Turn back to 1 Timothy chapter
3, and I'll read again that verse
that we're looking at. I don't ever at any time remember
trying to do what I have felt led to do this week, but we're
in it now, so we're going to have to go with it. Look back
at that 16th verse where Paul says, and without
controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest
in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached
unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into
glory." And this morning we come to that
phrase where he says of this one who is God manifest in the
flesh, that he was seen of angels. And I thought about it, there
probably isn't more foolishness, more outward utter stupidity,
and more idolatry associated with any being much more than
angels. Little gold pins fashioned as
angels. angels on your shoulders and
books written about angels. It makes me sick. But Paul says in this mystery
of the gospel, this virtual summary of the gospel of Christ crucified,
that he was seen of angels. And I thought this is really,
the more you think about it, really an amazing thing. Because even the angels, as long
as they had existed as created beings, they had never seen the
Son of God. And they surely had never seen
God manifested in human flesh. They had undoubtedly seen and
been in the presence of his holiness. They had seen the demonstration
and exercise of his sovereignty, of his power, and certainly of
his justice when one-third of that company of angels of which
they were a part had been cast out with Satan. And they had been dispatched.
I don't know how many angels there are. I don't know. They
said in times past there was a great debate in religion as
to how many angels could sit on the head of a pen. I don't
know anything about how many angels there are, but they had
been dispatched many times in the carrying out of God's purpose. They had delivered many messages
from the throne. And they had been engaged in
watching over the Lord's people since time began. He says in Hebrews 1, in comparing
and contrasting Christ to these angels, he says, but to which
of the angels said he at any time, sit on my right hand until
I make thine enemies thy footstool? He says, God never said such
glorious things even to the chief angel. And then he turns and
says this. And it ought to be a consolation
to all the Lord's people. He says, are they not all ministering
spirits sent forth to minister or to
serve for them who shall be the heirs of salvation? They are ministering serving,
helping, protecting, caring servants for the heirs of salvation. And they had seen fallen flesh. They had seen all the failures
of Edenic flesh, but they had never seen sinless flesh. They'd never seen God glorifying
flesh. They'd never seen God in flesh. But here He is, come as this
one described, as seen of angels, and they announced His birth. In Luke 1 it says, and the angel
answering, said, I am Gabriel that stands in the presence of
God and am sent to speak unto thee and to show thee these glad
tidings. I stand in the presence of God,
and I am sent of God to stand before you and speak this good
news. And they beheld his glory when
they saw him in the manger laying there, God manifest in the flesh. And the scripture says that they
saw him in such times as they ministered to Him in the wilderness,
and came and strengthened Him in the garden, and they beheld
Him when He hung there on that cross, and they watched over
Him when He lay there in that sepulchre. They rolled away the
stone when the time of resurrection was come, He says part of this
great mystery is that this incarnate Christ is seen of angels. But I've been thinking about
this and trying to see what the Lord might point out to us in
light of this verse and in light of this context here in Scripture,
because they also are spoken of as having some interest in
things that are more and greater than just beholding the person
of Christ. Turn over to 1 Peter. 1 Peter, that first chapter, and
look with me in verse 8. Because Peter here is talking
about how we by faith see Christ, though we see him not by sight,
and he says, Whom having not seen, ye love, in whom though now ye see him
not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full
of glory, receiving the end of your faith,
even the salvation of your souls, of which salvation the prophets
have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that
should come unto you. Searching what, and what manner
of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify
when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed that
not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things
which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the
gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,
which things the angels desire to look into." These are things that the angels
desire to look into. Now just hold that in your mind. Because when we read this word
angel in scripture, we have a kind of preconceived idea as to what
that means and as to who they are. And we might ought to examine
that just a little bit closer. Because knowing the person of
God and the purpose of God, what interest in one sense of speaking
would an angel or one of these created beings have with salvation
or redemption as it pertained to them? There was never a redemption
for those angels that fell was there. There was never any word
