Apart From Jesus

Introduction

As I was thinking about the words we have been singing to the throne of God this morning and the words of Ed’s prayer as he brought us into the very presence of God. I am continually awed as time passes by the great responsibility and the great privilege that comes from presenting the Word of God. And I am so grateful for this morning’s opportunity to deliver such a message from God’s great message to us.

And if you can write your own chain reference, getting in the mode of where Mike is going to take us in his Bible study next Lord’s Day morning. Let’s tie these three passages together this morning and make a few observations. In John 15, in John 15, as Jesus is addressing his disciples the night of his betrayal and giving them important instruction and information about their lives.

And he says in verse 4, Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine. So neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him. He bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. In John’s message, I have pointed out a number of times that some of the words Jesus says are uniquely Jesus. No one else can say these kinds of things. What an incredible statement he makes to his disciples here. And I particularly want you to notice in the latter part of that, as he talks about the need for them to abide in him and he in them.

And the point of this relationship is that a successful relationship with Jesus Christ, it bears much fruit. But he says, without that, extreme consequences.

In John chapter 1, when the word is introduced, the word who was God and the word who was with God and who became flesh and tabernacled or dwelt among us. And it says that word in verse 3 of John 1, all things came into being by him. That was the word’s role in the existence of everything material that we see and even ourselves. All things came into being by him, and apart from him, that same phrase theology that we saw in John 15, apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. And with these two passages together, I have bracketed in my Bible these four words. Apart from me, nothing. I have those bracketed in John chapter 1 and verse 3, because that’s such an important point.

Apart from him, nothing, apart from me, he says, nothing. Oh, he talks about creation, that nothing created has come into being apart from him. But in John 15, he talks about our role in his disciples, and that without him we can do nothing. And so I want you to take those four words. And that’s what this lesson is about this morning. And I want you to mark them in your minds, if not in your Bible.

None of this that we see, none of us, would be here today apart from him. And all that we are and ever hope to be is because of him. And if we choose to live our lives without him, the result is nothing. That’s about as low as it gets. There’s not anything below nothing. Why am I preaching this? I’m preaching to a group of people this morning that believes that a right relationship with God is important and necessary and should be pursued, and rightfully so as we read these verses. But I want to tell you, there will be times in your life. There will be moments of discouragement. There will be moments of pain. There will be moments of temptation. There will be struggles and difficulties and trials where the devil will encourage you to think.

I can’t make it, I can’t do it, and away we go. Oh, you’re not there today. But you might be one day soon.

1. No Pardon for Sins

But I want to tell you, sometimes in the midst of the vapor, it can be seemingly a very long time. And there are hills and there are valleys. And when you hit those lows, when you hit those valleys, sometimes you can go really low. And when you are there, I want you to remember these four words. Apart from him. Nothing. And there are five applications that I want to make from this thought this morning. But apart from Jesus, number one, there is no pardon for sins. You see, as those who have come to accountable age, we have transgressed the law of God. There is sin on our account. We have become separated from a perfect and holy God. And the only remedy for that problem, whether it was one sin or a hundred sins, the only remedy for that problem is Jesus Christ dying on Calvary for us.

It is the only way that we could find pardon. And thus Jesus would say another one of those dramatic statements that only Jesus could say. Unless you believe that I am. Some translations add the word he, but the point is that he is the I am. Unless you believe that I am, you shall die in your sins. So he says, I don’t. I don’t think I need Jesus. The kind of restrictions you’re talking about, the need for diligence, the need for commitment, the exercise of self control. Oh, I don’t think I’m up for that. That’s challenging. That’s demanding. That’s difficult. Jesus said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in yourselves. He was challenging the disciples in John chapter 6 to a higher kind of commitment and dedication.

And they knew full well what he was demanding because many of them withdrew and would not follow him anymore. But I’ll tell you what happens when you do that. As he turns to his disciples in John 6 and says, Will you also go away? Peter oftentimes would open his mouth and stick in his foot. But this was not one of those occasions. On this occasion, he spoke reasonably and logically when he said, To whom shall we go? If we’re going to walk away from you, Lord, where are we going to go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. We need you. We need him to rectify our sins, unless we believe that he is the I am. We will die in our sins. And what a marvelous thing it is, according to Psalm 103, verses 3 and 4, that God pardons our iniquities, heals our diseases, and redeems our lives from the pit.

But secondly, I want you to look at this text. Going along with John 15 and John chapter 1.

Apart from him. 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 12. Paul is talking about the resurrection. Now, if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. Look, if Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, there will be a resurrection that follows. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain. Your faith is also vain. Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses of God. We are liars.

