Apart from Jesus Christ, you stand before the
law of God totally condemned.
So many people have an idea that by
keeping the law or following some rules, there
is a possibility that we might gain some
favor with God.
And that's absurd.
The law never saved a man.
Never.
No one in the Old Testament was saved
through the law.
You need to understand that.
Through the law comes only condemnation.
The law was given, do you want to
know why?
To lead you to Christ.
You see, when a man looks at the
law and truly sees it as he is,
the only thing he can do is do
what we find here.
Fall down before the law, put his hand
over his mouth and wait his condemnation.
Without Christ, without God, without hope in the
world.
That's where we were.
We weren't just a little bit in trouble.
We weren't just needing a little bit of
help.
We were destitute.
Worse than beggars.
And our righteousness worse than filthy rags.
Under a curse, condemned.
Under the justice of God that cried out
for our destruction.
Honestly, that's true.
That's a part of God that you don't
hear much about anymore.
But unless you understand that, you can't understand
the glory of what Jesus did for you.
And you can't sustain a Christian life apart
from some glimpse of God's glory.
And so I railed at you this morning
on purpose to shock you.
I did.
And what I said is true.
And I went to extremes so that you
would see that this is what we are
apart from God.
I wanted to lock you away in a
cell.
I wanted Moses to beat the living daylights
out of you.
And the law to chase you to the
only Savior that there really is.
And His name, well, He needs no introduction
with you, I hope.
His name is Jesus.
A name that is above every name.
When you look in the mirror, sometimes it
bothers you because you don't see there what
you're supposed to see.
All these people talking about glory and power
and perfection and victory.
And you look in the mirror and see
something that scares you half to death.
Because you realize you're not there.
Well, I want you to realize something.
I'm not there.
And no one's ever been there.
Any man who truly just looks at himself
in the mirror should only see emptiness and
ruin and hopelessness and helplessness.
But let me ask you a question.
Who told you you were supposed to be
looking in a mirror at yourself?
You're not supposed to be looking there.
You're supposed to be looking at the place
I'm going to take you now.
A place where you were set free.
You see, there's a wonderful thing about knowing
who God is and then knowing who you
are.
There's a wonderful thing about knowing that you're
destitute apart from God.
And you know what that is?
Your enemy can do nothing to you.
Satan walks up to me and says, Paul,
you deserve hell.
And do you know what I say?
Well, tell me something I don't know.
You do not deserve to be called a
child of God.
And I have to say, you know, Satan,
your theology is getting better.
You're right about that.
You have no bragging rights whatsoever, Paul Washer.
You are absolute destitute.
Yes, I know.
But look at the one standing behind me.
Look at him, because he's the one I'm
looking at.
You see, you can't survive a war in
South America.
And you can't survive seeing people shot down
in front of you.
And you can't survive looking in the mirror
every day at your weakness.
And you can't survive anything in this Christian
life if you're looking at yourself and you're
thinking that you might find something there.
You can only survive those types of things
by looking at Christ and what Christ has
done for you.
Oh, my dear Christian friend, if you are
a Christian friend, you need to behold the
glory of God.
You don't need books about your problems.
And you don't need six little ways to
do this and that.
We've propped up a sick and dying Christianity
with little books written by men.
You don't need any of that.
What you need is a glimpse of the
glory of Almighty God.
And it will change your life forever.
You'll start on a passionate, crazy, magnificent obsession.
And you know what that will be?
To know God.
To know Him.
And you only want one mark on your
life.
Not greatness.
Not reputation.
Not books and not tapes.
You want to know Him.
The fellowship of His suffering and the power
of His resurrection.
And you want to know all the wonder
that He claimed for you.
A young man asked me this morning, he
said, do you even believe God loves anybody?
I don't talk much about it.
Because I find that preaching on the love
of God always leaves me very sad as
a preacher.
Because I always fail.
You see, you can't count grains of sand.
You can't count stars.
You can't weigh oceans.
And you can't describe what God has done
for you in Christ.
I wanted to bring you to a rotten
place so that you'd find a better one.
Not in yourself, but in God.
Now, what's the good news?
That Jesus died for sinners.
That's all you'll ever need to know.
But why is it that so many Christians
today think that the death of Jesus Christ
is such a small thing?
It's such a tiny thing.
It's like for the most people, it's the
beginning of Christianity.
And once you understand that, well, get along
with something else.
Go study something important.
My friend, all glory is manifested to you
through Jesus and through the cross.
