that he wore the crown of thorns on
his forehead somehow is a statement of the
thoughts of men that have been exceedingly wicked
throughout the whole history of the human race
and his hands pierced because of what we
have given our hands to do and our
feet have brought us into traffic so these
are symbolic penetrations in his very body occasioned
by the way in which we have thought
spoken, acted, walked, and done but it needs
to register I'm not happy with my own
understanding and the pity is that it can
reduce itself to just a safe doctrinal consent
but without the penetration that leads to true
piety love of righteousness the hatred of iniquity
true praise, worship, and service as servants and
in the end adoration adoration the ultimate statement
of the deepest respect and reverence emotionally to
which a human being can be brought is
yet before us and outside of our experience
if we ever get there and we ought
it will be through this route or not
at all Paul says I'm not ashamed of
the gospel as scandalous as it is and
it's a scandal religiously speaking I'm not ashamed
of it, why?
because it itself is the power of God
unto salvation to everyone who believes to the
Jew first and also to the Greek so
he's not ashamed because the message the account
of it is itself a power as you
expressed it the impact of that of the
missionary to his hearers it opened their understanding
it opened the awareness of themselves as guilty
before God in transgression the message itself does
that so he's not ashamed of it because
it has that inherent power foolish as it
is scandalous as it is the proclamation in
the anointing and authority of God has this
effect of revealing the truth of one's condition
and of the provision made for it no
other thing can that's why we Jewish people
are without any ability to see the truth
of our condition or to have a true
atonement because the gospel has not been proclaimed
to us though Paul says to the Jew
first so have we known that power?
have we seen in our own proclamation people
affected by it?
or do we give an explanation in human
terms that lessens the impact if not robs
it because the message itself is too crude
too bloody too scandalous so maybe we're packaging
something that is more humanly acceptable but depletes
the power of the gospel itself what is
he saying in his introduction?
it's for that reason I'm called to be
an apostle this is my reason to proclaim
this message so the church is without a
gospel which means how is it the church
then?
it's a social agency for the distribution of
certain benefits and enjoyments and entirely without consequence
in the world and even to itself ok
so if the gospel would be nothing if
men were not guilty and in need of
the rescue which the gospel alone can't afford
you have no need you're not even aware
that you need to be saved until you
see what it is that has been provided
then you can ask what is it that
required this about me?
that's the revelation of the righteousness of God
is the revelation of sin upon which his
wrath is set and that there's no revelation
except of wrath except through this gospel sin
is the measure of salvation only they that
know what it is to be saved know
what it is to be lost only they
who know what it is to be saved
know what it is to be lost you
didn't know you were lost until you were
saved and then you know from what pit
you have been dug and from what hell
you have been saved I say to the
church the church is correct but it's lacking
in fragrance it's not enough to be correct
there's a fragrance that is waiting that we
can only bring and I think Michael prayed
last night or one of these days Lord
I don't have an alabaster box and I
wanted to interrupt him and say you are
the alabaster box you don't come with something
you are it and the only way to
pour out the fragrance is your own breaking
and your breaking is relative to your understanding
of the magnitude of what has been poured
out for you so our house is yet
without fragrance which is the knowledge the fragrance
of the knowledge of him in every place
through us that woman's act is remarkable and
isn't it equally remarkable that his own disciples
were indignant at it that he had to
chastise them with those words that she's done
a good work upon me the only reference
to good work that Jesus ever acknowledged performed
by a human being was her act why
haven't we come to this breaking of our
box which is handsome and chiseled and we
want somehow to retain it and serve God
with it intact or find a little spritz
can where we give a little a teaspoon
a little but no this fragrance requires an
outpouring of the entire content lavishly that is
performed by a woman speaks volumes in itself
because the men were indignant at the extravagance
of the waste but what did God do
at the cross could anything be more extravagant
than the sending of his own son into
the earth isn't that indignity enough to take
upon himself the form of a man to
be confined into a body and have to
suffer the humiliation of all that restriction and
limitation and in that as a son of
Abraham the most despised race the Jew and
in that to become a slave and suffer
the death of the most scandalous kind can
God the father himself be more lavish than
that and will you know the hell from
which you've been saved by it if we
sensed what hell is which is not a
polite subject but when you look at the
great sermons of old what is it sinners
in the hand of an angry God people
in the hearing of that sermon which was
read clutched the pillars of the church lest
they slip through into the fire itself which
heat they felt at the soles of their
feet by the very preaching now when you
hear today references to preaching like that which
we don't hear they call it hell and
brimstone fire and brimstone as if there's something
about such messages that are contemptible and that
we have graduated to more elevated forms of
message no the most powerful and effective messages
were to persuade people that they were sinners
and unless they repented and saw their condition
in need they would surely perish Jesus himself
said I read it this morning in John
chapter 8 if you will not believe that
I am he you shall perish in your
sins what a fate that is eternal and
irremediable there's no remedy once you descend into
that hell, it's just a long and unbroken
anguish of soul it's a horror but it's
the just penalty for the wages of sin
from which God wants us to be saved
but the righteous God provides also the remedy
and one of the things he condemns as
we'll read in Romans 1 is that people
had forsaken God and taken for themselves idols
have forfeited the creator for creation and are
not thankful that's tagged onto the same statement
they have forfeited God and have formed their
own idols even of reptiles as well as
four legged things and are not thankful somewhere
in one of these commentaries the author says
the great sin is the sin of ingratitude
so are we sufficiently grateful and have we
sufficiently contemplated the basis for gratitude it's not
only the wrath of God it's the righteous
wrath of God his wrath is righteous itself
his anger is not some petulance of the
kind that we enjoy as human beings where
we get mad or we get ticked off
or we're in a huff his wrath is
righteous it's a right response of a holy
God to that which is willfully calculated against
him in the thought and conduct of mankind
who have every reason to believe just in
nature alone.
