In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 1 through
4, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 4, we
stand and read God's word.
Now I make known to you, brethren, the
gospel which I preached to you, which also
you received, in which also you stand, by
which also you are saved, if you hold
fast the word which I preached to you,
unless you believed in vain.
For I delivered to you as of first
importance what I also received, that Christ died
for our sins according to the scriptures, and
that he was buried, and that he was
raised on the third day according to the
scriptures.
Let's pray.
Father, I pray, Lord,
to sustain this preacher in the midst of
an impossible task, to preach the gospel of
your dear son.
Open up the hearts, Lord, that they might
receive.
In Jesus' name, amen.
You may be seated.
We studied verse 1 and 2 this morning,
and verse 3, for I delivered to you
as of first importance.
You know, my dear friend, you can go
through every supposed Christian TV station in America.
You can surf the channels, surf the nets,
look at ministries.
You can listen to missionaries preach, and I
want to tell you something.
Far and wide you will have to travel
before you hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And yet, Paul says here, for I delivered
to you, delivered it as a messenger, as
a faithful carrier, as of first importance, there
is nothing more important than the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
There is no greater theme to preach.
There is no greater cause to defend than
the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And as I said this morning, it is
not some little truth that you learn at
the beginning of your Christian life.
It's the great truth you chase down and
will chase down throughout all of eternity.
This gospel, for I delivered to you as
of first importance, what I also received.
Paul is making this statement, and why?
Because there were so many who claimed that
Paul was not that much of an apostle.
And do you want to know why?
Because for people who look at things in
the flesh, he was born at the wrong
time.
He wasn't in the inner circle at first,
and if church tradition tells us anything, he
didn't look like the man that you would
want in your pulpit.
Some say, I've heard scholars say that it
has been supposed that maybe he was four
foot nine, low legged, very large nose and
not a hair on his head.
We understand from different passages in Scripture, he
seems to be a sickly man, not someone
you want to build a big church around.
Beware whom you choose to fill this pulpit.
Appearances are very deceiving.
I preached one message and a lady came
to me and said, Surely you are a
man of God.
And I said, Surely you are a woman
who does not read the Bible with one
sermon.
You'd lay a mantle on a man.
Paul would have never been asked here.
He had no great speaking ability.
But he delivered the message and he was
faithful to that call.
He said, I delivered to you as a
first importance.
The one thing that I love about Spurgeon
is that when the gospel message was crumbling
around him by so many preachers that turned
their back on the truth of Scripture, he
stood there like a beacon.
And you say, yes, it had mighty success.
Have you studied his entire life?
For in the end, he knew what it
was to suffer for the cause of truth,
he knew what it was to have everyone
turn their back on him.
He said basically this, he says, I know
that now the message I preach is being
eaten by dogs, but one day the truth
I preach will be vindicated.
And it was and it was.
So what we're looking at here is a
man who delivered to the people as a
first importance, not seven ways to have a
successful life, not 13 ways to balance your
checkbook and not 10 steps to self-esteem.
But he delivered to them the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
That is the bomb in Gilead.
That is the healing power.
That is the strength and the only strength
of God revealed in a message preached by
men.
He says, well, I delivered to you as
a first importance what I also received, that
Christ died.
For our sins, according to the scriptures.
And that he was buried, why does Paul
put emphasis there?
Why does the spirit put emphasis there?
For this reason, there were so many who
said Christ did not die, even until today,
there are liberal theologians and pseudo scholars who
claim that he simply passed out on that
tree and came alive in the coolness of
the tomb, rolled a who knows how many
hundreds of pounds stone out of the way
and took off for northern Galilee, never to
be seen again.
No, he died.
And not only is this a proof of
death, his burial, but it is a sign
for us that everything death could do, our
Christ suffered, but only to strangle death out
of death and rise again.
He died, he was buried and he was
raised on the third day, according to the
scriptures.
Paul saying this is not a new message
I bring to you.
This is according to the scriptures.