I want you to know that God created
the world through His Son.
I want you to know that every revelation
of God that's ever come to anyone has
come through His Son.
I want you to know that God bought
redemption for His people through His Son.
And if you want to know God, you
seek out His Son.
If you want to know His Son, you
look at a cross.
You see, Moses came up to God one
time because he was called.
He said, God, who are you?
God said, I am.
He said, I am.
Now, we all know what that means.
Theologians will tell us, well, that's talking about
the eternity of God.
He has always been.
He simply exists.
And it's talking about the independence of God.
God needs nothing outside of Himself to exist.
If you ever grow up and tell your
children that God made them because He was
lonely, I want you to know you blasphemed
God.
He's independent of all things.
There's one thing I've always wondered.
I said, that I am name, it's got
more to it than just those two things.
There's got to be something in it.
So I sat down one day.
You might say I'm an idle person, but
I sat down one day and I said,
I'm going to stay here and I figure
out something else about this name.
And then one day I was sitting there
and it seemed to hit me like a
ton of bricks.
If a Martian came down today, I suppose
that could happen in Hannibal, Missouri.
If a Martian came down today and he
asked me, he said, Paul, who are you?
I could say, well, I am like him.
And I am in some way like her.
And well, there's thousands upon thousands and millions
and billions of examples of what I am.
I can point outside of myself to absolutely
anyone and say, I'm like that.
But when you ask God, God, who are
you?
God can't say, I am like him or
her or this or that.
God can only say, I am what I
am because outside of me there's no comparison,
you see.
God has never been able to point to
something else and say, I am like that
or I am like him.
Until, of course, 2,000 years ago when
someone asked God, God, who are you?
And God pointed down to one called Jesus
and said, I am like him.
If you want to know me, I am
there.
And so that's our magnificent obsession.
I've known things about money, about the world.
I came late into this Christianity.
I know a lot of things that the
world can give a person.
They're garbage.
They're excrement, and I mean to use that
word.
Beauty, wealth, fame, power, reputation, everything is worthless
compared to one thing, and that is the
glory of Almighty God.
Systems will not sustain you.
Jobs and ministries will not sustain you.
Fame in the church will not sustain you.
There is only one thing that can motivate
you purely and truly, and it is the
glory of Almighty God.
And in order for you to see that,
you must be brought down.
It's found in Jesus, and it's found in
the cross.
And so we're going to look at what
it means that Jesus Christ died for you.
One time I was going through the Andes
Mountains, my first time actually, and I was
going through a pass called Ticlio.
It's one of the highest in the world.
Well, it is the highest in the world
for a railroad.
We're at about 16,500 feet.
And I was looking at all the majesty
of the mountains, and I looked at the
old missionary sitting beside me, and he was
asleep.
I woke him up, and I said, What's
wrong with you, man?
Look what God has made.
He said, I've seen it a million times.
Well, now I sit in his seat, and
when we go across Ticlio, all the young
guys are saying, My gosh, how can this
old Paul stay asleep while we see all
these beautiful things?
And you want to know why?
When you see things and hear things too
many times, they become commonplace.
When you hear about Jesus dying, and it
no longer moves you, you're off.
You're wrong.
Something's happened.
I love theology.
I know and understand God because of studying
His Word and studying doctrine.
And I want you to know that if
you're not into all this doctrine stuff, then
you just need to go someplace else.
Because your Christianity is not going to be
worth a fizzle.
But I want you to understand that doctrine,
true doctrine, leads to this, passion, and poetry,
and dance, and fire, and shouting, and screaming,
and running through a field like a madman,
because that's what the gospel's all about.
Jesus died for you.
What does it mean?
Turn to Matthew chapter 27.
Matthew 27, verse 45.
From the sixth hour into the ninth hour,
darkness came over all the land.
About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in
a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabbatani, which
means, My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?
We miss the meaning of the cross today.
As a matter of fact, it's almost perished.
You are not saved because of a wooden
cross.
You are not saved because the Romans beat
his back.
You are not saved because of a crown
of thorns on his head.
And you are not saved because someone pierced
his hands with nails.
You are saved because he died, forsaken of
his own father, and condemned in your place.
The pain of the cross is not found
in crosses, or nails, or crowns of thorns,
or stripes on a back.
The pain of the cross, and what has
caused you to be redeemed, is the fact
that the Son of God became a curse.
You see, you don't realize that much because
you don't hear it much.
