it. Amen. Beginning in verse
21 of Colossians, once you were alienated from God and were enemies
in your minds because of your evil behavior, but now he has
reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death and to present
you wholly in his sight without blemish and free from accusation,
if you continue in your faith established and firm, not moved
from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that
you heard. and that has been proclaimed
to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become
a servant." Now, the title of this message
is The Hope of the Gospel. And I only give it that title
because, well, there's two reasons. People kind of think there should
be a title. At least I think people think there should be
a title. But also, if you come up with a title, if in my studying
I can actually put a title on what I'm gonna say, that helps
center my thoughts. Because you know, the title,
everything that's said should have something to do with the
title. So the hope of the gospel, Now this passage that we read
begins with the description of the most horrible
condition in which a person can exist. Once you were alienated
from God and were enemies in your mind because of your evil
behavior. Now, when we look on the sufferings
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we see the physical sufferings
he endured, all the pain involved in a flogging, having his beard
ripped out, having a crown of thorns put on his head. Somebody
had said, balled up his fist and hit him.
When he was blind, they blindfolded him, and somebody hit him and
said, prophesying to us, who hit you? And they took that beam of the
cross, and even though pictures show, you know, the modern pictures
of crucifixion, they'll show Christ with that entire cross,
you know, dragging it along. That's not how it was done. Generally
speaking, the post part of a cross stayed in its location. And when
it said someone carried their cross, it meant just the cross
beam. But our Lord began to carry that
cross beam, and I can't remember just how far it was, but it was
a mile or less. But our Lord, who created the
heavens and the earth, yet so much had He taken on humanity. that the cross became too heavy
for him to carry. I suppose he had bled so much
that he just didn't have the strength to do it. And there
was a fellow, Simon of Cyrene, standing by. And I don't think
that a Roman soldier picked Simon out because there's anything
special of him. They're just going, that's where it happened.
And so the soldier, the Lord, falls down under the weight of
that beam. And he just looks, and here's
this guy that looks pretty stout. He says, here, you carry that
cross up there for him. And I don't know what Simon thought
of all the proceedings. I don't know if he was among
those who had said crucify him. I don't know if he had merely
been walking down the road on his way to Jerusalem and just
stopped a minute to see what these goings-on are. I don't
know if he had any sympathy for the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever
his attitude was, By the providence of God, he was called upon to
carry that crossbeam the rest of the way. And when they got there, from
what I've read, they just threw that thing on the ground, threw
our Lord on his back, nailed him through the wrists, and then
they picked that beam up. heave it up to the top of that
cross beam, and then just let it drop. You know, the post had been whittled
at the top to be a little bit smaller so it could fit through
a hole in the cross beam. Some say that the pole would
be laying on the ground, You know, they would have pulled
it out of the hole that was its permanent location, and they
would fasten that crossbeam on it, and then they would stand
it up, and of course, in order to make it stable, that had to
be two or three feet in the ground, the pole, or it just wobbled
everywhere. And they'd do it, and there was no mercy shown
to these guys, and they just dropped it in that hole. And
when they would do so, Normally, it would pull their joints out
of place. In the prophetic scriptures concerning
the crucifixion, in one place it says, all my joints are out
of place. And if they had not nailed the
person's feet to the cross yet, which they might not have, that
meant the entirety of that three-foot drop was absorbed by the wrists
because there was nothing else to hang on with. Horrid physical pain. And recent archaeological evidence
has showed that when the feet were nailed to the cross, it
was not as you see in modern pictures where their feet were
kind of folded over one another and then a nail driven through
both of them. The feet, they would bend the
knees some, and then they would nail each foot to the side of
that beam, nailing it through the heel bone. Now you imagine
that. I mean, if you got a nail driven
through the soft tissue of your feet, in between bones, it would be an agony. Imagine if they drove a spike
through your heel bone. But that was because soft tissue
was not strong enough to hold the weight. And so there they'd
be hanging and their knees bent. And there was a reason for their
knees being bent. Because when you're hanging by your arms,
it pulls your ribcage up. And oddly enough, you can't breathe
out. which means essentially you can't
keep breathing. And so these fellows that had been so crucified
would be hanging like that until their lungs were burning for
oxygen, and their knees were left bent so that they could
stand up, so to speak, on their heels, all that weight borne
on those nails, take a gasp of air, and then drop back down.