And when he said according to the scriptures,
he was not speaking about the New Testament.
He said, according to the scriptures, he was
talking about the old that which had been
written hundreds and thousands of years.
But it doesn't matter how long it takes
for God to fulfill a promise, you can
count on this, it will always be fulfilled
and always in the most unusual of ways.
Now, Christ died.
What does that mean?
Christ died for our sins.
What does that mean?
I want us to go to Romans chapter
three, and there is several months of preaching
in this one text, Romans chapter three, verse
twenty three, for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God.
All have sinned.
That doesn't terrify you.
It should.
As the Puritans would say, you have not
stand against some inferior prince, you have not
broken the laws of some some domestic governor.
You have not violated the rules of tiny
mayor of a small village in a strange
place, but you have rebelled against the very
Lord of Glory.
Man asked me one time, a reporter, he
said, why are this these meetings?
You're always telling the people to be afraid
because they ought to be afraid.
There are some things, sir, that you should
fear the extent of our sin.
How vile is it?
How can we know we're a people of
unclean lips and we dwell among the people
of unclean lips, sin around us, men drink
it down like it was water.
It's the common practice of the day.
Commercials are based on sin.
Marketing strategies are built upon sin, revel in
sin, laugh at sin, love sin.
What is it to rebel against God on
the day he stood on that first day
of all days?
He said, stars.
Put yourself there and move in this direction
until I give you another command, and they
bowed their head and said, yes, sir.
He said, planet, put yourself to this spin
and dance to my song.
They obeyed him with trembling.
He said, mountains be lifted up and valleys
cast down.
See, you will only go this far.
Yes, sir.
And then he looks at you and says,
come and you go, no, the vileness of
sin will never be understood by man, at
least in this century.
The sinfulness of sin, as the Puritans would
say, the lunacy of sin, the insanity of
sin, all words used by theologians down through
the ages, and they don't even begin to
tell us the violence of sin.
All have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God.
It is very common to take this passage
today and make it so man centered, fallen
short of the glory of God.
To many today, that means that God had
this marvelous purpose and this marvelous design and
this wonderful image of us and that we
have fallen short of all the great things
we could have been.
That's not what this passage means.
Because you define a passage, its meaning in
the context of the passage, fallen short of
the glory of God, what does it mean?
Listen to this, for even though they knew
God, they did not honor him as God
fallen short of the glory.
Means that you were made for God and
you only find meaning and you only find
life in serving that purpose, you were not
made for any other reason.
And to rip yourself out, to dislocate yourself
from the purposes of God and try to
be something you were never created to be
will only leave you in futility.
And that's where we see most people today.
And even most people identify themselves, Christianity.
Have you ever noticed we are the wealthiest,
most protected group of Christians in the history
of Christianity, and yet you go into a
Christian bookstore and half the books there are
written about how empty we are and why
is that we are empty for the same
reason Jesus Christ was never empty.
He had food to eat that we know
not of his food was to do the
will of his father who sent him fallen
short.
I was born in the country.
I do things like someone in the country.
I'm a hunter, I make my own bows
that I shoot with, you can you can
take down an elk with a bow I
make, but you can't play a song on
it.
It makes for a great hunting weapon.
It's a terrible, terrible instrument for music.
It wasn't made for that, was it?
And to try to play music on one
of my bows, you would just be frustrated.
You would end just pitifully.
Well, you weren't created for doing many of
the things you're doing.
You weren't created for being many of the
things you're being.
You were created for him, for him and
only for him, everything for him.
I'll have fallen short of the glory of
God.
Now, in verse 24, being justified.
This is the thing of every religion being
justified.
What does it mean?
How can someone be declared right before God?
Isn't it amazing that every religion in the
world ask this question?
How can a man be declared right before
God that automatically tells us that every man
in the world has a guilty conscience?
We know something's wrong.
We can put it out of the back
of our minds.
We can do everything to stomp it out.
But it is there.