What makes the cross such a tragic, but
yet such an important event, is that when
Christ was on the cross, all the wrath
of Almighty God that you should drink, He
drank in your place.
You see, when He was in the garden,
I'm amazed that so many people wonder, what
was that cup He was so worried about
drinking, and that He wanted to pass from
Him?
Well, just study the Old Testament.
Almost every reference to cup in the Old
Testament has something to do with the wrath
of Almighty God.
So, on that tree, He carried your sin.
Everything that ever made you an abomination to
Almighty God, everything that God ever hated about
you, everything that ever deserved the wrath of
God, every disgusting, despicable abomination, trespass, and iniquity
you ever committed, He carried.
And He held up the cup of God's
wrath, and He drank it.
And when He turned it over, not one
drop was left for you.
I want you to look at a passage
in the book of Galatians, chapter 3, verse
10.
All who rely on observing the law are
under a curse.
For it is written, Cursed is everyone who
does not continue to do everything written in
the book of the law.
How many times did Adam and Eve sin
before they were cast out of the presence
of God?
Does anyone know?
Once.
How many times have you sinned?
You can't even begin to count.
And because of that, you belong under a
curse.
Now, we can study the word curse in
Hebrew and Greek and all sorts of things.
But if you want to get a true
understanding of that word, go through the entire
Old Testament and New Testament, look up every
reference to it, and try to summarize the
tragedy, the horror of that word.
I came up with this.
When something is cursed before God, it means
that it is so detestable, and such an
abomination before a holy God, that when that
thing is destroyed, God is glorified.
That means, my dear Christian friend, that you
and I, because of our sin and our
breaking of God's law and our declaration of
war against Him, that we had become, to
His holiness, such an abomination, so detestable, each
and every one of you, that God would
actually be destroyed, God would actually be glorified
in His justice through your destruction.
But you know what?
Let's continue to read.
Verse 11.
Clearly, no one is justified before God by
the law, because the righteous will live by
faith.
The law is not based on faith.
On the contrary, the man who does these
things will live by them.
Now, here's the passage.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
law by becoming a curse for us, for
it is written, cursed is everyone who is
hung on a tree.
Where's the pain of the cross?
What makes that death such a terrifying and
yet powerful thing?
You see, you can't know unless you know
what you are apart from it.
Anything that deviates even less than a millimeter
from the righteous standard of God is nothing
more than an abomination before Him and under
a curse.
When Jesus Christ was on that tree, it
wasn't Romans that bothered Him.
It wasn't mocking from Jews.
It's that the One who had always dwelt
in the bosom of the Father carried our
sin and became an abomination before Him and
became accursed.
Jesus Christ, bearing your sin, became so terrible,
such an abomination, God was glorified in His
destruction.
The pain of the cross?
Throw the whip to the wind.
That's a little thing.
Crosses?
Millions of people have died on crosses.
Crowns of thorns?
It's a small thing.
Broken fellowship between the Father and the Son.
Any one of us, in any shape, form
or fashion, trying to draw near to a
holy God would get nothing but the heaven's
door slammed squarely in our face, turned away.
A door was slammed on someone else, the
Son.
He died.
If you're a child of God, He died
for you.
That's what makes everything else so small in
life.
There are so many people today talking about
the presence of God.
But I know that when you truly come
into the presence of God, not just in
my own experience, but in biblical literature, my
friend, every time someone comes into the presence
of God, the only thing they can do
is cry out and pronounce a curse upon
themselves.
Isaiah said, Woe is me, let me be
cut off, or I am cut off.
He pronounced a curse of death upon himself.
You see, we can't draw near to God
on our own because we deserve what Jesus
took.
He died.
And He died not under the wrath of
man.
That's not the big thing here.
He didn't die a martyr.
He wasn't wrestled up there.
This wasn't something against God's will.
It was God's design and God's plan, the
only way for man to be safe.
It is men that sinned against God.
It's men who deserve to die.
God had to become a man to take
men's sin, to take your sin, and to
take your curse and your condemnation and your
wrath and die for you.
Let's go to Isaiah 53.
Isaiah 53, verse 4.
Surely He took up our infirmities and carried
our sorrows.
Yet we considered Him stricken by whom?
By God.
Smitten by Him and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought us peace was upon
Him.
And by His wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray.
Each of us has turned to his own
way.
And the Lord has laid on Him the
iniquity of us all.
Christian, I want you to listen to something.