And the goal of all of this, because crucifixion was not a
humane way to execute people. In our country, of course, there
are serious questions about whether we ought to continue the death
penalty at all, but probably ever since its inception,
our nation has thought that If someone is to be put to death,
it should be done as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
Crucifixion was designed to be the exact opposite. It was designed
to take days. Because you really didn't bleed
that much. Our Lord bled a lot because they'd done much more
than crucify him. But if all that has happened
is nails in your hands and nails in your feet, your body can handle
that so far as clutting things up and you don't bleed anymore.
They wanted you to live as long as possible in that agony. To
be put to shame and not only that, to be a deterrent to others
as they saw the unimaginable agony that you were going through
because what you had done. It was a deterrent. And our Lord suffered that And
he suffered more than your average crucified man did, because before
they crucified him, they'd shredded the flesh off of his back, they'd
put a crown of thorns in his head. And yet, he said not a word. He did not cry out in pain. A sheep before his shearers is
dumb, he opened not his mouth. Our Lord said seven things from
the cross. I can't remember all of them.
One of those, I thought of what would happen if I were ever a
martyr. And all martyrdom is unjust.
And I have this thing about justice, I just can't stand for injustice
to go. I'm unavenged. And if that had happened to me, I'd have been cursing everybody
involved. You know what our Lord said?
Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. On another occasion, he said,
I thirst. He told the thief on his right, today you'll be with
me in paradise. But none of his words expressed
any pain or agony or suffering but these. My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? He did not complain about what
men were doing to him. He did not cry out in the agony
of his fleshly suffering. This is God in human flesh. And
as Martin Luther is reported to have said, he sat and looked
at that portion of scripture, they said, for three hours, he
just looked at it, meditated on it. Finally, he closed the
Bible and he said, God forsaking God, nobody can understand that. And that's true. And while we
have no way to Explain that in a way that's
gonna fit nicely into our minds. We can't deny the reality of
it, that as our Lord hung on that tree, as the scriptures say, despising
the shame, meaning he counted it nothing. Because of the joy
set before him, he didn't care that he was being treated shamefully
and exposed to open shame. while he's hanging there. He
doesn't cry out about his physical sufferings. The only thing that
made him open his mouth was that he was alienated from
God. Verse 21, once you were alienated
from God. And you know what? When we were
alienated from God, we didn't care. If there's any evidence
of the depravity of humanity, it's the fact that he is born
in this world alienated from God, and apart from a work of
God's grace, he remains alienated from God, and until he dies,
he doesn't care. He doesn't feel that there's
any loss in that. It doesn't bother Him. And yet
that is the greatest of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ as He
poured out His soul unto death, bearing our sins and His body
on the tree. That's what made Him cry out,
alienated from God. Of course, I kind of know the
reason why it would have bothered Him. doesn't bother your average
person. If I had never met Bonnie, I probably wouldn't be saying,
oh, I just feel so bad I'm alienated from Bonnie. Because I wouldn't
have known about her. I wouldn't know what it was to
be joined to her as her husband. therefore being without her would
have meant nothing. Now, if the Lord were pleased to take
her away from me, unbearable. And as much as any of us who
are married might be able to enter into that, how much more
the blessed Son of God who through all the ages of earth to that
point, and in the eternity that existed, and here we are, we
have to talk funny about it, that existed before there was
time, for all of that existence, he had been in perfect, open,
complete union with God. He was God. He was with God. The worlds were made by Him and
through Him. He is and always has been the God in whatever way that God
is able to enter our creation and interact with us. He had
a fellowship with God that I suppose we can't ever know, not even
in glory, because we aren't God. But imagine being God in your
very substance and yet be alienated from God. And yet, brethren, that's how
every one of us was born into this world. And I say to the children and
the young people here, to anyone here who is not a believer in
the Lord Jesus Christ, that is your present condition. cut off
from God. And maybe you don't think about
it much. And if you don't think about
it much, you're pretty much like everybody else. I'm saying that to those of you
that are here, and I hope there are some out there sitting down
in the living room watching with their parents. Let me speak to
you. honestly and from the heart,
not that I've ever intended to deceive you or not that it's