We know we are not right.
And we know that somehow we have to
be made right.
That's what this means.
Being justified, speaking about believers, they are justified.
Now, what does that mean?
Does it mean that believers are righteous?
No.
To say a man is righteous is to
say that man is sinless, that man is
perfect.
There's not a righteous man in that sense
in this room.
But when the Bible talks about righteousness or
justification, it is talking about forensic justification, legal
justification.
God has declared you to be right legally
in the courts of God, in the mind
of God.
You, if you are a believer, you have
been declared right with him.
That's what it means.
It's a legal declaration, I desire to be
righteous, I desire to be holy, but I'm
not.
I still sin, I still have wayward thoughts,
I still have need of brokenness and repentance,
a hunger and thirst for righteousness, but I'm
not completely satisfied, but I am declared righteous
before God.
This is being justified as a gift by
his grace.
Now, this is redundant.
He's saying being justified basically as a gift,
as a gift, as a gift, as a
gift, as a gift.
Now, why is that?
I'll tell you why.
Men hate grace.
What is grace?
Unmerited favor, men hate it.
You think, hold on, why would anybody hate
grace?
I'll tell you why.
To receive grace is to acknowledge need, to
acknowledge need is to humble yourself before God,
and that's one thing men do not want
to do.
If you were to open the doors of
hell at this very moment and promise every
man there a free trip out of hell
forever, if only they will bow their knee
to God, they would slam the door in
your face and stay in there.
That's how much men hate God.
We don't like grace.
That is why if you do, I tell
students sometimes, I say, you probably would enjoy
a class with me in comparative religions.
And they say, why?
I said, because there's only two religions in
the whole world.
There's a religion of works and a religion
of grace, and that is it.
I was back there this morning, and some
of you know, witnessing for an hour and
a half to a couple who walked into
this church, a Hindu couple, and it was
simply a battle between works and grace.
Them being made right with God through their
own virtue and merit, and me being right
with God through the virtue and merit of
another, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Now, what he says here is being justified
as a gift.
Now, this is the same word.
Have you read in Scripture where it says
they hated him without a cause?
Did Jesus Christ ever give anyone a cause
to hate him?
No.
Well, in the same way, you gave God
no cause to declare you right.
Sometimes when when people will be singing, there's
certain songs that are written.
And, you know, it's basically this question.
I just can't figure out why God would
save someone like me.
I feel like a school kid in the
back of the church going, oh, pick me,
I'll tell you.
I know exactly why he saved you, for
his own glory and because he is love.
And it had absolutely nothing to do with
you, because the only thing you could ever
motivate a holy, just God to do would
be to condemn you eternally.
So it says being justified as a gift
by his grace, amazing thing.
Through the redemption, there are certain words in
the Bible, you talk about loving God's word,
there are certain words in the Bible that
only ought to come off of your lips.
With a bit of trembling.
This is one of them.
Now, I'm going to speak humanly for a
moment, I'm going to give you a human
illustration, apply human things to God, this is
not a theological treatise, I'm just using this
part for emphasis.
What do you suppose run if we spoke
of God in human terms, what do you
think would run through the mind of God?
Every time he heard this word, the son
of God, his son, his only begotten son.
Bearing the guilt of his people.
Crucified over a garbage dump outside of Israel,
side of Jerusalem and crushed under the fierce
fury of God's holy hatred.
Against the sins of men, you see, words
might not mean much to our culture, but
they should.
Especially when they're words about him on my
computer, I have a thing that goes across
my screen, a screensaver.
And it's a quote from Bernard, every conversation
that does not have Christ as its theme
is absurd, you say, should this be so
consuming?
It should be all consuming.
Everything you do with your eat or drink
or the most menial of tasks, you do
it all for the glory of him.
And he bears that right on you by
creation and by redemption.
Not only has he made you, he has
bought you and not with silver or gold,
not with vain things of our fathers, not
with sacrifices, not with the blood of bulls
and goats, but he has purchased us the
blood of his only begotten son.