If in fact the dead are not raised. Look, if there is not going to be a resurrection of the dead, then that implies that Christ Himself was not raised, because those two things go hand in hand. And we’re liars because we said he was raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. Then those who also who have fallen asleep in Christ, no resurrection. They’re gone. They’ve perished. If we have hoped in Christ, in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. Remember when we receive pardon for sins? How do we do that? When the scripture instructs us, when we were born of the Spirit and born of the water and born of the blood of Jesus, we were baptized into Christ.

2. No Profitable Prayer

We put to death an old man and we rise to walk in newness of life in likeness of his resurrection. I want to tell you, baptism has no meaning and significance whatsoever unless Christ was raised from the dead. There’s no new life. There’s no pardon for sins. Apart from him. Nothing. But these verses and the implications and consequences that it talks about are also true of the individual who rejects Jesus altogether. Without Jesus, everything is worthless and vain and empty. And ultimately miserable. No pardon for sins. We’ll come back to these thoughts in a minute. No profitable prayer. In times of crisis, people often turn to prayer. But apart from a right relationship with Jesus, those prayers are empty. The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears attend to their prayers.

1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 12. There will be times of crisis and difficulty in your life when you’re going to want to turn to a source higher than yourself and you’re going to need him. But without him, you have no such avenue or access. But as believers, we can go boldly to the throne of grace to find help and mercy in a time of need. I love that passage in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 through 16. What great solace and comfort for the believer. And we’ll come back to that in point number four. But point number three.

3. No Purpose in Your Life Beyond Pleasure

Apart from Jesus. Somebody says, again, these restrictions, these challenges, the holy life and the demands of living holy before God, too difficult, too challenging, I choose to reject. Well, what’s that leave you? No purpose in your life beyond pleasure. Are you still in 1 Corinthians 15? Go down to verse 32. Paul’s talking about some of the results of preaching the message of the resurrection. And he says, after he says, I died daily, in a dramatic statement in verse 31, due to the death of Christ. He says, if from human motives in verse 32, I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, whether that’s the wild beasts of false teachers or literal wild beasts in an arena of persecution. I sort of like the latter. But not that I would enjoy doing that.

But I think that’s what the reference is to.

This will be great. No, they don’t give you a gun. It’s you versus the beast. If I did this purely from human motives. What does it profit me? If the dead are not raised? Let us eat, drink. Let us eat and drink. And that phrase often says, let us eat, drink, and be merry. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. In other words, just get everything out of life that you can. If Christ is not raised, that’s what you’re left with. And so if you reject Jesus and His message and His will for your life, you might as well just get everything out of it that you can. Eat and drink and be merry. And Paul says, from the standpoint, if the resurrection did not happen, if the resurrection is not true, then that’s what you ought to do with your life.

For the brief moments that you have it. And yet some people, even though the resurrection is true, say, well, that’s, again, I don’t want what Jesus has to offer. So what’s that leave you with? Have a blast while you last. Okay. Let’s suppose. You don’t have to go to work tomorrow morning. In fact, you don’t have to go to work ever again. You are instantly at this moment wealthy beyond your imagination. Say goodbye to the nine to five. You can do whatever you want. Whenever you want. And you can buy your own private jet to go wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go. No limits. Hey, let’s try that for a while. I’ll give it a whirl. How about you? And there you go.

Live it up.

At the end of it all, even in the midst of it all. What do you have? You know, that’s really the point Solomon is making in Ecclesiastes chapter 2. He had it all. Bill Gates had nothing on Solomon. He could do whatever he wants when he wanted.

Not the richest man ever to live. And so he tried everything. And I’ve loved Ecclesiastes too for a long time. When he looked at the results of all that he had done as he sought pleasure.

Parting, sexual pleasure. He tried everything. Beauty. He said, This is the reward for all that I’ve done. Hey, what he’s saying is, what I got out of it is what I got out of it. And that was it. All was vanity. And vexation of spirit and striving after wind. Ultimately, it does not profit. So if you reject Jesus, I want to tell you, just live it up. Have the time of your life. But at the end of the day, what will you have? Nothing. Not anything of value. And I’ll tell you, when you reject Jesus, you give up some things. You give up knowing what Jesus meant when he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. Acts 20 and verse 35. You give up what it means to love as I have loved you.

You give that up. You give up your life. In wishing to save your life, you lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake shall find it. Mark chapter 8 and verse 35. And I’ll tell you what else you give up. You give up the times of refreshing that only come from the presence of the Lord when we repent and be converted to Him. Acts chapter 3 and verse 19. Oh, you’re getting a lot. But in the end, what are you really getting?