Probably the best definition of sin you will
ever hear in your life is found in
verse 6.
Each of us has turned to his own
way.
Christian, the majority of Christians in America today
are living according to their own way.
They've built their own God, and so every
time they worship on Sunday, it's idolatry.
They've traded the commandments of God for traditions
of men so that Christianity becomes comfortable.
And I want you to know, it's sin.
You can go no way except God's way.
And you cannot know God's way in this
popular cultural Christianity that we have in America
that is an abomination to God.
You can only know God's way when you
set upon yourself to study Scripture and study
the men and women of God throughout history
who have known Him.
Very little is worth reading today.
Very little written in the last 150 years
is worth reading, because since we no longer
have knowledge of God, we've replaced it with
methods, and methods don't work.
Isn't it interesting, my friend?
Isn't it interesting that you go in a
Christian bookstore, half the books are written on
how to be blessed, and the other half
are written on all the problems that Christians
have because they don't seem to be too
blessed.
We're self-absorbed.
What you need is a glimpse of the
glory of God.
That'll straighten out your psychological problems, your emotional
problems, and every other kind of problem.
God.
God, God, God, God, God.
And here, so that you might be reconciled
to God.
The Son of God was smitten by God
in your place.
Look at verse 10.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush
Him and to cause Him to suffer.
My goodness, do you understand these words?
It was God's will to crush Him.
The only way that you and I might
be saved was for a perfect sacrifice to
be crushed under the full strength of God's
wrath.
God is a just God.
He cannot wink at sin.
He can't pass over it.
It must be dealt with.
And the only way was for it to
be dealt with on a cross.
And to be dealt with through the Holy
Son of God that became an abomination.
The carrier of our sin.
The serpent lifted up in the wilderness to
be crushed by God.
So that the full length of His justice
would be poured out.
So that then mercy could be poured out
on you.
Let's go to Psalms 22.
If you notice, I'm in the Old Testament
a lot.
Young Christian, I want you to know I
suffered a lot of things in my early
Christian life because I paid little attention to
the Old Testament.
If you're a New Testament Christian, you need
to get right with God.
You need to be a biblical Christian.
If you've got an Old Testament professor around
here, take everything he's got.
Psalms 22.
Now, I'm a man of limited knowledge, as
we all are.
But I want to show you some things.
And I hope I'm not going too far
by doing it.
But I want us to look at Psalms
22.
Because here, the Lord seems to have given
us some things about the cross that we
need to understand.
Why?
Look at the first verse.
Psalms 22, verse 1.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
Have you ever heard that anywhere before?
From what I've read, I'm not a scholar
of the Old Testament.
But from what I understand from other men,
that when a rabbi wanted to teach and
to explain, he couldn't say, let's go to
chapter so-and-so.
They didn't have those.
But he would cite the first verse of
a psalm or a passage.
And immediately, his students' attention would be drawn
to the entirety of that psalm.
It's as though Jesus Christ, when He was
hanging on the cross, standing there, hanging there,
mocked, disciples looking on, confused.
What's going on?
No one understanding.
And then all of a sudden, here comes
a cry from the cross that says, My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And I believe with all my heart that
every scholar there, cold water ran down his
back and he trembled.
Because he knew at that moment that Jesus
was teaching something.
That He was explaining something.
He was identifying Himself with prophecy.
He was identifying Himself with the suffering servant
and the Redeemer of Israel.
And He was explaining to everyone around what
was really going on there.
Let's look.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
Why are you so far from saving me?
So far from the words of my groaning.
Oh my God, I cry out by day,
but You do not answer by night and
am not silent.
Yet You are enthroned as the Holy One.
You are the praise of Israel.
And You, our Fathers, put their trust.
They trusted in You and You delivered them.
They cried to You and were saved.
In You they trusted and were not disappointed.
He's basically saying, God, throughout the covenant history
of Israel, ever since Israel has ever been
Your people, there has never been a case
when a man has cried out to You.
When the righteous have cried out to You
and You have not heard.
All throughout our history, God, we see our
own people crying out to You.
And every time, You've been faithful to deliver.
But I cry out to You and You're
silent.
The heavens are stone.
The windows are closed.
The doors are locked.
And I'm alone.
Why?
I think in verse 3 and verse 6,
He tells us, Yet You are enthroned as
the Holy One.
Verse 6, And I'm a worm and I'm
a worm.
That's why.
It goes on and it talks about what
could be the crucifixion.
