Well, it's a tremendous privilege for me to
be here with you today.
A tremendous privilege.
I am much older than most of you
and have probably walked with Christ longer than
some of you have been alive.
When I look out over a group of
young people like yourself, there's great joy, at
the same time there is tremendous burden.
As you walk with Christ and become a
minister of Christ, you begin to see the
great dangers that exist in the world, how
this is not a game.
You also grow in your passion to see
the church presented to Jesus Christ as a
spotless, stainless, pure virgin.
Your great desire is for the holiness of
God's people, to see salvation worked out properly
in its three tenses, that you have been
saved, justified, and that if you have been
saved, justified, you are being sanctified.
That God is working in you to perfect
that which he has begun, and then to
ultimately see you glorify.
But I look out over you today and
I can tell you this, you are wrong.
You are so wrong about so many things.
Yes, you are wrong about so many things.
You are.
Now, do I say that as a legalistic,
judgmental preacher?
No.
In the almost 30 years that I've walked
with Christ, I am amazed how even today,
more so now than in my younger years,
I realize that I am wrong that I
am so much a product of my culture
rather than scripture.
And I'm here to tell you, it's not
that I walked in this room here today
and I saw things that were wrong or
flagrant violations of the word.
No, it wasn't that I didn't approve of
the worship.
I enjoyed the worship.
I'm just here to tell you that the
beginning of walking with God is to know
that you have come forth from a twisted,
dislocated people, that in order to truly walk
with God, you must be changed in your
thinking.
You must be renewed in your mind.
You must begin to conform your life to
the scripture rather than the culture, which has
so much great a hold on you, far
greater than what you could ever imagine.
I would that you would be holy, but
for you to be holy, you must know
what that means.
And the only way to know what that
means is through the scriptures.
I would that you be holy, but it
takes more than just a man's wish.
There has to be a proper motivation to
that holiness.
And I'll tell you what that is.
It is Jesus Christ.
I sometimes feel like a prisoner, a prisoner.
Chained in every place around wrist shackles around
feet, a prisoner of Christ, that the more
I come to know him.
The more that the love of Christ constrains
and pushes and demands and inflames the heart.
You see, thus far, I have told you
that there's so much about you that is
wrong, conformed your culture instead of being conformed
to the word.
Now I've changed the theme and I've told
you this, but in order to break free
from that, you need a motivation.
You need something more than a pep rally
and a pep talk.
You need something more than a conference or
a conference speaker.
You must grow in your knowledge of who
God is and what God has done for
you in the person of Jesus Christ.
And the more if your heart has truly
been regenerate, if your heart has truly been
renewed by the spirit of God, if you
have truly been converted, the more you will
know about Christ, the more Christ will captivate
you and most of the problems resolve.
I would pray that the spirit of God
would show you Christ.
In such a way.
That you would become a captive.
Not to the lusts of your own flesh.
Not to the prince of the power of
the air.
Not to this wretched, vile world in which
you live.
But that you would become a captive of
Jesus Christ, no longer belonging to yourself.
But belonging to him.
Now, let's go in our Bibles to second
Corinthians.
Chapter five, verse twenty one.
He made him who knew no sin.
To be sin on our behalf so that
we might become the righteousness of God and
him.
How many times have you read this text?
And yet there is enough glory in these
few words to propel a heart into an
eternity of godliness.
Look at what the text says.
Second Corinthians 521.
He made him who knew no sin to
be sin on our behalf that we might
become the righteousness of God and him.
Your mind is filled up with so many
things.
You waste your mind on so many things,
but you would not waste your mind if
you shut off everything else in your life
and you dedicated every waking moment of every
day of the rest of your life to
understanding what this passage means.
And I would assure you that the more
you understood it.
The more you would be conformed to the
image of Jesus Christ.
And the more you would be propelled to
want to serve him with all your heart,
soul, mind and strength.
Many of you have come here to learn
to preach.
