He says, “Whoever makes a practice of sinning”—that’s your life is habitually marked by sin. Whoever makes that type of practice of sin—not the presence of sin, but the practice of sin—is of the devil. “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil.”

These children, they reject the truth. They desire and practice evil.

Thirdly, children of the devil believe lies. That’s where we started this morning. Children of the devil believe lies. Look at verse 44 for the second half of it. It says, “There is no truth in him.” That’s Satan. “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”

Satan, according to Jesus, is the father of lies. In the culture, and in common Christian parlance, we often assign that word “demonic” to things, and that can be confusing. I don’t have a clear, thought-out theology of when to use that word, but I think one rule that’s helpful is what marks Satan’s character the most is he’s a liar. He’s the father of lies. And therefore I tend to use that word “demonic” for forces of darkness, elements of the spirit of the age, or cultural things that deceive. Those lies that Christians believe, or those lies that the world believes. That’s demonic.

What are those things that are deceiving us today? That’s the profound activity of Satan. Now all sin basically is. But there’s something to that, that Satan inherent to his character. He’s a deceiver. He’s a liar.

The very first temptation in the garden was a masterclass in deception. He says to Eve, “Did God actually say… Did he say you were going to live forever if you didn’t eat the fruit? Did he say you’re going to die?” And no, that’s not going to happen. He’s a liar.

Satan is a master of disguise, presenting himself as an angel of light. Satan rarely says, “I am the fount of all wickedness, and I will destroy you. Let’s howl at the moon and drink the blood of virgins.” That’s not Satan’s normal practice. No. Sin and Satan crouch at the door. They make themselves smaller. They try to deceive. They try to make you believe their lies. Satan is a prowling lion who you will rarely hear growl. Not until he devours you.

Satan does not say to sinners, “Isn’t it great to slaughter children in the womb?” No. He enslaves minds by appealing to their false sense of righteousness. Men are oppressors. Women must have this right to choose. This is a freedom issue, a matter of choice and liberty. Do you see the lie there? He’s subverting their own sense of morality.

Satan doesn’t tell a married person, “Adultery is just great. And you’re going to love the bitter consequences of your sin.” No. He robes his lies in morality. “God wants you to be happy. Your marriage doesn’t make you happy. Therefore, you should leave your marriage.” It’s a lie. That’s a demonic lie from the pit of hell.

Satan will superintend good intentions to destroy souls. He lies. And the problem with children of Satan is they believe their father. The unbeliever gobbles up his lies because he’s their father.

Psalm 131 is a beautiful psalm. It talks about how “My heart is not proud, O Lord my God. My eyes are humbly fixed on you in matters that are too great and beyond my understanding. Like a child, I will trust in you.” That’s Psalm 131. That’s where we get that “like a weaned child with its mother, so I trust in the Lord.” And the idea is the general motif of the Christian’s relationship to Christ is as of a small child depends and trusts his father. He doesn’t need to question him because he loves him and he trusts him. He knows his father knows best.

Do you realize those who are dead in their sins are the exact same? What makes them so susceptible to the lies of Satan is because they trust their father, and they have an inherent belief in everything he throws their way.

So the children of the devil, they reject the truth. They desire and practice evil. They believe lies.

And fourthly, and lastly, under this heading, they hate Jesus. Children of Satan hate Jesus. Verse 37: “I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place in you.” But now verse 40: “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did.”

You see, brethren, failure to believe in Christ is a failure of desire. Every person who has ever hated Jesus has done so because they love something else more.

Now it may strike us as odd, but Jesus rushes in this conversation to say that they’re seeking to kill him. And maybe we can make sense of that, because we know that many of the Jews would eventually lead Jesus to the cross. But rather than I think that mistakes the meaning of sin and what the Bible teaches about sin. According to Jesus, failure to love him is akin to hatred of him. There’s no such thing as neutrality with Jesus, my friend.

If you’re outside of Christ like, do you understand that maybe you’re here to see Amelia Parker get baptized today, or Jack Sullivan or Daniel, and you think that’s great for them. I’m glad they believe in something. You all seem like nice people. This is great. Not for me.

Jesus says if you’re not for me, you’re against me. You reject him. You hate him. Failure to love him is to abhor him. And that’s blasphemy. There is no neutrality with Jesus Christ. There is no neutrality with the Christian faith. You either receive this message as the only means of salvation or you’re dead in your sins, and you are left exposed to the judgment of God. You’re either his friend or his enemy.