ever been a matter of my heart, that is the condition of your
soul, but I feel a burden about it at this moment as I think
of this. Once you are alienated from God, listen to me, if you
are not a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ, right now you are
cut off from God. In Ephesians chapter 2, Paul
described it even more. He said, you are separate from
Christ, without hope, and without God in the world. Maybe that doesn't mean much
to you. But you know this. You know that this world won't
last forever. It'll probably last longer than
you, but it won't last forever. You won't last forever. No matter
how young you are, no matter how healthy you are, no matter
how exciting life looks to you as you look ahead, the time is
coming when your life will end And here's what the scriptures
say. It's appointed unto man once to die, and after that,
the judgment. And I tell you, with all the
passion, with all the love, with all the seriousness that my heart
can muster, you don't want to stand before God alienated from
Him. And this is one of the reasons
I don't like going to church. It scares me sometimes. There are things that you should
be scared of. And you might be thinking, yes,
but I'm young. I won't die for a long time. I graduated from
high school. It was, I think, June 13th, but
somewhere around there, 1973. When we were getting ready for
our 40th year reunion, I was looking through the pictures
in our yearbook, and they had a picture in there of us all
sitting there. There were about 350 people in
my graduating class. Of course, I look at a picture,
and well, I don't know if everybody's like me, but the first person
I look for is me. See, if I can find me in that
picture, and I found me. And I looked, I think it's three
seats to the left. And I think the guy's name was
Gary. I can't remember his last name. His parents had bought him a
brand new car for graduation. I did not know him well, but
I was told he's a good kid. And his parents were so proud
of him. And because of their pride and their love for him,
they bought him this brand new car. And it was outside the Memorial
Fieldhouse where our graduation was held. And he went out of
that graduation flush with the excitement of
having gone through that rite of passage, gone to his car,
wasn't drinking, wasn't driving fast. but somebody else was. And within three hours of his
high school graduation, he met God. You young people, get this in
your heads. Someday, you're gonna meet God. I know you realize someday you'll
die. That's bad enough in itself.
But the really bad part of dying is this. When you die, you go
to meet the God who created the heavens and the earth, who created
you, and against whom you have sinned. How will that go for you? How will that go for you if you
are alienated from Him, cut off from Him? I'm not going to say to you.
as they used to do to us young people in the church I went to.
They'd tell us stories like that and get us all worried about
it and say, okay, everybody bow your head and close your eyes.
Who wants to go to heaven? Raise your hand. Raise your hand,
okay. Well, then who wants to ask Jesus
in their heart? And, of course, teenagers whose
emotions are much more powerful maybe than circumstances would
justify, but yet they've got them all wound up and Yes, I
want Jesus to come into my heart and they'd make a profession
of faith and then they'd talk them into getting baptized. I
don't want to do that to you. I just want to inform you of
the reality that awaits you. I want you, even in your young
age, to know that when we meet like this for worship, it's not
just because we're religious people. It's because there are
important and eternal issues in mind. You're going to school, and maybe you don't like that
so much, but I kind of enjoyed it. I didn't like the classes
part, but I liked seeing my friends. But I didn't mind going to school.
But you're going to school. You spend a lot of hours there
every day. And when you're done, many of you are going to go on
to college and maybe even graduate school. Why are you doing all
that? You're doing all that out of the belief that if you'll
go through that, your ability to make a living and have a reasonably
prosperous time in this life will be enhanced by going to
school. But you know, if you go to school,
let's say you get a bachelor's degree like I've got, that's
gonna take you till you're 22. And if you get out of school at 22,
then you have roughly 43 years of a regular career. You may
work later in your life, but 65 is the normal, what people
think of as retirement time. So you're going through 16 years
of school, not to mention all the discipline and instruction
that your parents gave you while you were at home, all of that
for the sole purpose of making your life better. for the next 45 years. What are you doing about eternity? What are you thinking, young
people, about the existence that never, ever ends? You're not immortal. But that doesn't mean you won't
exist forever. Immortal means you can't die.
But we're never in a state we can't die. The only thing that
would require us to cease existing is for God to quit thinking about
us. And then we would just disappear. You know, that old Descartes,
I think it was, the philosopher said, I think, therefore I am.