spoken. There was never any sign given. There was never any prophecy
made that had anything to do with the spiritual improvement
of any created angel. So what does all that mean? Well,
what is an angel? In other words, if I say that
word angel to you, what comes immediately to your mind? Halos or wings or whatever it
is. But essentially, this is what
an angel is. That word means messenger. messenger. And the Old Testament
word angel, the root meaning of it is to dispatch as a deputy,
or to speak or to be the bearer of a message from God. That is, an angel is in one sense
an ambassador. And so when you read this passage
of scripture here, this verse that we're trying to look at,
we find that the very prophets of God, as we see their ministry
and as Peter described them, they were in a sense angels. If you remember Isaiah, he says,
that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up." How did he see the Lord? You
ever wonder how he saw the Lord? How did he see the Lord Jesus
Christ? How did, as Christ said, Abraham
see my day and rejoice in it? Well, they saw the Lord by the
same way we're enabled to see the Lord. They saw him by faith. And Isaiah said, I saw the Lord
high and lifted up. And immediately on the heels
of that, in confessing his own sinfulness, when the Lord says,
who shall I send? Or who will go for us? And Isaiah
says, Lord, send me, send me. And so in that sense, he is an
angel or he is a messenger of God. And even to this day, though
he himself as a man is dead, is still being used of God in
that word and prophecy that we love so much, such as Isaiah
53, he's still being used as the angel or messenger of God. The scripture says that after
Christ had died, and rose again from the dead. It says that he
was seen of many. As a matter of fact, turn back
to Acts chapter 13. Acts chapter 13, and look with
me in Acts chapter 13 in verse 29. It says, And when they had fulfilled
all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree,
and laid him in a sepulchre. But God raised him from the dead. And he was seen many days of
them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are
his witnesses unto the people. They saw the resurrected Christ. And what was the consequence
or the result of their having seen the resurrected Christ? It was that they then were his
witnesses. And that was the case with those
saints, those New Testament saints that were witnesses to the very
resurrection of Christ. And it was also true of those
apostles that he himself set forth. Now, every once in a while,
I pass by as I go along in this world I pass by these religious
organizations, and I'll see a title for what they call themselves,
and underneath it, it'll be Apostle Joe Globe, is the head here,
or Apostle so-and-so. Well, the truth of the matter
is that there was a particular qualification for being an apostle. In that sense of being one of
those twelve original apostles, there was a qualification that
was necessary in order to be one of those apostles. What was it? They had to have
seen the Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Well, somebody said, well, we've
got a little problem there because the man who wrote the better
part of the New Testament, Christ had already died and he was not
even converted at the time, so how in the world could he fit
that description and qualification as an apostle? Well, turn over
to 1 Corinthians. And in 1 Corinthians chapter
9, listen to what the Apostle Paul says in just the kind of
passing as he speaks in seeking to, I guess you might say, justify
himself before men in what he told them. And what he says in
1 Corinthians 9 and verse 1 is this. He says, am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ
our Lord? You say, well, when did he see
him? He saw him when Christ stopped him on the road to Damascus and
unhorsed him and brought him down and blinded him in the brilliance
of his resurrected glory and revealed himself to them. He says, when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me. But what did you do after that,
Paul? I'll tell you this, he said, I didn't confer with flesh
and blood. He didn't run off somewhere and
ask some man what he was to preach. As a matter of fact, he didn't
even meet with any of the other earthly apostles, with the very
exception of a brief encounter with one of them, but he rather,
having seen the Lord, preached Him, preached the Lord
Jesus Christ. And it all boils down simply
to this, and that is not only with those who were witnesses
of His resurrection, not only of these apostles who saw Him
face to face, but the truth is all who are enabled to see Christ. They're these messengers or angels
or witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ. But it always boils down to this. You can't tell somebody. You
can't describe. You can't say anything about
somebody you've never seen. That's it. Now, I know this from
experience. Because I tried, I think, for
about maybe five or six years to tell somebody or to be a witness
or to describe or be a messenger concerning somebody that I didn't
know myself. I didn't know who he was. Isn't
that the most amazing thing? How a man or how people can be
preachers and evangelists and soul winners and church workers
and all this kind of stuff when obviously they don't know who
he is. Why? Because he has to reveal