Paul says they are without excuse for creation
itself reveals the truth of God and I
wonder how many missionaries of the kind that
we entertained recently going into the jungles of
Brazil really have believed the testimony of Paul
at the beginning that they are without excuse
you're going to a bunch of savages whose
condition is their judgment they are thoroughly cursed
in their sin, their minds are obdurate, their
hearts are black they can murder, they can
pillage, they can do because they have already
forfeited the revelation of God through creation and
they are without excuse, not only have they
forfeited the creator but they have taken for
themselves idolatries of their own choosing of four
-legged things and creatures and reptiles, sneaking things
and worship them instead of God and they
are ungrateful.
The missionaries need to go what they're coming
into this is not people who are just
primitive and they need to come to an
evolution from pagan primitivism to the acknowledgement of
a monotheistic God to the more sophisticated recognition
of the gospel and the revelation of Jesus
unto discipleship no their condition is already a
judgment and many a missionary comes back broken
from his failure even to begin to crack
this condition because they have not acknowledged that
what they're facing is already a judgment for
the forfeiture of God and that they are
without excuse and that these savage people need
to be confronted and accused your condition now
is already the statement of your sin and
when we go into the other form of
rebellion against righteousness what does it take women,
Paul says even women give over the natural
function of their own bodies and develop a
perverse passion for each other, even women why
did he say even because women are supposed
to be chaste and pure we men of
course are another thing but women but even
when women will give over their natural bodies
to that which is perverse that is the
judgment of the forfeiture of the righteousness of
God, homosexuality is an effect is an effect
and not a cause homosexuality and lesbianism is
already a judgment for sins already performed in
the rejection of the righteous God and this
is its outcome and this is its logic
and it is so perverse that if they'll
not be converted in the recognition of the
evil to which they have given themselves by
which the natural functions have been abandoned and
that they're slaves to these passions that torture
them and enslave them, how then shall they
come to a place of repentance, that the
judgment itself is God's provision to be brought
to a place of repentance when you see
the wickedness of your condition and for which
there is no escape and no remedy except
through the power of the gospel to save,
but how is that being spoken of today
in the secular world, well they can't help
it, it's a biological thing, it's in the
genes, they just have a disposition you know,
from birth completely disregarding the testimony of God,
when I attended a Lutheran seminary in St.
Paul and there was a discussion on how
we ought to relate to homosexuals and after
all Christ loves all the world and they
ought to be accepted, I in my naivety
spoke up and said, you know the scriptures
call homosexuality an abomination in God's sight men
lying with men and the president of the
seminary cried out, who is that man who
speaks like that and is in ignorance of
the most recent psychological findings that the most
recent psychological findings nullify Paul, that Paul was
an ignoramus and did not have the advantage
of sociology and psychology to understand the complex
causes for homosexuality for which we need to
be far more sympathetic and not homophobic no,
hey listen guys this is the testimony of
God this is the apostle of God, he's
speaking the truth of God and we need
to submit to his statements as being the
description of evil which the present world is
unwilling to acknowledge because it's only Paul and
the word but Paul and the word is
God and part of our submission of righteousness
is to submit to its truth or else
we would be tempted to kind of go
along and say, oh the poor victims well
they couldn't help but they had this issue
in their upbringing and no their condition is
already a judgment that they have allowed themselves
to give over the natural function of their
own bodies, is already the thing to which
God has abandoned them, he has abandoned them
to their own illicit lust and this is
the logic of its out working, but the
sin itself is the rejection of God as
God which is what all sin is, that
this has become now epidemic perversion lesbianism, homosexuality
is a universal thing that is now seeking
for legitimacy and acceptance as being as valid
a mode of sexual relationship as and it's
just a choice of style of how your
fancy and taste is but it needs to
be presented to our children in the classroom
as an option as legitimate as any, oh
saints we're suffering in the world and in
all nations for the want of a church
that hates iniquity and loves righteousness and has
accepted the testimony of God that explains that
these perversions are already a judgment that the
sin is God rejection and even the rejection
of his word which God sets out painstakingly
from chapter one in the most authoritative encyclopedic
statement of faith given by this great apostle
in the book of Romans, you're without excuse,
you've ignored the testimony of creation and nature
you've ignored the testimony of the word and
now you're suffering the consequence of a willful
ignorance when I confront Jews, I don't start
them off with, are you saved brother, what