Redemption, it means more than deliverance, a liberal
theologian will tell you it means deliverance, but
it means deliverance through the payment of a
price, satisfaction must be given.
Now, this is redemption, which is in Christ
Jesus.
You've ever read the first 14 verses of
Ephesians, you realize that every time Paul makes
a great and glorious statement, he comes back
by saying in Christ, in Christ, in him,
in the beloved, in Christ, in Christ.
Why is that?
You have nothing outside of Christ, nothing.
And in him, you have everything.
He goes on and he says in verse
twenty five, whom God displayed publicly as a
propitiation.
The cross was not plan B.
It wasn't an accident, and I'll go so
far to say.
The cross was not so much necessary because
of the fall, but it was necessary to
have a fall so that there would be
a cross.
Because only through the cross of Jesus Christ
is the glory of God revealed in such
a way that it astounds angels.
The cross is not a focal point in
history, it is history.
It's everything.
Absolutely everything.
And it was the will of God.
God decreed it.
God predestined it.
God elected it.
It was his doing, yes, by the hands
of wicked men, yes, but according to not
only foreknowledge.
But a predetermined, glorious decree now whom God
displayed publicly, why?
Why publicly?
He could have put this thing in a
closet.
He could have done this great work in
the wilderness.
Why is it that Christ was portrayed at
the crossroads of the greatest religious city in
the world being hung over a garbage dump?
What is God's purpose?
Because God, through the cross, is going to
reveal something about himself.
And every time he does that, it must
be center stage.
We are going to learn some things about
God through the cross that we could learn
no other way.
And not only that, but in the cross
of Jesus Christ, God, you've always heard how
through the cross, God justifies man.
Well, then listen to this through the cross,
God justifies himself, the word that Martin Lloyd
-Jones used through the cross, God vindicates himself.
Now, what do we mean?
Propitiation.
Now, if you can
grasp this.
Tonight, you will have learned some things.
That many do not know the why of
the cross.
The reason for the cross, the what happened
at the cross, propitiation, what does it mean?
A sacrifice that enables a just God to
be merciful and you say, I don't fully
understand the problem.
I want you just to listen, just just
listen to something.
I'm going to show you the greatest problem
in the entire Bible.
Yea, it is what the entire Bible is
written about.
This is it.
If you want to know the center of
the Acropolis, everything is right here.
I just listen.
I'll give you the verse in a moment.
Just listen.
He who justifies the wicked and he who
condemns the righteous, both of them alike are
an abomination to the Lord.
Now, let me shorten it.
He who justifies the wicked is an abomination
to the Lord.
It's the greatest problem in the entire Bible.
Do you realize what do we sing about
in this church all the time?
We sing about how God justified us, how
God justified the wicked.
And yet the Bible says anyone who justifies
the wicked is an abomination before God.
You see, here's the problem.
This is what it is all about.
And if you miss this, you miss the
cross.
It's what it is all about.
If God is just, he cannot forgive you.
Let me give you a horrid example.
Let's say that you go home tonight and
find your entire family slaughtered on the floor
and the assassin is standing over them with
blood on his hands.
And you throw the man to the ground
and you carry him off to the police
and the police presenting before the judge.
And the judge looks down upon this horrendous
criminal, this fiend, and says, I'm a loving
judge.
I pardon you, go free.
What would be the response coming out of
your mouth?
This is wrong.
This is vile.
You'd write the Congress, you'd write the Senate,
you'd get on the television, you'd write the
newspapers, you'd get on the radio.
You would say that there is a judge
on the bench more vile and more wicked
than the criminals he pardons.
Would you not do that?
Is it because a judge does justice?
How much more shall the judge of all
the earth do justice?
If God is holy, if God is just,
he must pour forth justice upon those who
have broke his law.
To give way to pardon is to turn
his back on sin and not to do
justice in the world.