himself. He has to reveal himself. He has to send me He had to send
me, as even a preacher who had preached about six years, he
had to send me, the pastor of a congregation supposedly trying
to lead somebody else, he had to send me an angel before I ever saw him. Now, he didn't send me. He didn't
send me an angel that would fit on anybody's picture in their
dining room. He didn't. But this Christ, Paul says, this
One who is God manifests in the flesh, this One who is justified
in the Spirit, He is seen of angels, that is, God reveals
His Son to these who are to act as messengers. They got a message. Now, I'm
not like, who was it, Ehud, the judge, the left-handed man with
a dagger who confronted the king and he thrust that dagger into
that fella all the way to the hilt because he's a fat fella,
and he said, I got a message from God. No. You see, when you read such passages as Revelation chapter
2, The Lord addresses this message,
this word that's given, and he says, to the angels of the church
at Ephesus. It is impossible, almost, to
think in terms like this. Well, Bill Parker is an angel. I guess some folks think he's
a devil. Richard Wormack, he's an angel. Well, he must not be. His wife
has just about been to keep him wearing black all the time. Doug Weaver. He's an angel. He is if he's sent of God with
the message of Christ crucified. And one reason why Christ looked
at those scribes and Pharisees who were themselves preachers
and pastors of a sort and teachers and leaders, and said of them,
you are your father the devil. It's because they didn't know
Christ. They had never seen Christ. They never had Christ revealed
to them, revealed in them. And they didn't preach Christ. They were devils, not angels. And this business of preaching
the gospel is a matter, as somebody said one time, with God bringing
this message to the heart of His servant And that servant
preaching that message from his heart to somebody's heart that
the Lord takes it to. Because an angel is a messenger. And if you notice here in the
context in 1 Timothy 3.16, what is the very next statement? He
said, preached. Preached. I believe it was Brother Henry
said, you can't tell what you don't know any more than you
can come back from where you ain't never been. But what is this message? What
is the message delivered that Paul sums up and describes
as this. He said, we preach Christ crucified. And all these folks running around
here telling me and telling these other men, telling you and stuff
like that, they say, well, just preach Jesus. Which one? I don't think hardly a day goes
by in my life that I don't hear somebody, somewhere, in some
situation, talking about somebody they call Jesus. But Paul said this morning, he
said, you know, he said, I'm a little bit fearful of you.
He said, just naturally, if apart from the grace of God, anybody
come along preaching another Jesus, you'll believe them. No. He said, we preach Christ
crucified. Everybody's always saying, well,
why are you always talking about blood? And why are you always
talking about righteousness? And why are you always talking
about the cross? And why are you always talking
about Christ crucified? And why are you always preaching
what they call a mercantile redemption? Because that's the message of
God. It ain't how you live and how
I live. I live by a Marine Corps base,
probably maybe the biggest in the world. And so I have like
a, in some sense, I have like a revolving door coming in every
other Sunday or every Sunday. Here comes in a couple. You know,
three or four children in tow, and they're here, and all this
kind of stuff, and they listen, they look so bright-eyed, and
they got the Bibles in the hand. And I'm preaching the gospel.
I'm preaching Christ crucified. Well, you know, that's kind of
appealing at the first and all that. And I can almost tell that
they're looking at me and they say, well, we're going to give
him a second chance. And so they come back the next
Sunday or the next service, whenever that is, they come in, they bring
their children in, all smile, they sit down. Guess what they
hear? Same thing. About that third time they started
beginning to question me. When are we going to start hearing
about how to live? When are we going to find out
what it is that you do for the children? Or when is it that
we're going to find out what kind of group your women have,
or your young people have, or your single people have, and
all this kind of stuff? And I have to tell them this.
What do you have for our children? I've got the one thing. And so
far as I know, if you live in this town, it's the only place you'll find
it. And that's the gospel. That is Christ crucified. That is where I stand up before
you and try to be an angel and tell you the only way that this
God of the Bible, the God of heaven and glory, the only way
He can save you in a way consistent with His own self and consistent
with His own justice and consistent with His own Word. That's what we've got. I remember
one time a lady asked Brother Scott Richardson, after he got
through preaching, she said, she said, is Christ really enough? He's a lot wiser fellow than
I am. He said, if He's all you got, He is. But if you've got anything else, I can remember when the Lord
revealed the truth to me, and I began, you know, those folks
after I resigned the Southern Baptist Church and went out there.