Many of you have come here to know
what it looks like to be in the
arena of the corporate world as lawyers and
engineers and this and that.
And you want to go out and have
an impact for Christ.
You do not know the monster that's laying
at your door.
You don't know how many people just like
you this world has eaten to pieces, men
of best intention with greater moral fiber than
you now possess.
It's going to take more than just intention
for you to be used of God when
you leave this school.
It's going to take a heavenly vision.
It's going to take a magnificent view of
what God has done for you in Jesus
Christ.
That's what you need.
And then all the vain things that charm
you most, you will gladly sacrifice them.
All the things of youth that now hold
you captivated, they would dissolve into nothing.
So let's look for a moment at Christ.
Let's see this person.
I pray that God would change us by
him, through him, because of him, for him.
It says here, he made him who knew
no sin to be sin on our behalf.
He knew no sin.
Isn't that astounding?
Isn't that absolute?
He knew no sin.
Do you realize this?
There has never been one moment in your
life, not one moment in your life that
wasn't tainted by sin.
And yet there never was a moment in
his life that was tainted by sin.
Someone asked me a long time ago, what
is the greatest sin you can commit?
And now all of a sudden it just
popped in my head.
So I said it, I said, well, I
suppose the greatest sin you could commit is
to break the greatest commandment that's ever been
given to love the Lord, your God, with
all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Do you realize there's never been one moment
in your life that you have loved God
as God ought to be loved?
To even suggest that you have is paramount
to blasphemy.
You have never loved God in a way
that God deserves to be loved.
But there was never one moment in the
life of the man, Jesus Christ, that he
did not love God as God deserves to
be loved.
You think Jesus is great?
He's greater than, you know, there has never
been one time in your life or my
life that we have done what we have
done fully and completely for the glory of
God.
Not one time.
There was not one time in the life
of Jesus Christ.
Not one time, not one fraction of a
moment that he failed to give glory to
God, the very glory that is due him.
This is absolutely amazing.
Just to look at this one truth, a
thousand PhDs throughout all of eternity could be
one just searching out this one truth.
But therein is the problem, student.
There's your problem.
You live in the age of busyness.
We do not think we do not meditate.
We do not wake up at two in
the morning and carry on any sort of
night watch calling upon the name of the
Lord.
We're so busy and there's so much noise
that we no longer have time to think
great things about Christ to discover this infinite
well of the treasure of the wisdom of
God.
Christ was without sin, fullness of deity, yes,
but understand he was without sin as a
man.
This man, Christ Jesus.
Walked in perfect obedience to God, and yet
Paul tells us that he who knew no
sin was made sin on our behalf.
How can we understand this passage?
We are people of unclean lips and we
dwell among the people of unclean lips, our
stock, our family.
We drink down iniquity like it was water.
We cannot understand the grievous nature of sin.
The hellishness of sin, the vile, degrading, disgusting
mark of sin.
We do not know it, and therefore we
cannot appreciate the fact that this one holy
son of God became sin was made sin
on our behalf.
Now, you've read this passage before, but what
does it mean?
You ever thought about that?
You tell people all the time that Jesus
bore our sin.
Can you explain what that means?
Have you considered it enough so that it
breaks your heart with sorrow and joy?
What does it mean that Christ was made
sin for you, for you, on your behalf?
Does it mean that somehow on that tree
that Christ's nature devolved into something corrupt?
Did Christ himself become some defiled being when
he was on that tree?
Is that what it means?
Absolutely not.
While even on that tree, he was the
spotless lamb of God.
The perfect, beautiful, impeccable son of God, then
what does it mean that he was made
sin?
Well, the text tells us he made him
sin who knew no sin to be sin
on our behalf so that we might become
the righteousness of God in him.
What does it mean for us to be
justified?
Does it mean the moment we believe in
Jesus Christ, we are made into a perfectly
righteous being?
Absolutely not.
If that was the case, we'd never sin
again.
What does it mean to be justified?