But it seems to me that everyone is
always preaching about nails and crosses.
And they're not preaching about the right thing.
That the pain of the tree has nothing
to do with metal or wood.
But with the fact that the Son of
God became a low thing.
The most exalted name in all of glory
became a low thing.
A worm, a serpent, a lamb, a goat,
a sacrifice, a substitution.
Make no mistake about it.
An expiation, a thing to appease the wrath
of Almighty God.
Now, again, I just might show my colors
here.
And I might go too far with this
illustration.
I hope not.
But it's interesting to me that I was
studying the word worm there.
And actually the word is scarlet or crimson.
It refers to not just a worm, but
a special kind of worm.
And I did a little research on that
worm.
And it seemed that they would do something
quite terrible to this type of worm.
It was called scarlet for a reason.
You could make a beautiful scarlet purple dye
out of it.
They'd set it on a table.
They'd take a rock and they'd crush it.
And they'd take that crushed bloody mass and
use it as a dye.
But it was so expensive and so rare
that they would use that dye only to
make robes for royalty, for priests.
Let's go to Revelation chapter 5, verse 8.
Let's start in verse 2.
And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in
a loud voice, Who is worthy to break
the seals and open the scroll?
But no one in heaven or in earth
or under the earth could open the scroll
or even look inside it.
I wept and wept because no one was
found who was worthy to open the scroll
and look inside.
My dear Christian, do you see what happened
here?
John recognized something.
He was without hope.
He was totally destitute of life and meaning
and hope of any possibility of salvation because
no one could open the scroll.
And he wept and wept and wept.
I find it very difficult in our modern
day Christianity to see that there's not much
tears in conversion anymore.
And there's not much tears because no one
really recognizes the great need they have.
You see, you have to be brought to
a place where you weep because you see
the holiness of God and you see yourself
an abomination before Him.
And you weep and you weep and there
is no comfort and no balm in Gilead
because you're lost.
And then comfort comes.
Verse 5, Then one of the elders said
to me, Do not weep.
See the lion of the tribe of Judah,
the root of David, has triumphed.
He is able to open the scroll and
its seven seals.
Then I saw a lamb looking as if
it had been slain.
The only type of Jesus that saves is
the one that was crucified.
There's a lot of others running around today.
They're not the right ones.
And the church is not able to discern
between the wrong ones and the right ones
because we have no part with the doctrine,
theology, or study of God's Word.
I saw a lamb looking as if it
had been slain, standing in the center of
the throne.
Make no mistake, a man is not in
the center of that throne.
It is the lamb.
Encircled by four living creatures and the elders,
he had seven horns and seven eyes, which
are the seven spirits of God sent out
into all the earth.
He came and took the scroll from the
right hand of him.
Who sat on the throne and when he
had taken it, the four living creatures and
the 24 elders fell down before the lamb.
Each one had a harp and they were
holding golden bowls full of incense, which are
the prayers of the saints.
And they sang a new song.
Worthy are you to take the scroll and
to open its seals because you were slain
and with your blood you purchased men for
God from every tribe and language and people
and nation.
And you have made them to be a
kingdom and priests.
For an illustration or for an illustration's sake,
as that worm was crushed and the blood
flowed to make robes for kings and priests.
The Son of God was crushed and blood
flowed.
It had to flow because without blood there
is no remission of sins.
And that blood purchased you for God.
Now, I want you to understand something.
The word purchased, you are not your own.
How dare you live as though you were.
You have no rights.
All your dreams are His.
All your hopes are His.
You make no decisions about your life.
You are property bought by the blood of
the Son of God.
That is the gospel according to Jesus.
This lamb that was slain was slain primarily
and foremost, make no mistake about it, for
the glory of God.
And you were saved primarily not because of
yourself but for the glory of God.
But in that glory comes to you an
inexpressible love.
Something that goes so far beyond what any
man would ever have the opportunity to explain.
The love of God is yours now.
And you are the love of God because
He died for you.
But He did not stay dead.
In your gospel, don't leave Him laying.
I hear gospels today.
At Southwestern Seminary, men were graduating with their
master's degree in theology, and a professor asked
me to give them a little test.
I said, Paul, give them a test, see
what they know.
So I said to each one of them,
16 of them in matter of fact, I
said, would you tell me the gospel?
Not one of them got it right.
They were all wandering around in For God
So Loved the World somewhere.
And I'm no way making light of that
passage.