I didn't know what I was going to do. I was just going to just
be out there somewhere. I was going to find me somewhere
to hear the gospel. But I was out of town, and they
called my wife, and they said, ask Gary if when he comes back,
if we've rented someplace or gathered somewhere, will he preach
to us? And I told her, yeah, and I started
out. I knew a little bit more than
I knew then, but maybe not a whole lot. But I started out to preach
the gospel because I felt like the Lord had shown me something. And so, you know, just preaching
the gospel came out of that Church, I don't know, maybe 60 people
at the beginning and, you know, they're just so delighted in
it, but when they begin to find out that this wasn't something
that just paced on to what you already had, you know, they couldn't hardly
go back to where they came from. One drift off here and one drift
off that. That's 30 years ago. Because this message, Paul says,
is going to be a fragrance of life unto life to some, and of
death unto death to others. And I've watched over the years
how hard people come in, you know, and they're trying to They're trying to believe what
we're preaching. They're trying to believe what
the Lord's people, who He's been pleased to save over the years,
what they rejoice in and delight in. They look at it in the Scriptures,
and I point it out, and I say, read this and look at this, and
it does say that, and they're trying as hard as they can to
believe it. But the problem is they don't
have any love for it. They don't see it as a matter
of life and death. Now, I'm not sure of a lot of
stuff, but I'm going to tell you this. This gospel, wherein
the righteousness of God is revealed, it ain't a matter of a point
of doctrine or a higher doctrine. It's a matter of life and death,
heaven and hell. If you believe not that I am
He, you'll die in your sins. I don't
want to die in my sins. And I tell you, if the Lord,
you know, He says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved. You think that's the only statement
in the Bible sometimes to hear preachers preach. The trouble is most people don't
know what it is to call upon the name of the Lord. I heard a man that's supposed
to be a grace preacher take that one statement of the script and
preach an old sermon on it, and he simply made it a matter of
like in your heart or with your mouth, so simply just calling
on the name of the Lord. You better go back and find out
what that means, because that isn't the first place that's
mentioned in Scripture. And you go back in Scripture
and find maybe, as I like to do, I use it as a principle of
interpretation a lot of times, go back into Scripture and find
the first mention of something. You'll find something like this.
And Abraham took stones, and he built an altar, and he offered
a sacrifice, called on the name of the Lord. But a while later, he moves to
another place, says he's takes wherever he settles and makes
his camp, he gathers them stones up and he piles them in a heap.
God had already said, don't you put a chisel on them anywhere.
You just take them, rear them up, offer that sacrifice, and
says he called on the name of the Lord. That means that he worshipped
God. in the recognition of the only
way that God can be worshipped, in the only way that God can
receive a sinner, in the only way and basis upon which He can
bless a sinner, and that's in a perfect, God-appointed, God-approved,
God-provided sacrifice, in a way. that shows him to be
righteous in blessing, giving, saving, taking unto himself sinners. Righteous grace. Well, one day the Lord showed me that. I'm not a preacher. I'm just,
I'm not a orator. I'm not a scholar. I did manage
to struggle through 12 years at Jacksonville High School.
He gave me a little piece of paper, you know. Oh, don't forget
my one credit from the community college too. Forgot what it was
now. Grammar and composition. But I've seen something. I may
struggle to tell it to you, but I've seen something. Man didn't show it to me. God
sent an angel. He preached the gospel, the truth
to me, and God revealed it to me. And if I tell you anything, that's
what I got to tell you about. And if you are ever sent an angel
of God, that's what he's going to tell you. And the angel of
the Lord in this sense, and I believe really this is the sense in which
that word is used, these who saw this God manifest in the
flesh, these who saw this resurrected Christ, these who were eyewitnesses
of His majesty, especially these twelve in the beginning that
He revealed Himself to and sent out as messengers, these who
in time He sends out to preach His gospel, they're angels, messengers, because they've seen. by the
hour of faith in the gospel of Christ crucified, God manifested
in the flesh, who went to the cross on the behalf of his people,
died the death of the cross. Do you know that the death of
the cross ain't just any death? said he humbled himself and became
obedient unto death, even, or particularly, the death
of the cross. Turn over to 2 Corinthians 4,
just a minute. 2 Corinthians 4. Now, I've never heard anybody at Sovereign
Grace Baptist Church in Jacksonville, North Carolina say, we got an
angel of a pastor. I've never heard that. I don't
ever expect to. I don't even want to. But like those men said, I can't
help but preach the things that I've seen and heard." Paul, writing in 2 Corinthians
4, he says, "...therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we
have received mercy, we faint not. But we renounce the hidden things
of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the
Word of God deceitfully." I used to stand up before men and women,
and every head bowed and every eye closed. Now, if you feel anything tonight,
if you believe you're a sinner, if you want me to pray for you,
just raise your hand. Or I'd stand up before him and
I'd promise something. I'd say, if you do this for God,
he'll do something for you. That's what Paul's talking about.
He says, we've renounced the hidden things of dishonesty,
not walking in craftiness. We're not trying to sneak up
on anybody. That's what we used to try to
do. or try to sneak up on somebody and blindside save them or gang
save them or something like that. No. We're not going to get you under
pressure and sing 20 verses of Just As I Am and just wear you
down. We're not going to go to your
pew and take you out. I don't even want to say what
came to my mind. No. We're committed to this, to being
messengers of the truth.