do you think of Jesus, I start them
off with, how much time have you spent
in the libraries of the university knowing from
my own experience how much time that is,
chasing after some esoteric subject in the requirement
to catch your degree so you'll have a
route to financial security and success how much
time have you spent examining the statement of
a man who is purported to be the
Messiah of Israel and very God himself who
has come into earth at a certain point
of time to affect a redemption for the
rejection of which there'll be an eternal penalty,
how much time have you spent considering eternity
itself how much time have you spent considering
God himself, when have you opened the testimony
of God, these things are written that you
might believe and believing have life, why haven't
you once opened, while you've read Jung and
Freud and Adler and every half-baked character
and brooded over these books and spent hours
in their contemplation you've never once opened the
Holy Writ you will be judged for what
you have chosen to ignore and would the
God that be a church that is confrontive
and pushing this into the face of a
willfully unbelieving world who is suffering the consequence
of their willful unbelief which is Godlessness and
unrighteousness and for which the penalty in this
life is severe, what of the penalty of
the hell to come, we have failed dear
saints, to take God seriously, we're doing despite
to the grace of God it's as if
he has not suffered what he has suffered
and we have reduced it to a little
cheapy glib formula and little phrase are you
saying brother because the grace of God has
given a rudimentary benefit to mankind called conscience
but conscience can be seared by a continued
unwillingness to be pricked by it and finally
to be deadened to it so that it
no longer has any effect at all where
have we seen this, we've seen this in
the history of Nazism a whole nation is
robbed of conscience and can perform putting bodies
in ovens as if they're dealing with hot
dogs or reduce a people to a number
and rob them of humanity and go home
and have their Christmas dinners and sing carols
without any conflict because their consciences have become
seared, God has provided men are without excuse
either by the testimony of nature the testimony
of their consciences the testimony of the word
of God all of which is a willful
rejection which is sin itself the willful rejection
of God is the essence of what sin
is because, well why would men reject God,
because he cuts into your lifestyle because he
says thou shalt not because he's a God
of righteousness and law and because he's established
commandments and we don't want to be infringed
upon and want to do our own thing
as if we ourselves are God I still
remember the horrified looks of Dana's brothers and
sisters when I spoke at the Pentecostal church
in Rondas and while I'm speaking the brother
is looking at the catalog on racing bikes,
that was his idol and I'm pouring out
my soul and I said something like do
you think that this earth is your playground
to enjoy this is like coming into someone
else's house without even asking and walking right
in and trafficking your mud right up to
the carpet and going straight to the refrigerator
and taking what you want and stuffing your
face like a glutton and then not even
taking your shoes off, plopping on the couch
and leaving behind a mess as if this
is your right have you ever considered the
earth is the Lord's and the nations thereof
and those who dwell therein, this is not
your baby you're trafficking and exploiting the world
as if it's yours, as if there's not
a God who's created for his purpose so
what does Paul say in Rome in Acts
17 when he goes to Mars Hill God
has made of one blood all nations of
men and established the bounds of their habitation
that they might seek after him and be
found with him that the whole purpose of
your life is to obtain a knowledge of
God it's not for your bicycle racing and
your pleasure and the exploitation of the world
and it's resources you're acting in complete disregard
to the creator and his intention for creation
and that God has winked in times past
but he commands all men now everywhere to
repent for he has appointed a day in
which he will judge all men by that
man whom he's raised from the dead that's
preaching and you know what the scholars say,
that was Paul's worst performance, he did not
establish a church in Athens that his message
was somehow lost and vain and I count
it as one of the high water marks
of Paul's remarkable and acute perception of what
reality is that even the purposes for which
nations are created is for the purpose of
salvation some have even suggested that Adam was
made necessary because of Jesus, God had to
bring an Adam who would first fall in
sin and bring his taint to the whole
human race as the fertile head so that
a second Adam would come to lift men
out of that fallen condition so that the
second Adam justifies the first God brought the
first Adam only because he knew that the
second Adam would not be understood except in
the light of being a new federal head
for the new human race out of redemption
through his blood that God would go that
far that God has gone so far for
creation that men would be without excuse in
the way in which he has structured it
and what do we read in Ephesians 3
that God has created all things in order
that through the church the manifold wisdom of
God might be demonstrated to the prince of
God of the palace of the air and
this is the eternal purpose of God in
Christ Jesus what?
the whole of creation?