The greatest question in all the Bible, what
the Old Testament sacrificial system and everything else,
what it is all written about is this.
If God is just, how can he pardon
the wicked?
That's what it's all about, folks.
That's it.
If God is just, he cannot forgive you.
Because you have broken the law of God.
And the wages of sin is death.
Have you ever heard someone say instead of
being just, God was loving and he saved
you.
Do you realize what they're saying about God
when they say that?
That we have an unjust God with an
unjust love?
No, my friend, there can be no contradiction
in the character of God.
God is both just and loving.
So how can a just God demonstrate love
and forgive the wicked?
Again, verse 24, we were boasting, we were
reveling in the fact that we have been
justified, even though we were wicked, we have
been declared legally right.
That's not right.
That's wrong.
How can God look at the wicked and
declare them legally right when they are not?
That's what Paul is dealing with here.
Now, when God displayed publicly as a propitiation,
Christ was a propitiation.
How can the just judge of the universe
pardon the wicked by
taking off his robes of glory and becoming
a man and living a perfect life on
this earth?
The son lived in perfect submission to the
law and will of God and then going
to a cross and on that cross, he
carried the guilt of his people and then
and listen to me carefully, the son of
God was crushed under the wrath of his
own father.
It was a great.
Disturbance when the movie The Passion came out,
I don't know how many emails I got
from pastors and theologians and such that were
either sung for many against it.
Well, I have no bones to pick with
anybody, but it doesn't matter how true the
film.
I didn't see it.
Doesn't matter how true the film might have
been.
It cannot demonstrate to you the pain of
the cross.
The pain of the cross is not found
in a Roman weapon.
The pain of the cross is not found
in a beam laid across his back.
The pain of the cross is not found
in nails, a fourth of an inch in
diameter.
The pain of the cross is that the
son died there, forsaken of his father and
under his own father's wrath.
Carrying the sins of a wicked people, let's
go to the garden for a moment, just
think about this.
Jesus Christ is in the garden, he says,
let this cup pass from me, let this
cup pass from me, father, let this cup
pass from me.
I've heard so many preachers say Christ trembled
at the fact of being crucified.
Christ trembled at the at the fact of
being thrown off to the Romans to be
beaten, to be to be hung on a
tree.
Rubbish.
Let me tell you something.
Is our captain not greater than the ones
who follow him?
How is it that we hear about martyrs?
Who have been burned at the stake, singing
hymns.
How is it that we hear about martyrs
who willingly walked out of their house and
said, here, place the cuffs on me, carry
me to the tree.
All for the sake of my Lord.
And they trembled, not even by their lip.
And yet our captain trembles in a garden.
Was it a cross?
Was it nails, was it a crown of
thorns that made the omnipotent God shudder like
a babe?
No, it was this, he said, let this
cup pass from me, what was in the
cup?
I was teaching at a classical reformed school
several years ago in the front row with
kindergartners on back.
And I asked that question and a little
girl stood up.
I said, what was in the cup?
She said, sir, the wrath of God was
in the cup.
That's why when I got all those letters
about people mad about the film from Mel
Gibson, I would write them back and say,
well, I probably have a problem with some
of his things he does in there.
But I have a greater problem with Southern
Baptist preachers and the way they preach the
gospel.
I heard a man during this movie who
had this great big radio program, who actually
said, I'm going to tell you the true
meaning of the cross.
And he never got to it.
Not once he preached a romantic, emotional, sentimental
version of the cross that has no power.
The power is that when Christ was on
that tree, he bore the wrath of almighty
God.
He bore the curse.
Turn with me for a moment to the
book of Galatians, chapter three, verse 10.
For as many as are of the works
of the law are under a curse, for
it is written, cursed is everyone who does
not abide by all the things written in
the book of the law to perform them.
They're not afraid.
Well, then I suppose I should tell you
what it means to be under a curse.
It means this, that if you are not
converted, you are so vile.
So loathsome, so detestable, not only before a
holy God.