They were telling me that Jesus died.
They were telling me about victory.
They were telling me about all sorts of
things.
But they weren't telling me about the gospel.
That men have rebelled against God and deserve
the wrath of Almighty God.
But God in His graciousness and for His
own glory has sent His Son.
And His Son became the sin bearer and
became accursed before God.
And He died under the wrath of God.
And He drank God's wrath.
And He paid the price.
And on the third day, He rose again
from the dead.
You see, my friend, anybody can die on
a cross.
But it takes God to rise again.
And that's what He did.
On the third day, He rose again.
And make no mistake about it, my friend,
they did not roll away the stone to
let Him out.
They rolled away the stone to show He
wasn't there anymore.
Too many men today are rolling back too
many stones and helping God too much.
They need to get out of the way
and bow down and give all glory to
God.
This is the gospel according to Jesus.
And then this Jesus, He did not stay
here.
What did He do?
He ascended up.
How?
I really don't know.
But I read a lot of dead theologians
that had an idea.
Let's go to Psalms 24.
Psalms 24, The earth is the Lord's and
everything in it, the world and all who
live in it.
For He founded it upon the seas and
established it upon the waters.
What this passage is simply trying to tell
us is the same thing Isaiah tells us
in chapter 66, verse 1 and 2.
God needs nothing for man.
He needs nothing for man.
And then He goes on to tell us
who can approach this God.
Who can do it?
Who has the right?
Well, let's see.
Verse 4, verse 3.
Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?
Who may stand in His holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure
heart, who does not lift up his soul
to an idol or swear by what is
false.
Do any of you qualify?
No.
A thousand times no.
None of us qualify.
That's why John wept.
That's why we should all have wept at
one time.
Because true knowledge of salvation realizes that there
is no salvation in yourself.
No one can ascend that hill.
No one can approach God.
No one could approach God.
Never.
This silly idea that Christians have today about
great men of God.
It's ridiculous.
There's never been such thing as a great
man of God.
Only tiny, pathetic, sinful, pitiful men of a
great and mighty and merciful God.
There's never been a man to ascend that
hill.
Never been a man to get in through
the door.
Not even a foot.
Not even to look inside.
Until, of course, then came Jesus.
Two thousand years ago, He rose again from
the dead.
And He ascended up to the right hand
of the Majesty upon high.
Now, I'm not sure how He did it.
But look at verse 7.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates.
Be lifted up, ye ancient doors, that the
King of glory may come in.
Who is the King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty.
The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates.
Lift them up, ye ancient doors, that the
King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord mighty.
He is the King of glory.
The old saints used to say, they take
this passage along with Ephesians chapter 4.
And they would say, along with Colossians also,
that on the cross, Jesus triumphed over all
the enemies of God.
He destroyed every power and principality and might
and dominion.
When He died on that cross, He vindicated
God.
And when He rose again from the dead,
God vindicated Him.
And then He ascended up.
And He comes to the doors of heaven.
The first time someone would dare stick their
face around there.
And He walks up to heaven and He
said, Be lifted up, ye ancient doors.
Be thrown back, ye eternal gates, that the
King of glory might come in.
And they answered back from heaven and said,
Who is this man?
Who is this one?
No one's ever approached this gate.
Who's going to come through this gate?
And some will bow.
Make no mistake, we have no limp-wristed
God.
Some will bow because of a rod of
iron that breaks their knees.
They will bow.
And you will bow.
And eternity, that began at your conversion, will
find itself fulfilled in one thing.
That one thing.
God.
That God might become all in all.
And then you take this with Ephesians.
I find it so funny that so many
people ask and can't answer the question of
why has God done everything He's ever done.
They say it's a mystery.
I say it's not.
I say they ought to read Ephesians.
Do you want to know why God has
done everything He's ever done?
Do you want to know why there was
a garden, and why there was a fall,
and why there was a Christ, and why
there was a cross, and why there was
a resurrection, and why there's you?
Do you really want to know?
Do you have enough time?
Or is your Christianity looking at the clock?
I want to show you something that's helped
me a great deal.
It's in Ephesians.
And let's look there quickly.
Ephesians chapter 2, verse 6.
And God raised us up with Christ and
seated us with Him in the heavenly realms
in Christ Jesus.
In order that in the coming ages He
might show the incomparable riches of His grace
expressed in His kindness to us in Christ
Jesus.
Chapter 3, verse 10.