Does it mean we're infused with grace so
that we live in a new power and
therefore justify ourselves by our own deeds?
Absolutely not.
Then what does it mean that we were
justified?
Justification is a legal or forensic doctrine.
It means this, that the moment a man
or a woman believes in Jesus Christ, they
are declared legally to be right with God.
It is a legal term that God declared
you before his throne of judgment to be
right with him.
But that's not all.
When you are justified by believing in Jesus
Christ, you are declared right with God.
And here's the important word.
You are treated.
Do never forget this word.
You are treated as right with God.
God's disposition toward you has changed.
His works toward you have changed.
Your relationship with him has changed.
This legal declaration brings about a different treatment
from the throne of God.
You are treated as perfect before him as
having all your sins forgiven and forgotten before
him.
This is a magnificent thing.
One of the reasons why in modern contemporary
evangelicalism, if you can even use that terminology
anymore, one of the reasons that there is
no rejoicing in Christ is because there's not
much preaching about sin.
If you knew and if I knew the
extent of scripture's attitude with regard to sin,
how hateful it is before God, you and
I would rejoice at every mention of the
fact that Christ died for our sins.
We would be broken.
We would be weeping.
We would be full of joy.
We would be propelled to godliness.
We would need no other motivation.
Someone asked me one time, why do you
preach about sin so much?
And I said, it's because I want you
to love God because the one who has
been forgiven much loves much.
So what does it mean that Christ was
made sin?
Our sin, the sin of his people was
imputed to him.
It was imputed to him.
It was placed upon him.
Now, here's the big word again.
And he was treated as the one guilty
before the judgment bar of God.
Now, there again is a life worth of
preaching that the eternal son of God lived
in this magnificent, indescribable, incomprehensible relationship with the
father throughout all of eternity.
Now, at this moment, this impeccable, spotless lamb,
all your filth.
Oh, your hatred of God.
Everything that would cause all of creation to
rise up and condemn you and joyfully applaud
when you take your first step into hell,
all of it is placed upon Christ.
It's placed upon Christ.
And the father treats him as the full
mass of us ought to be treated again.
How can we understand that we were born
going astray from the womb, the psalmist says?
How can we understand that we have been
so long estranged from God?
How can we understand that when even as
Christians we could we could choose we over
the study of the scriptures?
But you see, Christ.
This man hanging on this tree, the eternal
son of God, he always beheld the face
of the father.
He was his father's joy and his father
was his.
And in that moment to bear our sin
goes beyond any tongue of human or angel
to tell.
I once was walking around in a field
and I was crying out to God and
I was praying.
I said, oh, God, every time I've ever
preached the gospel, I have failed.
How can a man get his mind around
this thing?
And if he could, how could he proclaim
it, even if he was Spurgeon or Jones
or whoever?
It still would be an impossibility.
Oh, God, grant me on that day when
I pass over into glory, that you will
give me one time an opportunity to stand
up on a box and preach Christ as
he ought to be preached.
I heard no voice, there was no there
was there was nothing of extra biblical supernatural
revelation, but this thought came into my mind.
Even then, you shall not preach him as
he ought to be preached.
Only God can preach that way.
You see, you see the Christian life, eternal
life begins at the moment of conversion, because
eternal life is basically that you may know
him, that you may track him down.
To turn away from all the trinkets and
trite things of children and run to Christ.
There are men who go to greatest lengths
to risk their life going miles and miles
into the earth, Job tells us, just to
find something that shines.
We should be men and women who do
the same with regard to this person of
Christ.
How is it after all these years that
your zeal consumes you?
Because of Christ, this glorious pursuit, that everything
you know, everything you learn every day as
you go along and you increase in knowledge,
you realize that for everything learned, there's an
infinite number of more things discovered that you
do not know.
This is what you need.
To know him, to know him, it was
an imputed guilt, but it was real.
It was a real guilt that the son
of God bore on your behalf for you.
Doesn't that make you hate sin?