But I’m here to tell you that the beauty of the gospel is people become friends of Jesus by first acknowledging that they’re enemies. Jesus doesn’t wait for people to clean themselves up before he saves them. He doesn’t put them on probation and good behavior before he forgives them. No. In this the love of Christ is seen, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. He came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

Jesus saves sinners. All those who come to him, all those who pray to him for forgiveness, all those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. All those who come to him, he will never cast out. And Jesus can receive you now.

But you need to repent. What is repentance? Repentance is agreeing with God about your sin. God is holy. He is light. In him is no darkness at all. I am not like him. I’m a problem and I got problems. And my biggest problem is my sin. And only Jesus can do something about my sin problem. I deserve God’s wrath. You say, “God forgive me. You’re right. Forgive me.” And the Christian turns away from that sin.

I say it this way. You’re heading east. Jesus is going west. You stop going east. You start going west. That’s repentance. 180 degree turn and following Jesus. That’s faith. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, believing that he died on a Roman cross for my sins, that he rose for my justification. That he’s coming again to judge the living and the dead. And I’m going to follow him. And whatever his word says, I’m going to do. He tells me to jump. I ask how high. That’s following Jesus. That’s what Abraham did as he pursued a city whose builder and maker was God.

I just need you to know there’s nothing better than being a Christian. Like there’s just nothing in the world better than knowing that your sins are forgiven, having a clear conscience before God and man, having a firm foundation under your feet. There’s nothing better than being a saint. Jesus offers himself to you now. You can be saved.

If you want to know more about what it means to become a Christian, what it means to follow Jesus, please talk to me after this service. I need you to know Jesus. I don’t want you to perish. I don’t want you to remain in your sins.

Jesus tells them what marks the children of Satan. He then moves to consider what marks the children of God. We consider this briefly. Three marks of the children of God.

Children of God, as you could expect, if children of Satan reject the truth, children of God, they hear the truth and they receive the truth. Look at verse 47: “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” Look back at verse 31. He says, “Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”

John 8 uses language of abiding or standing or remaining in the truth. This calls to mind the language of Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. He doesn’t stand with scoffers. He doesn’t sit with people who are ungodly. No, but his delight is in the law of God, and on his law he meditates day and night. And because he stands on God’s law, His Word, oh, his leaf doesn’t wither. He’s like a tree planted by rivers of water. He has a firm foundation.”

That’s how the Christian is. They abide in the Word of Jesus and the response there as Jesus will say in John 10, they’re his sheep that hear his voice. All of the Lord’s sheep, those who are true children of Abraham, oh, they are responsive to the word of Christ.

The man who abides in Jesus is possessed by the Word of God. It has his heart because he delights in it. It has his mind and time because he meditates upon it. He is mesmerized by truth. The Bible and the truth of Christ are his firm foundation, which is why he can say, “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.”

Brothers and sisters, true children of Christ cherish the treasure of His Word. They cherish the Word of God, because in it they find the God of the word. And brethren, just like everything will change about your walk with God and particularly your private devotions. If you realize this, you’re not just studying the Bible. God is speaking to you. You’re not just reading. God is speaking and he’s revealing himself to you. And he does it in the work of Jesus Christ. But he speaks to you every day through His Word, and you have access to that in your language next to your bed.

Just imagine this. Start your devotions every morning, every evening, or whenever you read your Bible and just say, “Lord, speak to me. What do you have for me today?” The Lord has never failed to answer that prayer in my life. Receive the word. Do not obstruct his person from His word. No, he reveals himself and he wants us to commune with him as we read, study, digest and cherish in our hearts and meditate upon His Holy Word.

Only the Word of God can revive the soul of man. Only the Word of God makes wise the simple. Only the Word of God can provide a firm foundation. Only the Word of God rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, and endures forever. It is the Word of God that is said to be sweeter than life itself. So Christians they cherish, they hear, they receive the truth of Christ.

Secondly, children of God, they bear fruit. No getting around it. Look at verse 39. They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.”

You would act like Abraham. You would like the things that Abraham likes. You know, my son Ezra surprised the prize. He loves Lord of the Rings because his daddy loves Lord of the Rings. We’re both obsessed because he’s like his father.