just to provide a platform and a stage
for the existence of a church and whose
character of demonstration is to be made corporately
that once and for all defeats the eternal
foe of God, the powers of the air
and that's the reason for creation that it's
not there for industry and mass production and
high style of living, it's there for an
eternal transaction through the church so we need
to align ourselves with what God says is
the purpose for creation the purpose for the
world the purpose for the church for the
neglect and indifference and rejection of those purposes
is sin itself and the church itself is
not absolved of that sin while it is
using the world for it's pleasure, it's success
it's satisfaction, it's enjoyment and even saying that
the gospel is God's provision for your social
elevation and to a better lifestyle and a
prosperity so that my first message in Nairobi
all those years again ago and the lunchtime
prayer service of Christian downtown office workers was
inspired by God don't think that the gospel
is God's provision for your social mobility that
you should have a three piece suit and
a ministry and a car and a secretary
the gospel has purposes much more earnest than
your social elevation you have completely misconstrued the
issue of the gospel and it came as
a powerful indictment on an African church that
looks to America for it's models and wants
also to attain to the kind of lifestyle
that is celebrated the televangelists exhibit who want
you to send them your contributions as seed
faith I would be much more respectful if
they said send it to some dinky other
place but don't send it to us because
we need to exhibit our own message by
our faith and not by your money and
your donations so all dear saints we need
much to lament and much to repent for
we have paid the bill we have idolized
these characters and provided for their cushy lifestyles
in which the message of the gospel is
completely denigrated and lost as it's ministers so
also the church and as the church so
also the nation the lord can lay at
the door of the church full accountability for
the condition of our nation and it's drift
into homosexuality and lesbianism and Sodom and Gomorrah
standards as being approved and appropriate because Paul
says at the end of his statement not
only do they do these things but there
are those who approve them knowing that they
lead to death and yet sanction and approve
them as good that's the final statement of
evil is the approval of evil as being
somehow good so deranges man through his sin
and so there's a basis for repentance if
we ourselves are rightly aligned with God we
need to pray for the church with which
we're identified and for which our Jewish kinsmen
are suffering the lack of that model that
would move them to jealousy that they might
be grafted into death and that therefore they
are perishing wholesale and the nation itself is
in the most pathetic of conditions for the
want of the revelation of God that ought
to have been given it by the church
in its midst rightly so repenting for our
own condition our lack of a proper understanding
that was available to us in scripture why
haven't we seen it for our own willingness
to be satisfied with a reduction of the
gospel as a glib formula step one, step
two, step three without the deepest understanding of
the wrath, the righteous wrath of God for
sin that required that wrath to fall upon
his son that we might be saved.
Lord my God we're in pitiful condition you
know and we've lost that apostolic sense of
the gospel and what are we my God
without a message that has the power to
save and how saved are we who have
been inducted into this shallow Christianity by just
signing on the dotted line and believing and
praying after someone else say this my God
it shows we lack the depth, the gravity,
the sense the reality of God is righteous
and therefore our own conduct is unrighteous and
we take liberties and we're not affected by
the downward spiral in our nation and in
the world we've learned to live with it
comfortably and maybe these guys are not all
that bad, maybe we are homophobic maybe the
problem was with us that we can't acknowledge
them and give them full equal access even
to becoming ministers themselves even bishops heads of
the church and that somehow we're discriminating against
them because we have this hang up homophobic
when the fact of the matter is it's
evil and the evidence of sin in its
worst form as not the thing in itself
but as a judgment for sin that already
is in the rejection of God as God,
so Lord look upon us my God, we
don't even know how to cry out, we
don't even know how to pray, what shall
we say Lord we're battling against upstream we're
going against the stream because the stream is
human betterment and getting on the best seller
list and your large church is not big
enough until you get a stadium because the
crowds are coming like a wave wanting such
an easy and pleasant message of improvement rather
than the necessity for a death and a
resurrection oh Lord, oh Lord the best seller
list condemns us thank you my God, that
Billy Graham in Queens where I went to
hear him before coming here for the summer
has on the platform Hillary and Bill Clinton
in the friendliest exchange of buddy buddy condoning
and validating one another as if this man
has not been the uttermost disgrace of any
president who has ever occupied the White House
conducting his orgiastic practices with a Jewish woman
in the whatchamacallit room and nearly avoiding being
whatchamacallit, impeached and boasted about it that he
had done the nation's service by his impeachment
trial and if he could there were people
who would elect him now and Billy Graham
could say you know you make a great
preacher you have a way with words your
wife ought to be president and you ought
to be preaching and people laughed I went
away sick in my soul and I came
all the way for the hours to come
to that 70,000 people crowded in to
hear the great evangelist and to hear them
complimenting each other and for him to give
a little Pablo message that had no convicting