You say you do not have a love
for God as you ought or you do
not hate sin as you should.
You're right.
But the more you know the price that
was paid in order to take that sin
far from you to pay for it, the
more you know that the more you will
hate sin until one day you're sitting at
a table early in the morning like an
old man.
I knew.
And he looks up with tears in his
eyes after serving the Lord for decade after
decade, and he clenches his fist and he
says, I hate sin.
I hate it.
I'm not having to be a part of
me because of Christ, because of Christ, because
of Christ.
I could heap upon you all sorts of
things that you should not do, and they
would all be true.
But a vision of Christ is what will
purify you and bring you forth from your
culture, pull you out of that mess.
Now, I want you to think about this,
that Christ not only bore our sin, bore
the guilt of it, but he became the
curse.
You are familiar with the text.
I know you are.
That we were under a curse, cursed is
every man who does not abide by all
the things written in the book of the
law to perform them.
What does it mean to be under curse
again, as the glories of God are too
incomprehensible to understand or tell to properly communicate
to a student body what it means to
be outside of Christ and under a curse?
It's an impossibility.
But let me put it this way.
That outside of Christ and apart from the
grace of God.
That comes through his death.
You would be so vile.
And so loathsome.
Before all the holy hosts of heaven, that
the last thing you would hear when you
took your first step into hell on Judgment
Day would be all of creation standing to
its feet and applauding God because he has
rid the earth of you.
And yet Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law.
Taking that curse in our place and bearing
it, how can you not be a prisoner
of his love?
How can you not willingly throw yourself to
him and say, if it be so, if
he has redeemed me from such an extraordinary
mess?
How can I not think of him?
Serve him and lament when I do not.
I want you to just think about something
for a moment, I'm going to have to
skip through some things because of time.
I want you to think I want us
to go for just a moment to the
book of Deuteronomy.
Just just hold in your mind what we're
talking about.
You know that when Israel was brought forth
from Egypt after a while, they had two
things placed before them.
There was Mount Gerasim and Mount Ebal on
Mount Gerasim.
Some of the Israelites were to stand.
And as they stood there, what were they
to do?
They were to pronounce the blessings that were
to be heaped upon the head of the
covenant keeper.
You remember that?
Then there was Mount Ebal and on Mount
Ebal, another group of Israelites were to stand
forth and shout forth all the curses that
were to fall upon the head of the
covenant breaker.
Now, every one of those curses in the
book of Deuteronomy are yours.
You are the covenant breaker.
It's you.
It's me.
Every one of those curses is yours.
But on that tree, every one of those
curses fell upon Christ.
Do you understand that?
That he redeemed us from the curse of
the law.
By becoming by bearing a curse in our
place, the curse, your curse.
One of the things that most hurt men
today is not preached supposedly for the benefit
of man.
We are told that men's psyches, modern man
is far too weak now to bear with
hearing anything wrong about himself.
But because of that, because we do not
realize what we are apart from Christ, we
cannot appreciate what Christ has done.
And that is a great disservice if you
do that in your preaching.
You see, I can ask you right now
a question, where did all the stars go
this morning?
Did some giant come by and just pick
them all up in a basket, carry them
to the other side of the world?
Where did they go this morning when the
sun came up?
They went absolutely nowhere.
Then why can we not see them?
Because of the light of the sun, we
cannot see the stars.
So we lose their glory.
We no longer see their beauty.
And that's the price evangelical preaching has paid.
Because you see, it is only against the
pitch blackness of the night that we see
the glory of the stars.
And it is only against the pitch blackness
of man's radical depravity that we can begin
to see the glories of the gospel, to
understand what we were, to understand the greatness,
the tragedy, the terrifying nature of the curse
that was upon us all and that Christ
had to suffer.
What I've done is I've arranged all these
curses, taking them right out of the text
in Deuteronomy 27 and 28, and I'm going
to read them to you, but in a
different way, no longer applied generally to a
covenant breaker, but applied specifically to Jesus Christ
on that tree.