His intent was that now through the church
the manifold wisdom of God should be made
known to the rulers and authorities in the
heavenly realms according to His eternal purpose which
He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What does it mean?
It means that everything that has been done
has been done as a demonstration to reveal
the glory of God not only to creation
that we know, but creation that goes far
beyond anything we ever dreamed about.
One thing you learn about theology is that
God is a God of revelation.
That means God desires to reveal Himself for
the sake of His own glory.
God makes Himself known and therefore God is
glorified in that knowledge that is possessed by
His creatures.
So let's imagine a throne room for a
moment in eternity somewhere long ago.
And we have principalities and powers and mights
and dominions all before the throne of God
worshiping the One who's created them.
And this God desires to reveal Himself in
such a way to them so that they
might know Him in a way that no
one has ever known Him before.
And so what does He do?
An act of grace.
He creates something far below Himself.
Us.
Man.
Oh, don't think that you're so hot.
He could have done much better with all
of us.
You see, making man was no big thing
for Him.
It was a step down.
And He demonstrated His graciousness in our creation
even.
And then there was this fall.
And with the fall came a rattling of
arms in heaven.
Every principality and power and might and dominion
rallied to war against this little thing that
was made that would in some way lift
its face up to God and rebel.
But instead of sending destruction, God demonstrates His
mercy again.
And instead of sending forth wrath, He gave
a promise that one day someone would come,
born of woman, born under the law.
He would crush the head of the serpent
and he'd be wounded in the heel.
And the angels look on.
How could it be that God could be
this way?
How could it be that He could be
so gracious?
How could He deal with such a creature?
Eternity rolls on and there's a noise in
heaven, something totally unheard of.
The Son of God is to become a
what?
A man?
That thing, He is to become one of
them.
The glory of heaven, the treasure of eternity
is now going to become that.
My, isn't God something that we didn't know
about before?
And then He goes down and He's nailed
to a tree and armor clanks again in
heaven because anyone who would do that to
the very person for which they were created
deserves to die.
But in the plan of God, He was
sent to die for us.
And in His death, He redeemed a people
for Himself.
And then He cleaned that people off and
He sanctifies that people.
And then one day a great horn blows
in heaven and the Christ Himself comes back
to take His own.
And these little things, these little insignificant creatures,
these things that were bound in disgust, these
things that made themselves an abomination, these things
that have no right to even enter on
a crystal lake.
They walk into heaven with the Son of
God transformed into His image and they sit
down at the right hand of the Son
of God in heaven.
That's you.
And then all the glory and graciousness of
God throughout all of eternity is poured out
on you.
And then all principalities and powers and dominions
and every creature that's ever been created takes
one look at you and falls down before
the throne of God throughout eternity, worshiping God
because they now know who He is by
the way that He acted and continues to
act towards you.
You are a demonstration of the glory and
the majesty and the love and the graciousness
of God.
That's your purpose.
All creation will worship God because of what
He's done for you.
That's why God becomes your magnificent obsession.
I'm so sad that it couldn't be said
in a greater way.
But you are, without a doubt, the most
privileged of all creatures that have ever been
created.
And the love of God towards you goes
far beyond what can be written.
And look at what's ahead of you.
To the wind with your problems.
To the wind with insecurities.
To the wind with trials.
To the wind with tribulation.
To the wind with not being everything you
want to be right now.
To the wind with all of it.
And rejoice.
Why?
Look what's ahead of you, man.
Look what's ahead of you.
And all because He died and rose again
from the dead.
Now rejoice.
Rejoice.
I feel a need to worship a bit
about Jesus, if you wouldn't mind.
You could find an appropriate song.
I trust the Holy Spirit to lead you.
You do whatever God tells you to do.
You go home if He tells you to
go home.
You fall down on your face and you
worship Him all night if He tells you
to do so.
Go run around in the snow.
But if your heart is cold now, heaven
have pity upon you.
Let's pray.
Father, we come before you in the name
that is above every name.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Oh God, what is man that thou shalt
take thought of him, or the son of
man that thou shalt be concerned for him,
Father?
Oh God, great is your graciousness and your
mercy that you love us in a way
such as this.
Us, Lord, a bag of dust.
We've become the envy of heaven.
How could it be, Lord, that we could
boast except in the cross of Jesus Christ
our Lord?
And how could it be, Lord, that we
could live for anyone or anything other than
Him?
Holy Spirit, work in our lives.
In Jesus' name, amen.