Really, it's God thinks I am, therefore I am. But here is what the scriptures
have taught, that every man, woman, and child
will in time stand before God and give an account of his life. Does that sound serious to you? I remember sitting in church
one time And I think I had to be nine
years or younger, because I believe that happened at Highlawn Baptist
Church, and I was nine years old when we moved to a different
church. But, you know, you're talking
nearly 60 years ago. My memory might not be exactly
right, but I do remember sitting there in church, and as was customary
for me, I was falling asleep. And right as I got to that, I don't know what you call it,
kind of like no man's land between being awake and being asleep, it was just like someone spoke, someday you're going to die. Now I'm a little bit different
than other people in the way I think and how things come to
me. And I don't know that many people
have had an experience like that at nine years old. Believe me,
I did not go to sleep. I woke up. And that reality weighed heavily
on me for some time. Someday you're going to die. And the scriptures say it's appointed
unto man once to die, and after that, the judgment. And we came
into this world alienated. That means cut off from God. And he goes on to say, enemies
in our minds because of our evil behavior. So we come into this
world as enemies of God. We're not only cut off from Him.
We're not only disconnected from all of His goodness and mercy
and grace. We are His enemies. You say,
well, I've never hated God. If you've never hated God, it's
because you've never met Him. You know the old phrase, to know
Him is to love Him. Remember there was a popular
song probably in the first half of the 60s. To know, know, know
Him is to love, love, love Him. But if you are a natural person,
and by that I mean someone who has not been born again by the
Spirit of God, to truly understand who God is, to know Him is to
hate Him. because he is opposed to everything
the natural mind desires. A woman came up to Donnie Bell
one time and said, Brother Donnie, I've loved God all my life. Donnie
said, that's too long. That's too long. You were not born loving God.
And right now you may think I don't have anything in particular against
God. I'm just not particularly interested
in Him. That is what it is to hate God. Because it is God who made you.
In Him we live, move, and have our being, said the apostle.
You exist because God says you exist. You move around. Because God says, you move around. You live because God says you
live. Everything you have is a gift
from him. Every bit of food you've ever
eaten was given to you by God. Every breath you have ever taken
was given to you by God. Every bite of food you've ever
had came from his hand. Do you know that, young people?
Do you ever ponder on that? What if you were like that to
someone? You gave them everything good
that they have. They were poor and you made them
rich. They were hungry and you fed
them. They were sick and you healed
them. And then they said, oh, that's
well and good, but you know, I'm not particularly interested
in being friends with him. How would you take that? How
would you perceive that? Paul condemned the Romans at
the beginning of his condemnation of them in Romans chapter one,
verse 18. He said, They did not acknowledge God,
neither did they give thanks. Don't think that you've got to
have this white-hot hatred against God, that you've got to go around
gritting your teeth thinking, I hate God, I hate God, to fall
in the category of those who hate God and are alienated from
Him. Everyone outside of Christ. alienated
from God, and in their heart they hate him because he demands
their utter allegiance, and they want to be their own Now, you young folks, I've been
addressing this to you in particular, but the adults been here sitting,
listening, and maybe there's some of you adults, that's why
God had me say these things. After all, I did not prepare
to say these things beforehand. I haven't yet got to the message
I had in mind. It's this thing. At that time, you were alienated
from God and enemies in your minds through your evil behavior. And if you are not in Christ
by faith, then that's what you are. And
that's terrifying. We love you. We think we look
at you as humans look at other humans, and we think you're wonderful. Your parents probably think you're
the best kids that ever walked on the face of the earth, and
that's how your parents ought to think of you. That's all well
and good. That has nothing to do with what
I'm talking about. I'm talking about how God sees
you. Don't be fooled. Don't keep putting it off. Don't
say, I don't like to think about that because it's scary. That would be like someone who,
and this happens, who has the symptoms of a deadly disease
but won't go see the doctor because he's afraid the doctor will tell
him he has a deadly disease, as though the doctor telling
him he has it has any effect on whether or not he has the
disease. You may not go to the doctor, you may never hear the
diagnosis, you still got the disease. And so I'm standing
here in a sense like a doctor, and maybe you didn't want to
go to the doctor, you don't want to hear the diagnosis of your
condition, but I'm going to tell you because it may spur you to
find out if there's a remedy. for your condition. Here's your
condition. Whether you're a newborn babe,
or elementary school, junior high, high school, or all grown
up, or old. Here's the diagnosis. By nature,
you're alienated from God. and enemies in your mind through
your behavior. And while there is a remedy,
it is not a remedy that you can do. Verse 22. Again, let me address
you younger people. These are some of the most wonderful
words that have ever appeared in scriptures. We've heard some
of the most awful words that have ever appeared in scriptures.