But a holy heaven, that the last thing
you will hear when you take your first
step into hell is all of creation standing
to its feet and applauding God because he
has rid the earth of you.
You see, oh, to give this church, to
give this preacher a sensitivity to sin.
Are you shocked?
Go to verse 13.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
law, having become a curse for us.
Do you understand what I just read?
You were shocked.
That sinful humanity would be considered so wicked
that the last thing it would hear when
it takes its first step into hell is
all of creation standing to its feet and
applauding God.
Well, then be more shocked that the thrice
holy son of God would bear your sin
and become the curse before his father.
A serpent lifted up in the wilderness.
Eli, Eli, my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?
Do you not understand what he just said?
Are you like the liberal theologian that says
Christ at this moment realizes he's not the
Christ and gives his last cry of despair
before he dies, or are you a true
believer that realizes that in order to be
a true believer, in order to be a
child of God, no holy son of God
was forsaken by his father and then crushed
under his own father's punishment.
You say, oh, brother Paul, you've gone too
far now.
Have you not read Isaiah 53, 10?
It pleased the Lord to crush him.
Take a 10,000 pound millstone and put
another on top of it, put a grain
of wheat between them and see what you've
got when it comes out on the other
end.
Take a damn 100,000 miles high and
100,000 miles wide and have it break
in front of you and as the torrents
of water rolls down towards you to engulf
you to destroy you, all of a sudden
the ground opens up and drinks it down
and not one drop splashes to your feet.
And so Christ raised his hand up to
heaven and took the wrath of God, that
great cup and drank it down.
We cried out, it is finished, he turned
it over and not one drop came out.
He drank the wrath of God and satisfied
justice and appeased wrath, and therefore God can
now be just and justify the sinner.
This is what he's done.
This is what he has done.
Go to Psalms 22 for a moment, verse
one.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
Far from my deliverance are the words of
my groaning.
Oh, my God, I cry by day, but
you do not answer and by night, but
I have no rest.
This is the complaint of the Messiah on
that tree.
You see, you and I have lived so
much out of the presence of God.
We're not like the son who's in the
very bosom of the father and to be
ripped from that bosom, to have that eternal,
beautiful vision darkened, that's his complaint.
And then in verse four, he gives an
argument, in you our fathers trusted, they trusted
and you delivered them, and to you they
cried and were delivered, in you they trusted
and were not disappointed.
There has never been a time in the
history of people, history of the covenant people
Israel, that a righteous man has cried out
to God and God has turned his face
away.
And the son says, but I, your son,
I hang on a tree.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
And then he gets the answer.
Verse three, if you are holy, verse six,
but I am a worm, the Greeks, the
Greek fathers called Christ, Triodion, the thrice holy.
Notice that it never says in the Bible,
God is merciful, merciful, merciful, and it never
says God is love, love, love, but it
does say he is holy, holy, holy.
And that holy one born, a virgin, become
a man, that great shepherd of our soul
goes to a tree, and on that tree,
he who knew no sin becomes sin, and
the father's favor is turned away.
You know all those little tracks, has God
on one side and man on the other,
and sin in the middle, that there's separation
between us and God because of our sin.
Well, someone has to pay.
And so Christ died, separated, abandoned, forsaken of
the father.
And not only that, he died under the
father's wrath.
Who can die for us?
Is the blood of bulls and goats sufficient?
The one who died for us had to
be a man of like nature, of those
who committed the crimes.
Man has sinned, man must die, the son
of God became a man.
The one who died had to be God.
In the flesh.
Why?
Well, first of all, salvation is of the
Lord, Jonah learned.
And that's why the doctrine of the Jehovah
Witnesses, if you're here tonight and you're a
Jehovah Witness, I am not saying you are
an abomination, I am saying what you teach
is.
That's why the doctrine that Jesus Christ is
nothing more than a mere creature is such
an abomination, because if he is a mere
creature, then our Savior is not God.
And salvation is not of the Lord.
Why did he have to be God?