power at all, that's our condition that's our
state these are the evangelists that are buddy
buddy with presidents people in power in high
places Lord Lord, Lord, Lord Lord, forgive us
my God precious God and help us help
us Lord, what a pathetic scene that this
old crock lacking sleep is trying to affect
the resurrection of a message that has fallen
into complete neglect and has not been known
in our time and generation Oh Lord help
us my God with a little help to
be of service to you in these last
days and to be to the people of
Israel what we must not only in word
and deed but in what we are in
ourselves that would bring conviction because we love
righteousness and hate iniquity and will not look
the other way and pay them compliments as
many Christians do and say to Jews you're
more Christian than most Christians that I know
when they're so ungodly as even to consider
Christ and have disregarded him as some accident
of history that need not be considered but
they live nicely, Lord my God, my God,
my God bring us to the word of
God as being the defining statement of truth,
however contrary to our subjectivity however contrary to
the wisdom of the world as expressed in
magazines and newspapers, that homosexuality and lesbianism is
not a genetic defect, it's a choice and
for which we will be held accountable and
pay the penalty both in this life and
the life to come, for no effeminate no
homosexual, no coward no liar, need think he
can enter the kingdom of God you've made
it clear, without holiness no man shall see
God righteousness is the key to the kingdom
and we bless you Lord that it is
so, for only a righteous God would require
it and not be lenient and say well
we understand your life, you grew up without
a proper father, your marriage blah blah blah
blah and so, no, he requires holiness, he
requires righteousness and gives us every provision by
the blood of Jesus to attain it and
by the power of his spirit to be
sanctified, gives us a church to grow up
in, in which we can receive correction and
rebuke and the prayer that we might be
a holy people for his name oh Lord,
oh Lord oh Lord forgive us my God,
we have fallen short of your glory we
have too quickly accepted every clib alternative my
God we've not insisted upon the apostolic standards
set forth by Paul from the beginning of
chapter 1 of his great book but we
want to consider it now, and we're asking
a grace and a mercy on your part
that we might continue in it and if
you'll do it Lord and give it we
know, something will be required from us, that
will not make us popular, even Christians will
be offended by us in our insistence on
this gospel in an ecumenical age, where everybody
believes in God in his own way oh
Lord oh Lord oh Lord that even Muslims
believe in God in their own way, so
they can saw off the head of a
Jewish victim or any other and think that
they're doing Allah's service and even our president
is the one who says that they believe
in the same God not the God that
I know but it's politic in a pluralistic
society to approve of all forms of worship,
and not to insist on your Christo-centric
model, which is a form of narrow fascism
that everyone has to believe your gospel and
your message, as if it's the exclusive way
to God and there is no other, who
are you to insist on it, that's arrogance
and impotence what's the matter with Judaism, look
at how impressive these people are, and how
impressive are you, for the insistence on your
narrow gospel the fats and the fire saints
so my God help us, help us with
a little help Lord, my God, we're willing
to give up a total night's sleep if
you would have the greater possession to bring
your passionate and urgent jealousy to our consideration
thank you my God, that we would break
our lives as alabaster boxes before you and
pour them out for that's the purpose, we
have no other purpose for our being, but
to glorify God and serve him thank you
Lord oh Lord, hear our groanings and our
cry for the church and its present condition
and that we ourselves are culpable and have
contributed to it and have gone along with
it hear our cry Lord we're not persuading
our own children for the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
wickedness of those who by their wickedness oppress
or suppress the truth, for what can be
known about God is plain to them because
God has shown it to them, ever since
the creation of the world his eternal power
and divine nature, invisible though they are have
been understood and seen through the things he
has made, so they are without excuse for
though they knew God they did not honor
him as God or give thanks to him,
but they became futile in their thinking and
their senseless minds were darkened, claiming to be
wise they became fools, and they exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling
a mortal human being or birds or four
-footed animals or reptiles, therefore God has given
them up to the lust of their own
hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their
bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth
about God for a lie and worshipped and
served the creature rather than the creator who
is blessed forever for this reason God gave
them up to degrading passions their women, even
their women exchanged natural intercourse for the natural
in the same way also the men, giving
up the natural with women and were consumed
with passion for one another, men committed shameless
acts with men and received in their own
persons the due penalty for their error since
they did not see fit to acknowledge God,
God gave them up to a debased mind
and to things that should not be done
they were filled with every kind of wickedness,
evil, covetousness malice, full of envy, murder strife,
deceit, craftiness they are gossip, slanderers, God haters,
insolent, haughty, boastful inventors of evil, rebellious taught
parents, foolish, faithless heartless, ruthless, they know not
God's decree that those who practice such things
deserve to die, yet they not only do
them but even applaud others who practice them.