But listen to these next words, but now, but now. He has reconciled you by Christ's
physical body through death to present you in his sight without
blemish and free from accusation. First we hear, you're alienated
from God. You're enemies in your minds
because of your evil behavior. And doesn't that sound like something
that can't be fixed? You can't change how you were
born. And I'm telling you right now, you can't change how you
think. You can't change. You can change
your outward actions, but you really cannot change how you
feel about God. But now. No longer the once you were alienated,
but now. Now once you were alienated,
that applies to everybody born into this world. But remember
this book of Colossians was written to a group of believers written
in Colossae. So when he says, but now he's
reconciled you, Brethren, friends, that doesn't necessarily mean
you. You know, this is a letter. And before you can take the words
of a letter to heart, you've got to be sure it was addressed
to you. But now. He has reconciled you. Who is this you? Verse 3 of chapter
1. We always thank God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. because we have
heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love you have for
all the saints, the faith and love that spring from the hope
that is stored up for you in heaven and that you've already
heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you. Now that's the you that's mentioned
here in verse 22, but now He's reconciled you. No one else can lay claim to that. Are you one who can say, my faith
is in the Lord Jesus Christ? I love Him. I love His people. Is that true of you? Now let
me make an aside here. That isn't why you are in this
blessed group that he speaks of in verse 22. That's not what
put you in that group, but that's how you know you're in that group. But now he has reconciled At
one time, alienated, estranged, enemies, now reconciled. Have you ever had an enemy that
became a friend? Nearly all of us have had that
experience. Maybe somebody did something
to us. We misunderstood what we did, but we got mad at them.
We thought, OK, I got nothing to do with them. I'm not going
to do anything to them, but I want nothing to do with them. I'm
not going to. If they invite me to their house,
I'm not going. I hope I never see them. I really
don't like them. And then somewhere down the road,
for some reason, You become best of friends with that person.
That's what it means to be reconciled. The one you previously hated
has now become your close friend. And it says here, now he has
reconciled you. We don't reconcile ourselves. We remain in a state of hatred
toward God until He does something. He reconciled
you by Christ's physical body through death. You heard me explain
earlier something about the crucifixion. Understand this, the crucifixion
was what we could see of our Lord's sufferings had we been
there. But that was not the severe part
of his suffering, as awful as crucifixion is. Isaiah 53 puts it this way, he
poured out his soul unto death. Peter says it this way, he bore
our sins in his body on the tree. What would you think? Imagine some kind of criminal,
whatever be the worst, most disgusting type of criminal that you can
think of. Somebody that you personally
could pick up a pistol and shoot them in the head for what they'd
done. You think about that. And think that that person's
crime was charged to you, you were found guilty of it, You
were held in contempt by everyone, and you were punished for it. And there were a lot of people
out there that wished they had a pistol and couldn't get away
with shooting you in the head. Our Lord bore our sins in His
body on the tree in the presence of God. in such a way that his
sins were regarded, excuse me, our sins, the sins of his chosen
people, were regarded as his sins. They were charged to him. The one who never did wrong was
charged with every kind of wrong imaginable. All the perverseness of human
nature All the ugliness and awfulness
of human conduct was laid on him. And most of humanity who was
there on that day agreed. They thought that's the kind
of person he was. But here's the worst of it. That's
how God saw him in our day. Crimes of sexual violence and
sexual perversity are kind of in the foreground. Our Lord bore those sins. What would you
think if before the whole world you were held up and believed
to be a sexual pervert who had murdered
children. And everybody believed it. Your
mom and dad did. Your siblings did. Your spouse
did. Your kids did. Everybody believed
it was true, even though you knew that it hadn't been true.