Who else but God can withstand the wrath
of God?
Mountains turned to wax.
Man one time said, I won't bow before
him.
The man who's been such an influence in
my life, looked at him and said, son,
you will melt before him like a tiny
wax figurine before a brass furnace.
Who else but God could withstand the wrath
of God?
Drink it down and rise again.
Another thing, who else has life to give?
He said, well, I would lay down my
life.
It's not yours.
It's borrowed.
Go to an angel.
Ask him the source of his life.
It's borrowed.
Only Jesus has authority to lay down a
life and Jesus has authority to take it
back up again.
And then my favorite.
I almost trick students into asking me this.
I love it when some college student pops
up and says, how can one man dying
for a few hours on a tree save
a multitude of men from eternal destruction?
Do you want to know how?
Because that one man on that tree was
worth more than all the others put together.
You take everything that there is, everything in
existence.
You take crickets and clowns and moles and
mountains and stars and galaxies and planets and
trees and rocks and dust.
You put it all on the scale, put
Jesus on the other side and he outweighs
them all.
That's how that one who died was of
infinite worth and his sacrifice is of infinite
power.
He died.
Yeah, he died.
But if you were in one of the
early churches, if you were in the primitive
church, you would have probably heard a pastor
walk before you in a little house church.
Stand before you and say this, the Christ
has risen only to repeat to him, sir,
he has risen.
One of the great problems of Christianity today
is that we're not preaching the cross and
then we turn it back around and we're
not preaching the resurrection either.
He has risen indeed.
I will dance as the Irish would say,
I'll dance a fine jig on the lid
of that box they put me in one
day.
He has risen.
He has risen indeed, took death at its
own game, strangled the power out of sin
and made us right with God.
Rose again from the dead.
My older brother was killed in a car
accident.
My father died in my arms in the
middle of a field.
Ten years ago, I preached my sister's funeral.
But one day a trumpet will blow and
I'll mock death.
I'll laugh.
Where's your power of yours?
Where is your hold?
Lost your grip?
Have you?
Because the Christ has risen, but not only
risen, he's ascended.
Look at Psalms 24.
This is called an ascension song.
Psalm 24, verse three, who may ascend into
the hill of the Lord and who may
stand in this holy place?
Modern vernacular.
Who can go to heaven?
Who can go down?
You want to know who can go to
heaven?
Well, I'm about to tell you.
Verse four, he who has clean hands and
a pure heart.
Anyone here qualified?
Who has not lifted up his soul to
falsehood and not sworn deceitfully?
Anyone here qualified?
No.
I give you the desire to repeat the
words of Job.
Oh, that there was someone, an umpire, a
mediator who could lay his hand on us
both.
Job, don't despair.
There is one who has died and yea,
has risen.
And then 40 days after he ascended.
The early church fathers used verse 7 through
10 to describe that ascension.
Now, remember, when Paul writes to Timothy, he
says there is one mediator between God and
man.
The man, Jesus.
Now look, he says man.
He's not denying the deity of Jesus Christ.
He's just making a point.
Man has sinned.
Man must die.
And the one who lays his hand on
us both must be God and man.
And there must be a man, a second
Adam, one greater than Adam, that does what
Adam cannot do.
And brings restoration.
There must be a man who can go
there for us.
Christ ascends.
It's heaven as usual on the other side
of those gates.
Heaven as usual.
And then all of a sudden, everything in
heaven is stopped.
Because outside those doors, they hear this.
Verse 7.
Lift up your heads, O gates, and be
lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King
of glory may come in.
And all of a sudden there is a
reaction.
Who is this?
No man has ever approached these gates.
No man has ever dared lay his hand
to the latch.
Who is this King of glory?
And then they hear an answer back.
They say, Who is this King of glory?
And they hear the Lord strong and mighty,
the Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift
them up, O ancient doors, that the King
of glory may come in.
And for the first time in the history
of history, those doors are opened.
And Christ, the man.