Thank you for Paul, thank you for apostolic
seeing, thank you for truth that is unsparing
and clear and incisive two thousand years ago
it's as if someone is speaking today right
on with surgical precision and exactitude of things
as God sees them and gives us the
cause, the therefores and the becauses they willfully
have rejected the knowledge of God, they do
not want to consider therefore God has abandoned
them to the outworking of their own lust
in its most degrading forms, thank you that
your righteousness my God is like that, you
abandon you don't inflict, it's the logic of
their own rejection, whatsoever man sows that too
shall he reap there's a moral law of
the universe that needs to be recognized and
we see it being acted out in our
day so we bless you Lord, restore apostolic
seeing, restore apostolic jealousy for the gospel restore
apostolic proclamation of the gospel, may it come
to Denmark may it come to Sweden may
it come to those places where infidelity, divorce
homosexuality lesbianism and every kind of thing is
sanctioned as somehow normal and deserving of approval
and that there's something wrong with us if
we flinch at it we are the problem
we should be far more acceptive and tolerant
of these varieties of human conduct which are
just as valid as the normal use of
the body, Lord the age is evil and
we have not known it we do not
hate that iniquity my God, and we do
not speak out against it, we do not
love righteousness because we have not understood righteousness
so grant us my God that love that
you have for righteousness that did not enable
you to withhold your only son.
Righteousness required his death and a shameful death
of such a kind Lord that is stupefying
that you would permit it only evil and
its wickedness and your righteous wrath against it
will explain it teach us, give us back
the gospel in a jealous inheritance and an
obligation as Paul saw it as a privilege
my gospel he called it that I've been
given the stewardship of so great a message
that we have allowed to fall into a
mere formula step one, step two and that
the great evangelists of our days hardly even
know it that Oral Roberts applauds a 25
million dollar church building in a lush and
posh California suburb as being the issue of
the gospel Oh Lord Oh Lord, Oh Lord
give us a sense of your grief that
we might bear it with you as sons
and daughters who do not want you to
suffer no more sober us deepen us my
God, we're shallow somebody mentioned Woody Allen today
and I said I've been praying for him,
we need to be praying for these men
who are sailing along with Steven Spielberg and
the great culture expositors and their dream factories
and all of those who are moving toward
an eternal doom and do not know it
so that the head editor of commentary magazine
Norman Port Horace when I paid a thousand
dollars to attend his banquet, greeted me at
the door and he heard my name, he
said I'm too old to be evangelized I
said all the more reason you're close brother,
closer than you know one foot is already
in the grave and unless you repent and
receive a foolish message through a foolish messenger
you shall altogether likewise perish I don't want
to eternally even to think of the cry
from such a man that he's in a
place without remedy who is in a sense
ethical moral, concerned with issues in his magazine
and yet is himself intrinsically unrighteous in the
neglect and rejection of God where are we
with regard to the message, how internalized has
it become for us, how much real at
the grit, the pit and marrow of our
own being that we're not just giving a
hopeful suggestion, we're speaking words with conviction that
men cannot turn, we're not giving them a
casual option, it's not just a an opinion,
it's conviction that demands consideration, lest you perish
there's not enough of that kind of witness
because we have to become something not just
acknowledge something and to become that something requires
the very cross in which Jesus was impaled,
because we have shrunk from that cross, we're
not in a place to proclaim it, and
if we do make reference to it, it's
unctuous, it's just polite, but we've got to
be the thing in ourselves Paul was the
thing in himself and we need to be
so also to be it will require our
deaths but eternity is at stake for many
because of it we need to ask that
unlike Paul, are we ashamed of the gospel
maybe instinctively and inwardly outwardly we would say
no, we subscribe but is there really inwardly
a shame, when it comes to the nitty
gritty of speaking to a respectable person whose
life is even more impressive than ours morally,
culturally intellectually, can we bring the foolishness of
this message with conviction, or will we shrink
to face the world and all of its
esteem and the foolishness of this message with
the conviction that will penetrate and the anointing
of God that is given to those who
obey him is no small requirement and I'm
saying, we'll not attain to that except we
receive the deaths that are for us from
where we presently are and where we need
to become, search the scriptures read the references
of Jesus and read the great sermons of
Jonathan Edwards, Sin is in the hands of
an angry God, read the warnings in Hebrew,
in the book of Hebrews for those who
have tasted the grace of God and again
have fallen back whether they can be renewed
again unto repentance, that the prospect of hell
may be even a consideration for those who
were once saved and allowed their salvation to
fall into neglect so there's much to be
considered even the prospect of such a fear
is sobering for those that believe and would
we be as reckless as we presently are,
as my own son presently is divorcing his
wife, submitting his children to being ravaged by
the courts and being divided between parents in
the fulfillment of his own lust for a
woman if he had any fear that that
would be a way in which he would
find himself slipping step by step into hell
would he have entered into so cavalier a
career as divorce if he knew that by
such a means of acting against God who
says I hate divorce and putting away, you
would have been restrained from your own indulgence
because you want to respect what God hates,
because if you disrespect it, you disrespect God
and how long will it be before the
process of your estrangement from him will lead
you again to the prospect of eternal separation,
for no liar nor effeminate or homosexual or