I love when C.S. Lewis talks about the life of pleasure that people choose. And he says, the problem with people is not that they want too much, but they settle for too little. When God offers a holiday at sea, they’re content with building mud pies and a slum. And he says, we are far too easily pleased. It’s not that we want too much, it’s that we settled for too little. No purpose in life beyond pleasure. I want to tell you, don’t discount people if they don’t discount the importance of having purpose in your life when you know on the Lord’s Day on Sunday morning while the rest of the world is sleeping in and getting up and sort of taking it easy as they hardly get up before noon.

4. No Help Beyond Man

Here we are this morning. We’ve sacrificed those hours of sleep that are so important to the world. We had a purpose today. And it’s a purpose that’s out of this world. As we came and assembled with the Lord’s people, we have made an investment in eternal things and in our souls. And it is so high. And sometimes when people get discouraged and want to give up on the Lord, they forget the awesome things in which we are engaged and the wonderful things that we know about life and about eternity. This is way overrated. We have a greater purpose than this. Tell you what else. When you reject Jesus, you have no help beyond man. I don’t know how low these loads are going to be. I don’t know if you’ll ever reach the place where some of us have, where there was absolutely nothing that anyone could say or do to help your pain or your misery.

Oh, I guess physically we’ll all one day be there. As our bodies ultimately die. But some of you know what I mean to be in a position where there were no words of comfort that would help. Man was powerless. Facing some natural disaster. I think of the tornadoes that swept across our nation, particularly the state of Alabama, in recent years. You know, we can predict the weather, we can give off warning signals. Tunnel cloud, tornado sighted tornado warning. I mean, they didn’t have those years ago. The Galveston storm, the hurricane that came in, and they weren’t ready for that. Oh, we have so much more technology now. But you know what? We knew it was coming. But Rita and I can all the other hurricanes still do their business.

5. No Hope Beyond Now

No, we can’t stop them. We can’t prevent them. We can’t even shelter everybody from them. Tornadoes in the middle of the night. The warnings go off, but we can’t stop. Who are we going to look to for help and assistance when man can do nothing? And finally, without him, there is no hope beyond now. What a low aim. Just this. Just the now.

What on earth are you living for? What on earth are you living for? And then what on earth are you living for? We have hopes beyond this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly await for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he will conform our bodies in this lowly estate into conformity with His glory. We have a glorious future, not just for our souls, but for a future existence with a body that is far more incredible than anything that we can imagine. An immortal soul and body. And we will be with him. As Jude said, as we read quickly at the end of class in our study of the book of Jude. We will be with Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom belongs glory and majesty and dominion and authority before all time and now and forever.

Conclusion

Amen. But listen this and mark it well.

Without him, nothing.

And you’ve not come to him. And that’s his invitation. Come to me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus can deal with the burdens and the burden of our sin like no one else can. Come to me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Come, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly, and you shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. This yoke is what you should want and desire. If you choose it, you will be blessed. If you reject it. Nothing. What part of nothing do you really want? That’s your choice. That’s the choice that has been before men every day.

That the sun has arisen. Will you choose life or will you choose death? Will you choose salvation in Jesus or will you choose nothing. Without God and without hope in the world. That’s what Paul described in Ephesians chapter 2. And if you’re without Christ this morning, oh, and I’ll tell you, a greater danger too in this is thinking that you have Jesus when you really don’t. When you have based your feelings about your relationship with Him, not on this message and what it instructs you to do, but what you think you should do in order to be saved. One of the great tragedies of our time is the number of people all around us who think they have Jesus and they do not. And what we are trying to do in this place is to make sure that doesn’t describe us.

And just because we teach the truth about what saves an individual by grace through faith and the importance and the necessity of baptism for the remission of sins, even then, as we described this morning in the book of Jude, even then believers must be careful. Or else they’ll be swept away by false teaching and false influences. Those who turn the grace of God into lawlessness or licentiousness, we need to be careful that we do not have a false assurance. We ought to constantly maintenance our hearts and their affections and make sure that they’re placed on things above and not on things of this earth. Because if we are not careful, we can find ourselves again in this awful circumstance of being apart from Him. And everything we do in this place is designed to help all of us to be with Him.

To abide in Him and He in us. And as a result of that, always is, always, and we are doing it today, right now together, bearing much fruit. The fruit of our lips that brings praise to God is a part of that fruit that we bear. What a glorious thing that we this morning have come into the presence of God, blending our voices in praise of the one who created us and the Son who died for us. That’s awesome fruit, my friends. And let’s hold on to it tenaciously and let nothing separate us from Him. So if you’re subject to His call, come and find refreshing in the presence of the Lord. And remember that apart from Him there’s nothing. Won’t you come while we stand and sing?