Good morning. Title. Message that I plan on
bringing this morning. Is our duty to share the gospel
and. I know you heard it. Some of
you heard Bill this morning at the 10 o'clock hour. And one
of the things he said and he said several times I'm planning
on saying again, is it? We all have a life to live. a
death to die, a judgment to face, and an eternity to spend. And
we have a duty to share the gospel. And the rationale for the fact
of our duty to share the gospel is, number one, the brevity of
life. And I'm not going to get you
to turn to this, but in James 4, 14, the Bible says, whereas
ye know not what shall be on the morrow, for what is your
life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and
vanishes away. So our life, we don't know how
long it's going to be. And it could be a short time. And if you miss Bill's message
last week, he was here and it was one of the best that I've
heard in a long time. It was on the reconciliation
of Christ. And if you, if you didn't, you
weren't here, I would advise each one of you to get that message.
It was outstanding. It was simple. It was a great
message. And he talked about the brevity
of life in the uncertainty of life and uh... there is an insert
uncertainty matthew twenty five thirteen watch therefore for
you know net neither the day nor the hour when the son of
man come so uh... it is briefing is one more passage
i want to read and then up before i get down to the main things
i'm here to talk about and the bible and in luke you don't have
to turn to it sixteen through 20, I'm gonna cut out a couple
of them. And he spoke a parable unto him
saying the ground of a certain rich man, and then skipping to
verse 19. And I will say to my soul, soul
thou has much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease,
eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, thy fool,
this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Then who shall
provide these, shall those things be which thou has provided? You
know, another reason that I'm bringing this message about our
duty is right now there's a lot of people who are our friends
and family who are sick and dying and have problems. And I own
a brother, Leon, he has cancer. Al Davis, the nephew of Elizabeth,
has got either cancer or some kind of ailment. I think one
of Randy Wage's wife, Susan, her cousins has cancer. And my
brother has got cancer, got melanoma all over his body. He's right
now down at MD Anderson Orlando Clinic taking chemo. Some of the people that we know,
the more and more we live, somebody's coming down with something. Everybody's
coming down with cancer, and it's like an epidemic. It's not
the question of do you have it, when you're going to have it.
So two weeks ago, I don't know if you saw in the paper, four
young boys in Bainbridge were killed in an automobile accident.
And then, of course, with all the shootings in Columbine and
up in Colorado at the theater, no one is immune from death.
It could come. Today, it could come when you're
middle age, it could come when you're older, it could come when
you're real young. We don't know. And another thing, the reason
I'm bringing this message is the state of our country. Now,
we don't know who the next president's gonna be, but my opinion is that
no matter who's elected, that tough times are coming, and we
better be ready for it. And we have a duty to be ready,
And Matthew 24, 44 says, therefore, be you also ready for in such
an hour as you think not the son of man coming. Now is the
Lord coming soon? Well, as Bill said, uh, last
week that, you know, he may come tomorrow, but they were, they
were thinking he was come coming during the time of the disciples.
They, they were expecting him at any time to come. We don't
know when he's coming. But we need to be ready. But
the times are not looking good. And, you know, we're at our country's
basically on the verge of bankruptcy. We've borrowed trillions of dollars
from the Chinese. Our debt's at an all time high.
And but sooner or later, the Lord's going to say that me and
you, each one of us, the time's up. It's time's up. It's time for you to come on
in. And so hopefully, And it's not just for me and you. This
message is more for us sharing with our family and friends and
loved ones who don't know the truth. Now, you know, nobody,
when we share something, if we try to, you know, when you tell
the gospel, we are commanded to persuade men and we'll persuade
them as to the truth. And of course, what is the truth?
And we're going to talk about that a little bit, but it's just
like selling something. We're trying to sell this message
is truth to our loved ones and friends. I mean, we don't want
them to, it's kind of like where we all laugh at this joke about
the old guy. Everybody wants to go to heaven and raise their
hand, and everybody raised their hand except old Joe in the back.
And after the sermon, the preacher came up and said, hey, man, how
come you didn't raise your hand? Don't you want to go to heaven? He said, oh, yes,
sir. He said, I just thought you would have taken a bus load
right now. We don't want to go right now. We don't think about
it. It could happen to us right now.
