you in peace from God the Father
and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins,
that he might deliver us from this present evil age according
to the will of God and his Father, to whom be glory forever and
ever. Amen. I marvel that you are so soon
removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ
unto another gospel, which is not another, but there are some
that trouble you. and would pervert the gospel
of Christ. But though we or an angel from heaven preach any
other gospel to you than that which we have preached unto you,
let him be accursed. And as we said before, so say
I now again, if any man preach any other gospel to you than
that you have received, let him be accursed. What Paul is saying,
he says it three times, something about other gospel, another gospel. And he said, if you receive this
or it declare this, then it is an accursed gospel. So I asked
the question, what is this other gospel? What is another gospel? And Paul clearly says, it's not
a gospel. It's a no gospel, which is not
a gospel at all. But it is, in my perception,
Paul is saying it's an apparent gospel that is accursed. I like to look at what is this
other gospel, where does it come from, what is the result of that
gospel, and what is the Lord God Almighty's response to that
other gospel? The first thing this gospel does,
it causes the gospel that Paul just stated clearly In the first
few verses, it calls that heresy. It calls the gospel of Christ
heresy. Acts 24, 14, after which they
call heresy. So worship I, God of my fathers,
believe in all things which are written in the law and the scriptures. So that gospel of the gospel
says, the real gospel, the gospel of the sovereign mercy and grace
of God in Christ is heresy. Guess what? That gospel is still
preached today. You stand up and say something
like election or something that God is sovereign, they say, oh
no, he's sovereign in everything except salvation. So that's where
it starts. How strong is this gospel? Matthew 24, for there shall arise
false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and
wonders, insomuch that if it were possible, they should deceive
the very elect. That gospel is so strong, it
says if it were possible, it would deceive every one of us. But, God, in Romans 8, Paul makes
this statement. What or who can separate us from
the love of God? The sovereign mercy and grace
of God in Christ. And Paul says a nothing. Not
an angel, not any creature, not any power, not any principality,
not anything can separate, will be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So try as it
might, or be it as strong and as powerful as it is, this other
gospel, that it might deceive the very elect. Paul says it
can't, it's impossible. Nothing can separate his sinners,
his sheep, his people, his elect from his love. Yet that's exactly
what this other gospel tries to do. What are the characteristics
of this other gospel? Who is the author? In Isaiah
14, the scripture makes this statement. O Lucifer, son of the morning,
for thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend unto heaven, I
will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also
on the Mount of Congregation and the sides of the north. I
will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like
the Most High. That is the basic, fundamental
characteristics of this gospel. And it's based on I will. It
is the basic, fundamental gospel of most religions, I will. And
what does it say? I will be just like God. I will be God himself. And that's what this gospel preaches. This gospel goes like this. It's
called salvation by works. I must accept. I must open my
heart. I must come. I must do these
things. And what does that do? It says
God can't do it, therefore I must do it. What does that do? That
makes them greater than God Almighty. It diminishes God to a nothing
God and elevates themselves, I will, I can be just like God. And that is the fundamental characteristic
of this other gospel. Now, if you ask somebody, can
you be just like God? They'll say, no, I know nobody
that will make the statement that I will ascend, I will elevate
myself, I will exalt, I will be just like God. They say, no,
I wouldn't do that. Yet, they all do it. The minute
they say, I will do anything, it diminishes God Almighty to
nothing. It makes themselves their own
God. And that is the other gospel
that priests in the Baptist church, the Methodist church, Hindu,
Muslim, Catholics, Mormons, all of them, it's based on a reward
system of what they do. They talk grace. Listen to Stanley
on TV. He talks grace. But what does
it amount to? It is the grace that when I can't
do something, then God's grace is applied and helps me do what
I need to do. That is this other gospel. Now, I want to give you some
examples of this other gospel. It just comes from Ezekiel. It's
concerning the prince of Tyrus. Tyrus is a Phoenician city. In fact, it's still a city. It's
one of the fourth largest cities in Lebanon right now. So here
is a person, and whether that person is figurative, literal,
or not, I don't know, because he's not named. It just simply
says the Prince of Tarsus. And Ezekiel writes, and this
is Ezekiel 28, the word of the Lord came again to me saying,
son of man, play unto the Prince of Tarsus. Thus saith the Lord
God, because thine heart is lifted up, And thou hast said, I am
a God. I sit in the seat of God in the
midst of the seas. Yet thou art a man and not God,
though thou set thyself in the heart as the heart of God. The
same thing that Lucifer said in Isaiah. And it goes on. Behold, they were wiser than
Daniel. There is no secret that could
be hid from thee, meaning this guy sees himself as all wise,
his own wisdom. With thy wisdom and with thine
understanding, thou has gotten thee riches and hath gotten gold
and silver unto thy treasures. He has gained much because he
is so wise and so full of understanding. By thy great welcome and by thy
traffic hast thou increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted
up because of thy riches." His heart, his mind, his understanding
is all exalted because of what he believes and thinks of himself. Thus saith the Lord God, thou
hast set thine heart as the heart of God. And it goes on to say
in Ezekiel, and this is Ezekiel talking to this prince of Tyrus,
and he makes this statement. There has been an Eden in the
garden of God. Every precious stone was I covering,
the stardust, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx,
the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and
gold. the workmanship of thy tablets
and thy pipes was repaired in thee in the day thou was created."