And I'm going to say something that that
I once something was mentioned by R.C.
Sproul, and I call his name in on
this so that you realize when you are
shocked that this is orthodox.
What is it?
Christ on that tree bore your sin, he
bore your guilt, and when he looked up
into heaven and he cried out, my God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?
It's as though God from heaven slammed the
door in the face of his only begotten
son and cried out, the Lord, your God
damns you.
Damn you.
The Lord send upon you curses, confusion and
rebuke until you are destroyed and perish quickly.
The Lord smite you with madness and with
blindness and with bewilderment of heart and you
will grope at noon as the blind man
gropes in darkness with none to save you.
This was your lot and Christ bore it
on that tree.
The Lord delights over you to make you
perish and destroy you and you will be
torn from the land.
Curse shall you be in the city and
curse shall you be in the field.
Curse shall you be when you come in
and curse shall you be when you go
out.
The heaven which is over your head shall
be bronze and the earth which is under
you shall be iron.
You shall be a proverb and a taunt
among the people.
Let all these curses come upon you and
pursue you and overtake you until you are
destroyed because you would not obey the Lord,
your God, by keeping his commandments and his
statutes, which he commanded you.
This was yours and this was mine and
this is what Jesus Christ bore for us
on that tree.
The wrath of almighty God against our evil.
He was cursed as a man who makes
an idol and sets it up in secret.
He was cursed as one who dishonors his
father or mother, who moves his neighbor's boundary
mark or misleads a blind person on the
road.
He was cursed as one who distorts the
justice, do an alien orphan and widow.
He was cursed as one who is guilty
of every manner of immorality and perversion, who
wounds his neighbor in secret or accepts a
bride to strike down the innocent.
He was cursed as one who does not
confirm all the words of the law by
doing them.
This was Christ.
You see, student, listen to me.
This is the way to holiness.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is that great
mystery of godliness.
And the more you understand the greatness of
what Jesus Christ has done for you, the
holier you will become.
And as I can quote again, the songwriter,
in all these vain things that even now,
as you sit there in your seat, charm
you so much they will be gone.
You'll have nothing but Christ.
Christ, listen to what
the psalmist says.
How blessed is he whose transgressions is forgiven,
whose sin is covered, how blessed is the
man to whom the Lord does not impute
iniquity and in whose spirit there is no
deceit.
Now, listen.
Yet on the cross, our sin was imputed
to Christ, was exposed before God and the
host of heaven.
He was placarded, as Martin Lloyd Jones used
to say, before men and made a spectacle
to angels and devils alike.
The transgressions he bore were not forgiven him,
and the sins he carried were not covered.
If a man is counted blessed because iniquity
is not imputed to him, then Christ was
cursed beyond measure because the iniquity of us
all was imputed to him.
There is a there is a passage in
the scripture about during the renewal of the
covenant at Moab, and it talks about a
covenant breaker, about what would happen to Israel
if they broke God's law, as all of
us have broken God's law.
But it's unusual that when he talks about
the judgment that would fall down upon the
covenant breaker, he singles him out as an
individual man.
Listen to what it says.
The anger of the Lord and his jealousy
will burn against that man.
That'll be you, young man.
One time said on the day of judgment,
I'll stand before God and I'll reckoned with
him.
I said, young man, you will melt before
God like a tiny wax figurine before a
blast furnace when the seas dry up before
the wrath of God and the mountains melt
before him.
Archaic preaching.
Yes, very old, as old as the scripture.
And this is the judgment that was upon
you, but it fell upon Christ.
He says the anger of the Lord and
his jealousy will burn against that man and
every curse which is written in this book
will rest upon him and the Lord will
blot out his name from under heaven.
Then the Lord will single him out for
adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according
to all the curses of the covenant which
are written in the book of the law.
You should be singled out.
When I was in seminary and preaching class,
they told me that I should never use
the word you when I was talking about
sin, that I should say we.