violent or however God said, need think they
can enter the kingdom of heaven, don't think
you got it made because you once said
I accept you you may be more than
you know a candidate yourself for eternal separation
and anguish of soul, if that's not so
we ought at least to live with the
possibility that it may be so and even
that possibility would be a factor toward walking
more blamelessly before him we need to have
the fear of God restored we need to
face the question, which has not yet come
up in our consideration but now occurs to
me do we think that hell is even
righteous for God he's the one who has
established it is that becoming to God to
have a hell in which there's an eternal
burning without remedy and an anguish of soul
without answer are we reconciled to a God
who is a God not only of heaven
but also of hell are we embarrassed by
a God who finds such an eternal thing
necessary couldn't he have figured out a way
for human redemption without the necessity of that
threat is it unbecoming to him, or is
it the very statement of his righteousness does
righteousness itself require it, that there's a moral
requirement that if not in this life and
eternity men will reap what they have sown
and that they will not in one way
be an iota in excess of what they
deserve for the wages of sin is death,
and in exact proportion to what you have
sown you will reap I just gave Zach
a copy of Spurgeon's sermon on that very
topic and I thought it was so important
that we had a special meeting at Ben
Israel in which I read the whole sermon
to the collected body that we needed to
hear Spurgeon's statement that the wages of sin
is death that hell is totally a righteous
recompense for a reckless life that is not
at all an offense to God but is
totally in keeping with himself with what he
is in himself as righteous have we really
made that peace have we wrestled with this
some of us are embarrassed that God is
even the God of judgment we don't even
like it, we like his mercy we like
his love, his kindness but that he will
judge that he's appointed a day in which
he will judge all men, but that man
whom he's raised from the dead, why that
man?
because when we face that judge we're looking
at a man with scars that reminds us
that he's fit to judge because he's paid
the price for judgment, in being himself judged,
here's the evidence so what are you going
to say to him, what excuse will you
give what justification for your calculated willful offense
against God and a failure to heed and
to regard him, though he's made many efforts
at speaking to you and saving you from
the course which you had long flung yourself
in obstinate disregard to his warning what will
you say to him on that day you
ought to be fearful just for the day
of judgment that's why Paul said I press
on for the high calling of God that
I might be raised in that first resurrection
that when the Lord comes those that are
dead in Christ will rise first and those
that remain barely surviving will rise with them
otherwise if you don't rise then you'll have
to wait and linger in the grave for
another thousand years to the general resurrection of
all the dead because you didn't make it
with the first the second resurrection is called
a death and there the books are opened
the book of life and to see if
your name is written therein, why because Revelation
chapter 3 says it may well have been
blotted out your reckless and indifferent life even
as a believer can block you out of
a book in which you were once inscribed
and in that day when that book is
opened your heart is beating like a trip
hammer waiting to see whether it's there or
not because if it's not there it's bye
bye baby and a Jewish Christian theologian now
got on to me and said nothing more
reveals the radical content of the gospel than
it's confrontation with the synagogue there's a reason
to God's madness why he gives the priority
to the new first why Jesus said go
ye into all the world to preach this
gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem and
up to Judea then to the outermost corners
begin where I was crucified, begin where the
prophets were stoned, begin where the opposition is
most acute in every way and once you
can whether that by the power of the
message itself then you can rightly go to
the Greeks, why are we in our depleted
condition, we have ignored the priority as if
God had not spoken through Paul at the
very beginning to the church at Rome which
is the paradigm of the church everywhere to
the Jew first, we will not know and
understand the magnitude of this message and it's
foolishness which requires the power of God until
we will face them, so we need to
pray for church to be obedient to the
priority in it's every community because have you
noticed there are Jews in every community Omaha,
Nebraska Oshkosh, Idaho Copenhagen, it doesn't matter where
you are, they're there and they're there as
a presence waiting for our obedience try it
sometime it's death, it's humiliation, it's the door
slammed in your face, it is utter a
contemptuous disregard as if you are not an
entity and not worthy of even the faintest
consideration total absurdity all the more if you're
a Jew who proclaims it to Jews so
there's a reason why Paul gives that priority
from the first because nothing else will bring
forth the gospel in it's power than in
it's total absurdity when you bring it to
the epitome of civilization itself, the Jew so
let's be obedient the issue of eternity is
so great it is not too extravagant for
God to bring a holocaust and to bring
a second holocaust in order to occasion a
repentance because it's through repentance that faith comes
repent and believe ye the gospel if you're
hardened and you're unrepentant you cannot believe though
people would give you the most majestic exposition
of the gospel repentance is the key to
believing and so unless we ourselves come to
them in our own brokenness in the memory
of our own salvation out of so great
a death that we were equally guilty in
sins of their kind how shall we rightly
speak a word that can foment repentance rather
than indignation at our moral and spiritual superiority
because we have it and you're not with
the program we've got to come to them
in a certain way that is yet wanting
and waits upon the recognition of our own
depravity which we share with them and only
by the grace of God have we had