Meaning this person was given every bit of the providence of
God, and he compares it to the Garden of Eden, compares it with
a robe full of precious stones, and music was played celebrating
him from the day he was born. What a great person this person
is. The anointed cherub, and covereth,
and I have set thee so, thou wast upon the holy mountain of
God, that's walked up and down in the midst of the stones of
fire. With all this utopia that God gave him, this garden of
Eden, with all this he was walking up and down in the brilliance
and the splendor of all those precious stones, highly exalted, that was perfect in thy ways
from the day that was created, till iniquity was found in thee. All this he gained, all this
wisdom, all this splendor, all that God gave him, He said, I
am just like God. It is an issue of the heart. My heart is the same as the heart
of God. That's this other gospel. And again, it's based on what
I will and what I do. Thine heart was lifted up because
of thy beauty that has corrupted Thy wisdom by reason of thy rightness. With all this that he sees within
himself, he declares himself to be just like God. There's another person that says
the same thing in a different way. The Apostle Paul says, concerning
the righteousness of the law, I'm blameless. That was Saul
of Tarsus speaking. But God looks at that as iniquity. Now this example is showing natural
religion, it's showing natural man's character and belief, and
it shows the spirit of the natural man. I can't think of a better description
in all of scripture as this example, be it literal or figurative,
of here is the heart of natural man in all its beauty, in all
its wisdom, in all its understanding, in all its gains. It says, look
at my heart. I am equal to God. And it is
something that, since it's natural, every one
of us is born with that spirit. Every one of us. And I can prove
that scripturally too. Let's go to the best example
to me in all the scripture of this gospel and man's response
to it, separate and apart from the mercy and grace of God. And
guess who it is? It's Adam. Adam. Here is Adam. God formed Adam out of dust. God took the most inert thing
on the face of this earth and formed man. He took his hands,
his workmanship, He put it together, then he breathed into this pile
of dust, nostrils, and it became a living soul. Can't think of
a better picture of salvation than that. God giving a dead
sinner life. But here is his first creation.
God created him and he became a living soul. God created Adam in his image. What image? The image of Christ. Why do I say that? Because Christ's
name was Adam. He was called the last Adam.
So when they're talking about making him an image of God, it's
talking about what Christ would look like when he came on this
earth. So Adam, in that sense, is a
picture, something you can see, of Christ himself. God created
Adam. And guess what? He said it's
good. And when God says it's good,
it's good. In fact, it's perfect. God created
Adam as a perfect being, creature. Then he did something else for
him. He planted Adam in the Garden of Eden. He gave Adam a helpmate,
Eve. He planted him in the Garden
of Eden and the scripture says he put him in the Garden of Eden
to dress it and keep it. God gave him dominion over all
creatures. He named them. So here is God doing one thing
after another, after another, after another to make this perfect
creature called Adam. I look at the Garden of Eden
as utopia, the ultimate place to be where everything is perfect. Every living creature was food,
or the scripture says, was meat for him to eat. It was given
to him, dominion. It was his. God established one
simple condition. Out of all my creation, out of
these millions of trees and everything that I've made and put in this
Garden of Eden, you cannot eat of one tree. One simple condition,
eat of one tree. I'll look at this and say, look
what God did for Adam. Everything in there was pleasant
to the eye. And my imagination said the fragrance
was also pleasant. It was, again, a physical utopia
with God providing everything from his breath to his life,
to his food, to his comfort, to his pleasure, everything. But one thing, you cannot eat
of this tree, because the day you do, you shall surely die. However, a serpent was in the
garden. The serpent was the most subtle
creature that God created. Subtle meaning. What you see
is not what you get. If you look at this creature,
here is something so beautiful to the eye, yet in character,
absolutely ugly. tell you the truth in deceit. The deceit hides the truth of
what he is. So here comes this creature called
a serpent, beautiful, speaking plainly, pleasant to the eye,
pleasant to the ear, everything that was camouflaged in this
serpent. What you see again is absolutely
not what his internal character is. So it's deception. And he had a gospel. He asked
this simple question to Eve. Did God tell you you should not
eat of every tree in this garden? Eve's response was, God said
we could eat any fruit except one, and that we shall not eat
of it, neither even touch it, lest we die. So here's the question. Satan comes up, what did God
tell you? Eve told him. It's one simple
thing. And what was Satan's response,
or the serpent's response? You shall not surely die. God knows that the moment you
eat it, your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as God's, knowing
good and evil. So here's that gospel. You can