So right now, our family and friends
are very important to us. And, you know, we don't want
to offend them. And unfortunately the gospel
is the offense of the cross. The gospel is offensive to people. And it's very critical that we,
when we share the message, that we do so in a kind and loving
way. And, you know, like if we try
to, again, I was getting back to my point that we try to persuade
men, we're trying to sell them on our point. If you are a real
estate salesman and you go out, sometimes you might go out, share
that gospel. I'm not the gospel. I mean, you
try to sell this house and they say, Well, man, I like that house. I've got the money. I'm going
to buy it. One time, you go out there and sell it. Sometimes,
you go out there, you may take a hundred times, and then they
finally, you know, on the hundredth person, you finally are able
to sell the house. Sometimes, you don't ever sell
it. And that's kind of the way it is with the gospel. We are
commanded to share, and I think that we get discouraged when
we talk to our friends, and they pin our ears back. Wait a minute.
What do you mean? that I'm, you know, that Christ
didn't die for all. And we don't like to be, you
know, we don't like to offend our loved ones. We may have a
sister or a brother. We love them so much that, you
know, we kind of know they don't know the truth. We just hate
to share it, you know. But in light of this, And if you were
at the 10 o'clock message, and I keep referring to Bill, well,
Bill is, is our mentor. He's the one that taught us about
this gospel, about how Christ, you know, how Christ and him
crucified. But, and why, let me stop a minute
about Christ and him crucified. We say, we believe in Christ
and him crucified. We, you hear that all the time
in our church. That's what we, we preach. We
preach Christ and him crucified. Well, if you just hear for the
first time, you say, what in the world does that mean, man?
What's all this name dropping, all these little terms? Well,
it's an acronym for salvation. Basically, what's an anacronym? An acronym is a word or a couple
of words that are used to explain a phrase or a longer paragraph. So the anacronym of Christ and
Him crucified basically is that, I mean, Christ and Him crucified
is just an acronym that means Christ and his shed blood and
his imputed righteousness as the basis for our salvation.
That's what we use that term. I'll go into that a little bit
more in a minute. But, um, and, and we, another reason for the
urgency of a message of sharing the gospel of the truth is there
is a hell of people, you know, they, you know, we say, Oh man,
everybody's going to heaven. And there's a, uh, the mindset between
movie stars, you know that, well, there may be a heaven, but if
it is, they don't think about the hell in the reality, there
is a hell. And let me just read, let me just read from the scripture
that confirms this, and if you want to, you can turn to this,
and it's Matthew 25, verses 31 to 46. I'll pause a minute. But this is, I think people need
to hear it that there is, you know, so does the Bible really
talk about a place in hell? Oh, you better believe it. And
this is one of the places right here. All right. Matthew 25 verses
31 to 46 says when the son of man shall come in his glory and
all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne
of his glory. and before him shall be gathered
all the nations and he shall separate them one from another
as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he shall
set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then
shall the king say unto them on the right hand, come ye blessed
of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. Then said he, Then shall he also,
jumping down to verse 41, then shall he say also unto them on
the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire,
prepared for the devil and his angels. And then down to verse
46, and these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the
righteous into life eternal. So there is a hell and there
is a sense of urgency because of my In my particular thing,
I've had a near-death experience myself a couple years ago, and
now with my brother at death's door, I've really under conviction
that I haven't been proactive enough. I need to be more proactive
in sharing the gospel, and we all do. But the key to it is
that we must be, you know, We must be sensitive, and we must
be sensitive. And I'm gonna read three or four
scriptures that talk about that in a minute. And we don't wanna
break fellowship. And let me just read this, and
I know you've heard it. Maybe you don't wanna hear it again,
but I'll read it again. Luke 14, 26, and you don't have
to turn there. I'm gonna read it verbatim. This
is from the King James Version. It's what we use most of the
time here at our church. If any, it was what we use all
the time. If any man come to me, and hate not his father,
and his mother, and his wife, and his children, and his brothers
and sisters, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
Now, this is not advocating that we're to hate
our parents and our children, but But if anybody, our sisters
or our brothers or anyone comes between us and the love of Christ,
you know, Christ should come first is basically what he's
saying. And we should be... you know, willing to part with
our dearest loved ones if they stand between us and the true
Christ. You know, I mean, you know, they, most of them, not
going to believe it. And the Bible says that, that
they're, that the narrow is the way, straight is the gate, and
few there are that come in. And it's going to be a very few
that are going to trust this gospel and believe it. So this
message basically is for me and for you. We've got several men
here in this church. Bill left us several years ago,
and we've had men that have stood up to the plate, and they've
done a great job, and they've worked hard. And I tell you what,
I can't thank you men enough. And I want to mention Randy Wade
just right now, because he was on my heart about this message.