this revealed to us and we can avail
ourselves what was intended initially for them to
the Jew first so Lord again we pray
for mercy there's not a righteous stand upon
the earth that doeth good and sinneth not
and if God were to mark iniquity who
can stand where are we in any way
superior to our Jewish kinsmen Lord that there's
a grace and mercy that came to us
totally undeserved and the reason that it came
is that we should move them to jealousy
by the gracious exhibition of what we have
obtained that was totally undeserved so my God
help us to this we pray that you
might honor that witness Lord and bring us
into actual confrontation with this people we don't
have to look far they're in our community
we've not encountered them because we've not prayed
for them but start praying that we want
opportunity to fulfill the mandate and the priority
and see how long it will be before
God will show you that your dentist or
your lawyer or the neighbor around the corner
or your kids teacher is in fact a
Jew and that you would have opportunity to
share with him in proportion to your prayer
so we bless you Lord there's something very
alive before us today that has not changed
one whit from the moment that Paul wrote
it in his epistle to the Romans help
us from being cop outs and circumventing your
priority and obligation we want to rush off
to exotic places to witness but to this
people who are before our noses we are
indifferent and in ignorance we're moral cowards and
we know that to confront them will reveal
our inadequacy it will test us in ways
that we're not prepared to face so we're
asking Lord for grace, for mercy for ourselves
to be what we ought to this people
and then also because of that to the
Greek we thank you we praise you Lord
for this message, this gospel our privilege to
be its bearers and expositors righteousness is an
issue of faith and faith cannot be righteous
without faith for as many as will believe
that our witness is an issue of faith
also because it's obeying the mandate and the
priority of God as it is written that
obedience is faith and the ability to perform
that obedience is the faith that believes for
an enablement by the Holy Spirit that is
given to them that obey him so God
has established the whole remarkable saga in the
context of faith, faith to believe unto salvation,
faith to commend the gospel to others in
obedience to the word for the just shall
live by their faith serve by their faith
and without faith it's impossible to please God,
faith is obedience to the word of God
unbelief is a sin because it disregards what
God has said and will not believe him
for it so faith is righteous and only
by faith can we please God so we
thank you my God you've given us the
faith to believe this message grant us the
faith my God to commend it to others
and as we walk in our conscious inadequacy,
especially coming to the Jew, it will find
us out, will be revealed for the numbskulls
that we are who have barely graduated high
school and whose grammar is imperfect and will
trip all over our tongues and stutter when
we stand before their worldly composure that we
can believe that you give us a grace
and an anointing that shreds and reveals the
paucity, the fraudulence of their earthly credentials that
a word of God anointed is more powerful
than academic credentials and that in the foolishness
of our choked and spluttering presentation men can
be brought to faith and to believe because
there's an intrinsic power in that message that
you have imputed and that we're willing to
trust you for that even at the cost
of our embarrassment, thank you Lord and if
we'll not face that, how do we go
on to anything in God, in the realm
of faith, in the last days in sanctification,
fulfillment of anything if we miss it here
at the first that's why it's given at
the beginning, not just for our academic contemplation
but for our obedience seal that note Lord
I'm pleased with the way in which you
have unfolded the subject today precious let nothing
be lost my God in the way in
which you have made these points and because
your words will not return to you void
when we return to our places remind us
again of what we've heard and what you've
said obedience is faith your requirement your mandate
to this people the epitome of the world
and all of its arrogance and all of
its ability and all of its intimidation to
us whose lives are imperfect and yet we're
required to preach and to speak this foolish
message we bless you my God because we're
willing to bear some measure of the humility
that you bore in much greater proportion in
nakedness at that cross what is it for
us to catch a little flack from a
Jew and to be told that we're jerks
and upstarts and how dare we in our
impudence to suggest that they're lost, what is
that to us to suffer that their indignation
when you have suffered what you have totally
in degradation humiliation, nakedly even before your own
people we're without excuse Lord, if we shrink
from our small humiliation in view of yours
and because you bore that God has exalted
you and given you a place above every
name both in heaven and earth and a
throne higher than the heavens because you were
willing to be brought into that humiliation down
he has exalted you up and given you
a name and to that name every tongue
will confess and every knee will bow to
the glory of God the Father you exalt
those who are willing to be humbled and
so our eternal place and our eternal reward
is altogether proportionate to the humiliations we are
willing to bear in this life in obedience
my God to your call and to you
and Jesus himself is the evidence that he
who was abased is now exalted and that
Israel itself will be abased and it might
be exalted as the head of nations and
that we will be willing to suffer abasement
and humiliation in view of the exaltation that
will be ours eternally in heaven thank you
Lord put a seal on all this my
God, let nothing fall to the floor, let
it affect our every future consideration at this
school that something has affected us modified us
touched us in our deeps and therefore we
will see and consider everything that you will
be pleased to give in that modification we
don't want to lose it Lord, may it
temper our souls permanently we thank and give
you praise for how you have been pleased
to express yourself today for our benefit in
your so great mercy in Jesus name, Amen