be just like God. The same thing that Lucifer said
in Isaiah, The same thing that the Prince of Tars said of himself,
I lift my heart up, I can be just like God. I will set my
seat above the stars. I can be just like God. That's exactly what Satan is
saying, or the serpent. I keep saying Satan, but I think
Rupert is Satan and the serpent and the devil. all have the same
meaning. You can be just like God. Now,
here is the word of God saying, you have all these things for
your pleasure, for your enjoyment, for your comfort. You have dominion
over everything. The first question, was it enough? No. One thing. You withhold from the nature
of man and he will covet it and cherish it and love it. That's
what this tells me. So here is the word of God. Eve
listened to Satan. She looked and saw it was good
for food, pleasant to the eye, and her desire was to make her
wise. And she ate of that fruit. Here is the result of this other
gospel. She rejects the word of God and
accepts the word of the serpent, the devil, or Satan. A picture
of all natural man. You despise. You reject. You say, what God said is a lie. What this other gospel says is
the truth. It is desirable to my eyes. It looks good to eat. And I desire
to have this knowledge of good and evil. The difference between that gospel,
the other gospel, and the gospel of Christ is stated clearly in
something Rupert read out of Isaiah 53, probably Wednesday
night. This gospel, the gospel of Christ,
concerning Christ himself, has no form nor commonness when we
see him. There is no beauty that we should
desire Him. There is nothing in our souls,
nothing in our natural spirit that would say Christ or this
gospel is desirable at all. Because it deliberately says
there is no form, there is no beauty, there is nothing in this
gospel that would cause us to desire Him. compared to the other
gospel. Oh, how pretty it is. How beautiful
it is. It looks good to eat. I want
that. Oh, the contrast. Here is the
truth, the gospel versus the other gospel. And we in Adam
and in Eve are born accepting that gospel. It's our natural gospel. It's
our natural characteristics. It's our natural spirits. It's
our natural minds. It's our natural eyes. When we
see it, we will grab it. Why? Because it's acceptable,
it's pretty, and desirable. We look at the gospel, the free,
sovereign grace of God and Christ, and we reject it. We despise
it. We hate it. That is a picture of us. You can take, and I'll make this
personal, you can take Bill Maher and substitute for Adam. You can take Bill Maher and substitute
it for the Prince of Taurus. You can even take Bill Maher
and substitute it for Lucifer if you want to. Wouldn't hurt
my feelings one bit in our natural state. We all do it. Now, what is God's
response to this event in the garden? The first grace, and it's just
me speaking, don't know whether it's the first grace or not,
but I think it is. The first grace of God was in
that garden. Because the moment that Eve and
Adam took that fruit, their eyes were opened. God's grace opened
their understanding. And what did they see? I am naked. I am bare before God
Almighty in the presence of God. I am dust. That is an act of grace. We cannot see because we're blind
until God opens our eyes to understanding. And when we do, we see what we
are. The essential saying, I am naked. I have nothing to cover me. I am exposed for what I am. And then, ah, their natural says, I know how
to get un-naked. I go out and I sew me some fig
leaves together and I hide my nakedness from God. We still
try. Then, it continued. They hid, they ran from the presence
of God Almighty. That is the result of this other
gospel. When God shows us that it is
another gospel and not the gospel. When God opened their eyes, they
ran and hid. They said to me, I am nothing,
I am dust. Let me hide myself from this
person who gave me everything. And look what I did in response. But God, another grace, God sought
them out. The Lord said, you harken to
the serpent's gospel. You can be like God. You were
disobedient to my words. In other words, you listened
to him, you didn't listen to my word. This is the fountain
and the foundation for all sin. It's unbelief. I do not believe
God. I do not believe his word. I
believe something else. It is the fountain and the foundation
for every sin on the face of this earth. The Lord said, in sorrow and by the sweat of
your brow, you shall live for the rest of your days. Then the Lord made coats and
skins and clothed them. Ah, the first picture of the
shed blood of the lamb. That skin, it says skin, I believe
it was the lamb. took them in their sin, and he
applied the blood of Christ to them to cover them. After rejecting and saying, I
despise you, I don't believe you, I do the exact opposite,
after all you gave me, God came to them spoke to them,
and gave them eternal life through this picture of the skin covering
them. And to get the skin, you had
to kill an animal. And it shed blood. It's a picture
of the finished work of Christ, Christ and Him crucified. Then
he kicked them out of the garden. And notice, he did all of this
before he put them out of the Garden of Eden. And he said,
when you leave here, you're going to be in sorrow and at the sweat
of your brow for the rest of your life. Now, the sorrow of
Adam, my imagination, is can you imagine Adam looking at his
conditions prior to being kicked out of the garden and where he
is now? Sorrow for the rest of his life.