Our Lord stood before his beloved father, bearing sins like that, and his father saw him as guilty
of them. He bore them and bore all the
punishment due them, and you know what that did? That reconciled
God's people to him. Because those sins being laid
on Christ meant they were no longer on Him. Excuse me, they
were no longer on His people. A thing can't be in two places
at once. If my sins were on Him as He
suffered, they aren't on me. And I, the one guilty, and I'm
not going to sit here and describe what things I'm guilty of. I
can't bear it, and I'm sure you couldn't if you knew it. And
the same thing goes the other direction. Secrets are a good
thing. But everything that I am and
everything that I've ever done was charged to him. And his father
looked on him as the one guilty of it. And full of wrath and
indignation and disgust, he poured out his righteous wrath against
him. And I stand in his presence reconciled
among his best friends. For God sees no fault in me." And what is the result? To present you holy in His sight. Most people are trying to be
holy in everybody else's sight. I want to be holy in God's sight without blemish. I look at me and all I see is
blemish. All I can see is ugliness. Is that true of you? But thank God, I stand before
Him without blemish. We've been going
through the Song of Solomon in our Bible classes. And Solomon
describes Shulamith, which is just a feminine version of the
name Solomon, but she's the one he loves in this story. And he
describes her as the most beautiful thing that there ever was. And he says this to her at one
point. And it makes me weep. I find no fault in you. I can't see anything else in
me. He sees none. Free from accusation, the devil's
called the accuser of the brethren. He comes into the presence of
God and points out their sin. And you know what the Bible says?
He's cast out. Why? He no longer has standing. The blood of the Lamb has put
away their sin. And he can stand there and make
an accusation all he wants. He can't make it stick because
the sin that he brings up no longer exists in the presence
of God. Think of that and how wonderful
that is. You don't have to think far back,
do you, to remember things. You certainly don't want to face
God and have them on your conscience and have them as part of your
history. But it says here, we are free
from accusation. Imagine standing before him. And there on your left is that
accuser of the brethren." And he said, I know what he did.
I was there. I saw him do blank,
fill in the blank with whatever it is about you that disgusts
you the most. But according to the promise,
if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ
the righteous. And the accuser says, he did
this. And our advocate says, no, he
didn't. I did, and I paid for it. There is nothing that you can
rightfully accuse this person of doing. You say, that's awful bold. You
bet it is. But if it ain't true, there isn't
any truth, is there? If that's not the way it is,
there is no good news. We're all lost. We will all perish. If there is any accusation that
can be made against us in the presence of God, it can be made
and it can be found to be true, then we are lost and lost forever. We are alienated from God and
enemies. I realize I'm going kind of long.
I'll try to wrap this up. But this is just, right this
minute, it's the burden of my heart. Oh, the awfulness of what we
are by nature and the wonder of what we are by grace. If you continue in your faith,
verse 21, established and firm, not move from the hope held out
in the gospel. And I finally got to our subject.
I can handle it real quick. What is the hope of the gospel? That when I stand before him,
I will be holy in his sight without
the slightest blemish and free from any legitimate accusation. That's the hope of every believer. And those, you know, there are
many that kind of have that hope in a natural way and they make
a profession of faith, but it says this is true of you if you
continue in your faith established and firm, not move from that
hope. Not move that that's what you
want and not move from the truth how you got to be that way. And there's plenty of temptations,
isn't there, to move from that? Well, like I said, this is just
something on my heart. I could go on, but I don't know
I'd say anything more than what I've already said. I just have
to repeat it. Listen to me, all of you, but
especially you young people. Think seriously. about these
matters. Paul's talking about you. He's not talking about people
in other churches or people that don't go to church. He's not talking about the pagans
and the primitives. He's talking about you. well-bred, well-educated, reasonably
well-behaved children and young people in the good old USA. You are without God. You're alienated
from him and enemies. Look to Christ. Think about what
he's done to reconcile his people. call upon his name, and you will
no longer be alienated from him. You'll no longer be enemies with
him. You will be reconciled, and you
will be counted holy in his sight. You will be spotless under his
divine gaze, and you will be free from accusation. And when you die, you'll have
nothing to fear. May God bless the words spoken.