And there's nobody who is There's a lot of men, I'm not trying
to say nobody hadn't done a job, you know, witnessing and talking
to their parents and their loved ones. But Randy, I know that
for almost 20 years, he sent tapes to his father and his mother,
to his brothers, and fortunately, Two of his brothers have come
to know this gospel of salvation of Christ and him crucified.
And he has, you know, uh, you know, been mighty blessed. We,
a lot of us have shared things with our brothers and sisters
and we haven't been as fortunate, but we need to realize that it's
not us that this God that does the saving. And it's not because
maybe we didn't know what we were talking about or we said
the wrong thing. And I'm sure we've all said wrong things many
times. But, you know, at this particular
time, when I really believe times are fixing to get tough, and,
you know, we've had, you know, we have several things in our
Constitution. We've got the First Amendment
that guarantees freedom of speech. I think that in the, you know,
we've already seen that eroded to some extent. You can't say
certain things now. Uh, certain words or certain
things you can't say in violation. It used to, we have freedom of
speech, but that's been eroded freedom of religion. I really
believe that as I stand here, if we, if we preach, uh, something
different at some time in the near future, that it's, uh, that
we're gonna, we're gonna have that, that privilege taken away
to some extent. Now, some of you saw the ball
game yesterday, if you are a Georgia fan, you know, and They manned
up against Florida. They stood up, they played hard,
and they won the ball game. And it's time for me and you
to man up. And it's time for us to start
being more proactive, learn, and try to study harder. That's
our duty, and that's what we need to be able to share this
gospel and be more proactive in doing it. Now, what is our
duty as ambassadors to Christ? There's three verses and this
is basically the main part of the scripture, of the message.
And one of them is in 1 Peter 3.15. And it says, sanctify the
Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer
to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is
in you with meekness and fear. So what does that mean? Well,
Well, I tell you what, I'm, I need to be careful on how I answer
this because I, I think that, um, we should be ready to share
the gospel at any time. Uh, but I, sometimes you can
be a little too pushy and if someone you've gone on and on
and on with somebody and they've, they've told you, no, that, uh,
you know, that, you know, no, sometimes means no. And, but
if the Bible here in this scripture says to be ready. for every,
to give an answer to every man that asketh for the reason of
the hope. So if someone knows you believe
something, they believe a different gospel, be ready. Know what to
say. Know how to talk to them about
substitution, imputation, and satisfaction. Know what those
scriptures mean. Know how to talk about those
things. Know how to talk about a just God and a savior. We're
gonna talk about that in a few minutes. and know how to talk
about, you know, the imputed righteousness of Christ. You
might not have heard that much, but some of them here, we hear
it all the time. All right, another scripture.
This is a real critical scripture, I think. Colossians 4, 6, let
your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you
may know how you ought to answer every man. I just think that
means that we need to be sensitive to When you're asking somebody,
you don't need to start, well, let's see, the gospel is 1, 2,
3, 4. I was talking to Bill last week. And I just said, you know,
we were talking about sharing the gospel. I just said, I've
been having some difficulty. I explained to him, and I'm going
to talk to you about it in a minute, too, about an example I had.
But he said that you need to be ready to take people where
they are. Listen very carefully, just like be always with grace. Season with salt. Let your, in
other words, be kind. Listen to them. be sensitive
and don't blast and say, well, you know, everybody in this,
you know, if you don't believe this, you know, you're going
to hell. Well, well, the Bible says that if you don't believe
the truth, Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life,
you know, anybody, you know, if you believe me, you're going
to come and find eternal life. But if you don't, the Bible says
that you're going to hell. If you're, if you're a sheep,
you're going to believe him. If you're a goat, you're not,
but you still have to be sensitive. to people and you just can't
just say, well, everybody goes, this church is lost. That that
that's, that's going to turn somebody off. They're not, they
may listen to what you've got to say, but if you make some
dogmatic statement, they won't. And another one, and this is
the third one. And the last one on our, what
is our duty? The first one is to be ready to give an answer
to anyone that asks us the second, you know, be, be with grace,
let your season with salt, let your speech be with grace, season
with salt. Third one. in meekness instructing those
that oppose themselves if God, peradventure, would give them
repentance, the acknowledging of the truth. So, you know, a
lot of us say, well, man, that's pretty complicated. You know,
it's just trying to share the gospel, what you're talking about
in this church of how Christ, you know, about the imputed right,
that's kind of complicated. Well, no, the gospel's pretty
simple. It is very simple. But it's, you know, the Bible
and explaining the implications and that that's it is a little
difficult the bible's tough and just like you know it was talked
about last week that if gold was laying out on the on the
street you know we probably wouldn't find it you know if it was just
laying everywhere but number one it wouldn't be worth anything
but the fact that you have to dig for it you know that that
makes it more valuable you have to dig for things and uh... for
example if there's you know, this copper wire, copper has
gotten real valuable lately. And, you know, a lot of people
have to, uh, they get, they'll go get a bunch of junk that got
copper in it. They'll have to pull all the, you know, the plastic
off of it and, and, and they have to work to get it. They'll
finally get some money, but you have to, you know, the fact that
it's, that it's hard and it's complicated, you know, that's,
that's a poor excuse. So what can you do? What should
we do? How should we, we know this cost, how do we get it out?