I don't believe that.
I think that's wrong.
Yes, I am a sinner.
Yes, I do sin, but I do not
want to give you comfort in a multitude
of other sinners sitting around you.
I want to single you out.
You are guilty.
But Christ was singled out in your place.
The only covenant keeper of Israel was called
from the flock and singled out for adversity.
I want you just quickly to turn with
me to Numbers chapter six, the
blessing of Aaron.
Chapter six, 24, the book of Numbers, the
Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance on you
and give you peace.
Those of you who study theology, do you
find a problem here?
A problem.
The greatest problem in all of Scripture is
here.
This is not right.
How can a holy and just God bless
a wicked people?
How can he pronounce blessing upon you?
Is he not the judge of all the
earth?
Will he not do right?
The only way that this blessing can fall
upon the head of God's people is because
the curse fell upon the head of God's
son.
It's as though God looked down from heaven
and turned this priestly blessing around and said
this, the Lord curse you.
The Lord give you over to destruction.
The Lord take the light of his presence
from you and condemn you.
The Lord turn his face from you and
fill you with misery.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
Does that truth not move your heart?
Then be afraid.
Be very afraid.
Wonder to yourself whether you even know him.
Examine yourself, test yourself to see if you
are in the faith.
With all diligence, make your calling and election.
Sure.
He bore your curse and mine.
I want to go over something quickly.
I'm running out of time here.
There's so much to say about this.
Let me put it to you this way.
I believe I do not.
I cannot put the whole thing in a
basket and throw it all away because I
do not know all of it.
But I believe that much of what is
called church growth and strategies and relevancy and
contextualization and everything else is a bunch of
bunk.
I don't follow it at all.
I think they are carnal tools used by
little boys who no longer have the power
of God upon their life because they're not
preaching the gospel.
You can take that for what it's worth,
but I assure you it's worth a lot.
We preach the gospel today and we say,
but it has no power to change the
culture.
Do you want to know why?
Because we're not preaching the gospel.
Four spiritual laws or five things God wants
you to know is not the gospel.
Saying you are you sin.
Now, are you ready to jump to the
next question is not the gospel.
Asking people if they want to go to
heaven is not the gospel.
Even telling people Jesus died is not the
gospel.
Can you explain what it means that he
died?
If you're going to go out there and
you're going to proclaim the gospel, you must
be a scribe.
You must be a theologian.
You must be someone who can open up
their mouth and tell them what it means.
Most people think that somehow Jesus was martyred
on a tree by the hands of Roman
soldiers, and because of that, our sins are
pardoned and nothing could be further from the
truth.
If you're saved here today, you are not
saved merely because of what the Romans did
to Jesus on that tree.
You are saved because of what God did
to his only begotten son on that tree.
Let this cup pass from me.
I have preached this one thing a million
times.
Let this cup pass from me.
What was in the cup?
So many people say, well, it was the
Roman cross that Christ in his his omniscience
at this moment, he looked looked forward into
time and he saw the the cat of
nine tails coming down on his back.
He saw the bindings around his wrist and
feet.
He saw the cane being beat across his
head and face.
He saw the long nails going into his
hands.
I tell you, if you stop there, you
have not preached the cross.
You have done nothing but write a romantic
poem.
Do you honestly believe that Christ was so
disturbed in the garden over a Roman cross
that he he was sweating drops of blood?
That's absurd, and I'll prove it to you.
Is it not true that for the next
three centuries in Christian history, countless Christians were
nailed to trees?
Yes, they were.
They were nailed to crosses and some of
them were covered with or pitch and they
were set on fire.
And yet history tells us that many of
them went to the Roman cross after the
cat of nine tails and they went to
that tree singing and rejoicing and counting it
a privilege to die for Christ.
Now, are you going to tell me the
disciples of Jesus Christ followed him to the
same cross singing and counting it joy while
Christ, the captain of their salvation, is in
a garden crying out, let this cup pass
from me and sweating so intensely that vessels
are breaking and blood is falling?