These are not children of Abraham. Because they reject what Abraham loved.

And you see, there’s two types of fruit that Abraham had. Abraham had the type of fruit that trusted in God. He believed the Lord—Jesus Christ or he believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. That’s what Genesis 15 says. That’s what the book of Romans and Galatians says. Abraham was saved the same way you and I are saved. So he had a faith that was outward looking, that trusted in the promises of God, and that was something of a fruit in his life.

But that faith also produced obedience. Listen to James 2. You see that faith was active along with Abraham’s works, and that faith was completed by his works. It was completed when he sacrificed his son Isaac. It was completed when God told Abraham, “Go to this land that you’ve not been to.” And Abraham obeyed, went forth.

Hebrews 11 says, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.”

The brothers and sisters. You just need to understand Christianity can never make sense until you appreciate obedience in the Christian life. Sometimes as Protestants, sometimes even as Reformed people like we, we get uncomfortable when we talk about works and righteousness and obedience. But the Bible is just not going to make sense to you if you don’t understand the place of obedience in the Christian life.

Faith in Christ can never make sense until you comprehend faith’s fruit. The grace of God can never make sense until you understand that that grace has appeared. As Paul says, it is in Christ to purchase a people of his own possession who are zealous for good works. The gospel saves you from something. It also says you to something. I’m to love what God loves. I’m to obey him. I’m to by faith go where he tells me to go. I’m to follow his commands.

The gospel, the grace of God it produces. It doesn’t earn salvation, but it produces a real breathing obedience to Christ. When I’ve been set free by the truth, I’m so united to Jesus that I cannot help but obey him because I love him.

That leads me to my last point. True children of Abraham, true children of God. They love Jesus Christ. Verse 42 says, “Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.’”

It’s so simple. True child of Abraham, you’re a child of God, you’re going to love the Lord Jesus, Abraham’s son, God’s son. God’s supreme revelation of himself. You’re going to love Jesus.

Christian, I ask you, how are you growing in your love for Jesus Christ? Our text says that children of God, they recognize the truth of Christ not just because they love truth, but because they love Jesus. Truth and love for Christ are never enemies. In fact, genuine love for Christ can only exist where truth is embraced.

Yeah, I just noticed my entire life it is possible to defend truth while losing your affection for Jesus. Paul. Address this. Jesus addressed this. Paul addresses this. John addresses this in the book of Revelation. You can forsake your first love.

There’s a type of Christian that’s extremely passionate about the details of the Bible, that’s extremely passionate about precision and theology, but they’re not abounding in love for Jesus. Those two things must not ever be abstracted in your life. Truth from a thriving, love and abiding walk with Jesus Christ.

My friend. What are those things that lead to greater love for Christ in your life? I want Trinity not to move one inch away from the truth of Christ, one inch away from theological precision. We need more conviction, not less. But we must love the truth because in it we know and enjoy Jesus Christ.

Jesus says this to his enemies in John 8 that they rejected him not merely because they lacked information, but because they did not love God. That danger remains for us today. A church can have perfect doctrine and still be spiritually cold.

Maybe some of you are noticing this in your own heart. Today I’m drifting. I don’t love Jesus the way I used to. I used to be on fire. Now it’s cold as Poland. I used to be on fire. It used to be thriving. And now I feel like I’ve lost something.

Do you know what Christ’s word for you is? It’s the same word to the church in Ephesus in John 2: repent. Return to your first love. Do the works you were doing at the start. Come back. Come back. Abide in his truth. Come back. Remain with him. Come back.

It is sure as the sunrise. All that the Father gives him will come to him. And those who come to him, he will in no wise, never will he ever cast them away. Jesus will receive you, and he will produce greater love in your heart for him and His ways and his truth.

Would that be our prayer? Let’s pray.

Father, we pray against the father of lies. That he would have no children in this room, that they would resist his lies and hold fast to Jesus Christ. We pray that we, as your children would be responsive to your word. Lord, we pray that we would love your son and that we would be changed by the sight of him. Would help us to abide in Jesus. Help us to follow him. Lord, help us to be a people that watch over one another and point each other to the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, may we be a people that are zealous for good works, in no way to earn any favor from you or salvation from you. That is only because of Jesus Christ. But Lord, in a desire to please you, because we are your children, we want to live for the smile of our Heavenly Father. Help us so, Lord, help us. We pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.