Can you imagine that day?
All hail the power of Jesus' name.
Let angels prostrate fall.
Bring forth a royal diadem and crown him
Lord of all.
Every angel in heaven.
Everything that we can't even begin to imagine.
Falls before the Christ in worship.
The victor of God has come.
Imagine when he walks up to his father.
His father looks.
Takes him a seat.
Father, my seat I will take.
Son, is it finished?
Father, it is finished indeed.
And this same Jesus, who was crucified, who
died in weakness.
One day, a trumpet will call.
And the dead in Christ will rise.
And then we who are alive and remain
will meet him in the air.
And we will see the glory of glories.
The King of kings.
The prophet.
The priest.
The king.
The messiah.
The treasure.
The life.
And that will not be our end.
It will be our beginning.
Now, what are you called to do?
Repent of your sins and believe the gospel.
You say, what is repentance?
Well, let me just give you an illustration
instead of a theological treatise.
Let's say that you came here tonight.
No desire in your heart to hear anything
from God.
Maybe it came from all the wrong reasons.
And right now, the only thing in your
heart is that I'm preaching too long.
Can you be saved?
No, you cannot.
If you remain in this condition, you will
die in your sins and you will go
to hell without repentance.
There is no salvation.
Or maybe you came here tonight.
You had no thought of anything of God
in your heart at all.
You cared not for the things of God,
the word of God.
You just wanted to get through the worship
and through the message.
But maybe as the worship was going on,
your heart was somehow strangely warm and you
begin to hear a voice within a voice.
Yes, my dear friend, that can happen in
worship.
And then when the preaching came, it was
like an iron.
It was like a call.
It was like a beacon.
Something began to stir in your heart.
You begin to see the holiness of God,
the wretchedness of your own virtue.
You begin to hear things about Christ and
what he's done for you.
And the only thing you can think about
right now is I won't do absolutely anything
to be saved.
That is repentance.
You lack one thing.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you
will be saved.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you
will be saved.
Now, the Puritans spoke a lot about repentance,
not only from sin, but repentance from good
works.
You say, what do you mean?
There is a real sense in which repentance
is simply this.
You give up from trying to justify yourself.
You just quit.
You see that every one of your most
righteous deeds is nothing more than filthy rags.
And you detest them and you throw them
to the floor.
And you stand there before God and say,
unless you move on my behalf, I am
damned.
And you believe.
You believe.
You trust.
There is a deacon in my church back
home.
Little church in the middle of a cornfield.
And I love this man.
He's walked with God longer than I've been
alive.
And he remembers telling me one time he
told me about his conversion.
He said, I was a good fella as
fellas go.
But the preacher said something that morning and
it stirred my heart.
And I thought, what does it mean to
believe?
What does it mean to believe?
He went up in his hayloft and he
was just walking around.
He said he found himself finally with his
toes hanging over the edge of the loft,
just kind of standing there.
He said all of a sudden it just
dawned on me.
This is what he said.
Lord, I am going to trust, place my
confidence exclusively, only in what your son has
done for me.
And if that very thing, if what he
has done for me is not strong enough
to save me, then I will go to
hell because I will not trust in another
thing.
Right now, if this preacher died, he would
go to heaven.
Not because I spent years in the jungles
in the Andes Mountains of Peru.
Not because of piety, devotion or Bible study.
Not because of denominational affiliation, baptism or participation
in the Lord's Supper.
If I died right now, I would go
to heaven because 2000 years ago, the son
of God shed his blood for this wretched
man.
And that is my hope.
And I expect that that scarlet thread is
strong enough to hold me when I swing
out into eternity upon it.
Let's pray.
Father, I come before you in the name
of your son and would that you would
be gracious to us, Lord.
That you would help us.
That you would strengthen your people through the
word preached.
That you would convert the lost.
Father, no
one will ever preach your son as he
ought to be preached.
The King of Zion is simply too glorious.
In Jesus' name, Amen.