That's absurd.
What made the cross of Christ so terrible?
The fact that on that tree, the holy,
impeccable son of God would bear our guilt
and he would be treated as the one
guilty before his father and that he would
experience the wrath of almighty God in our
place.
You see, the absurdity of this thing I've
heard evangelists say so often, well, instead of
being just with you, God was loving with
you.
Oh, well, maybe you ought to take a
class in logic because that presents a tremendous
problem.
If instead of being just with me, God
was loving with me, therefore God's love is
unjust.
God will do no such thing.
God is just and he is loving and
not one of his attributes will diminish for
the sake of another.
He is perfect in all his ways.
His love is just and there is the
greatest problem in all of Christianity.
If God is just, he cannot forgive you.
If God is good, he cannot forgive you.
So how can he then?
Only if justice is satisfied, but it is
not, as some suppose, some suppose that there's
this universal principle even hanging over the head
of God that God must submit to a
universal principle of justice and God must satisfy
that justice before he can show love to
the guilty.
That's not true.
The justice that God satisfies is his own.
His own justice.
And Christ died, crushed under the wrath of
God in your place.
Imagine for a moment a dam a thousand
miles high, a thousand miles wide, filled to
the brim with water.
Your tiny village is an eighth of a
mile from the base of that dam.
And all of a sudden you wake up
one morning and you hear a crack like
nothing you've ever heard before in your life
and you look out the door and the
wall crumbles before that massive body of water.
You have seconds to remain before you are
going to perish.
The fleet of foot will not escape.
The strongest swimmer has no hope.
You are to be crushed.
And right before that mass falls upon your
head and breaks you into an infinite number
of pieces, the ground opens up and swallows
it all down so that not one drop,
not one drop.
Touches the heel of your shoe.
Imagine a millstone, 10,000 pound millstone with
another just like it on top of it
and a kernel of grain, corn or wheat
is put through the funnel, finds itself between
the two fraction of a second.
The whole is bursted and it's ground into
nothing.
You see.
As the Isaiah, the prophet said, and it
pleased the Lord, it pleased Yahweh to crush
him.
That makes us captives.
Son, you're going into the ministry.
I'll ask you what an old man asked
me many, many years ago.
Boy, can you be alone?
Well, all your other friends are running around
in bachelor packs and playing video games and
running to and fro to conferences.
Will you belong to God?
Will you be his man?
Will you tarry before him?
And the long watches of the night in
the word of God and prayer until you
are consumed.
Until you become a prisoner.
Until you become his.
Until Christ becomes so magnificent to your weary
eyes.
If you just know the rules of expository
preaching and you pride yourself in obeying them,
you'll still be worthless to the cause of
Christ.
Do you must be a Christ centered expository
preacher?
You must be a man of prayer.
You must be a man who calls himself
away from the noise of this present evil
age and spends time alone with God.
And to draw upon this strength.
It is found in what we know about
the gospel.
Young lady, your piety, your innocence.
Is dependent upon your knowledge of what God
has done for you in Christ.
And one day when you train your children.
It will all be about communicating Christ to
them.
Everything Christ, everything falls away, but Christ.
Everything did not even make it halfway through.
I pray that Wednesday will continue this.
Pray that pray that God will do something
supernatural.
Pray that God will show himself to you
through Christ and the preaching of the gospel.
Let's pray.
Father, I come before you and I pray.
Lord, we are entirely dependent upon the spirit
of the living God and the word preached.
Father, I pray.
That Christ, the height and the depth, the
breath.
That something of it, Lord, would be revealed
to these students in an ever increasing matter,
Lord, an ever increasing manner.
Father, it's so pitiful what has been done
here today.
Can these bones live?
You know, Lord, you know.
Help us, Lord.
This day and tomorrow's day.
The next day and help us in such
a way that we will know we have
been helped in Jesus name.
Amen.