Oh, why did I do that? He's the only human being that
can say that, because he was the only one there. And now he
sees where he is now. Oh, I am sorry for what I've
done. Lord, forgive me. Because more
than any human being, he knows. Now this sweat, literal sweat, Everybody who's
ever been outside in this hot weather sweats, so we know what
sweat is. And the Lord said, to eat, you're gonna have to
work. You're gonna sweat. There's two other kinds of sweat. The sweat of God Almighty in
Christ in the garden of Gethsemane with agony and sorrow the travail of his soul, he sweated
great drops of blood that fell to the ground. And I'm convinced
Adam's sweat, in a sense, is a picture of that sweat. Adam's
sweat caused God to sweat. He sweated blood that travails
his soul by putting skins the blood on Adam. That's what it's
called. There is a current of sweat that
we sitting right here do. And it's called in Hebrew, what
do you do to make sweat? You labor hard. Here's our spiritual
sweat right now. Labor to enter into the rest
of Christ. cease from your own works, just
like he did and rested. That is our current labor today. And let me ask you this question.
Are we better than the Prince of Tyrus? Are we better than
Adam? Are we any different? Answer
is, in no way. We're all the posterior. By genetics,
by nature, the children of Adam, born that way and have the same
character. People say, well, I didn't sin
with Adam in the garden. Well, I don't know what alien
you came from, but you didn't come from Adam then. 2 Corinthians 11.3, I fear lest
any man by any means as a serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety. So you should be corrupted from
the simplicity which is in Christ. Here is Paul saying, I fear the
very same thing that happened to Adam and Eve. I fear for you
now because of this other gospel. We are all dead in trespass and
sin. Now listen, are we better than
they? Ephesians 2, 3, we all walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince
of the air, a spirit that worketh to disobedience, fulfilling the
desire of the flesh. We were children of wrath. That
is our nature. No different. from Luther's statement
in Isaiah, and the one in Ezekiel with the Prince of Tyrus, or
Adam and Eve. No different whatsoever. That's
our nature. But, hear the grace. But God
crucified his son, shed his blood for Adam. for you and for me. Even though we were born despising
and hating and rejecting and calling him a liar, he placed his blood as a covering
over our sins. Why? To praise and honor and
glory of his clay. No flesh for glory in his presence. And I'll end this with a statement. How can you go from a dust to
a diamond? By the grace of God. He takes
dust, and we talk about in the New Testament, rather than dust,
clay. The potter and the clay forming
and making and filling and breathing, it's the same thing. Look what
God's workmanship does with that clay. He makes them vessels of
honor to the praise of His grace. We become the Lamb's pride, His
body, His people. And here's a statement in Revelation,
this is what God does for us. Romans 21, Revelation 11, having
the glory of God and her light, meaning whoever this person is,
whatever this thing is, it's illuminated by the light of God,
likened to a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear
as crystal. God takes his bride and illuminates
her, and she shines like a jasper. is as clear and bright as a crystal,
from dust to this precious jasper stone. The grace of God applied
and effectual to our souls. Having the glory of God upon
our souls, when I look at that, one of the things I see in the
scripture is when Moses was in the presence of God Almighty
on Mount Sinai when it lit, his face was so bright that you couldn't
even look at him. This is the kind of brightness,
the glory that God has created in this thing he calls a jasper
stone dispersal. Clothed in Christ's righteousness
as a wedding garment, perfect, complete in holiness, full of knowledge of all spiritual
things, May light unto Christ as he is so are we or we will
be. Seeing Christ face to face, we
see all the brightness of the glory of God. So from Adam we
start as dust and God takes that dust, the most inert thing on
the face of this earth, gives it life by His breath, covers
it with the blood of His Son, then brings His bride to Him,
and clothes His bride, His church, and His people with all His holiness
and righteousness and brightness, and we shine just as clear as
a crystal. all for one purpose, the gospel
that declares Christ is everything. It's a gospel that declares in
him is the brightness of the glory of all his mercy and grace
for poor sinners. It is a picture that shows here's
God's response and his gospel to this other gospel, which is
no gospel at all. So he showed me, he's not rude
at all.