What are we, what's our duty? Well, You say, God really, I
just don't have a, I'm not a preacher. God hadn't called me as a preacher
and I just don't know how to share all this stuff. Well, one
thing you can do, you can say, well here, here's a tape, a good
gospel tape. One of these four men in our
church have preached or Bill Parker's preached or some other
gospel preacher. Here is a good tape. Well, that's
fine. That's a good way. Well, another
thing, you can say, you know, go to our website. What's the
website? We got a website here. This little
church, this little rinky-dink church, we got a website. We
got a real good website, www.reignofgrace.com. And I'll tell you what, Jim Case
has done a great job. I went into it several months
ago and I was shocked to see how good it gets. It's got our
gospel sermons. It's got all kinds of stuff.
And that's a great way to share. And then, of course, The most
important way is, you know, some people, you know, when they get,
you know, they might, if you give them a tape, they say, well,
oh, I appreciate that. I appreciate that, Robert. And
then you walk on it and they just throw it in the trash can.
Or they won't listen to it. Or they won't go look at the
website. You know, some people will only go listen to you and
you alone. And so we better have, we better
know some things. We better know how to talk. We
need to know, first of all, We better know the gospel. Now,
I have handed out, I've got a handout sheet, I don't know if you got
it, but I gave every, we printed up about 15 copies of them. If
you don't have one, it's called The Simple Gospel of God's Grace
Ended by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me say this. It was written, most of it was
written by Bill Parker. And as a matter of fact, the
first, I think, six pages were his word verbatim, identical
word for word. And I asked him about three weeks
ago and telling him about my brother, John, who has got that
melanoma cancer. I told him I was very, he's got
a real, it's really bad. And I said, buddy, I need something
short that you could fix for me. And I think several men of
the church had asked him for a simple, it wasn't just me asking
Bill, but several of us had asked him for it. So he composed this,
and I typed it up, and then I added a little of my own at the end.
But this has got the gospel in it, and this is something that
you can read and perhaps use that. I think it's pretty good. What is the gospel all about?
We're going to talk about this, but I had an opportunity about
two weeks ago. I was going to a dove shoot around
Lumpkin, Georgia. And I had a buddy of mine, and
I won't mention his name, but we were riding together. And
I was driving, and it's about an hour drive, and I was just
shooting the bull. You know how guys do. You know,
we were just doing a lot of talking, laughing, and doing maybe a little
lying. But we, I started telling him, I said, I'm writing a book
on salvation. And I said, you're probably not interested, you
know, because this guy talks about a little different gospel
than And you didn't, you believe I'm sure. But I, I said, I'm
working on about 10, 11 years and I hopefully I'll get it finished.
But he said, I am interested. I said, well, really? And he
said, yeah. I said, well, well, you know, the doctrine of salvation
is, is, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot different. And, and
I, I'm just telling you, you know, I don't want to offend
you. He said, no, no, I want to hear about it. He said, if I missed it,
I said, you know, how many times you get that most time you said,
oh, good, good. Well, good for you writing that
book. That's good. And they'll shake your hand. That's a good
job. Good thing. He said, no. He said, I want to know if what
I believe. He said, I want to go to heaven.
And he said, I want to know if what I believe is right. Now,
how many times are you going to get that? I said, oh, my goodness.
I said, I'm on the spot. I better know what to say. And
I said, oh, goodness. And I rubbed my hand and rubbed
my head. And then, of course, I started off and I, you know,
is there a pat way to do it? I think like Bill says, you have
to take them as they are. You know, for some reason I went
right to the atonement. I think in a minute I'm going
to tell you the way I kind of think, and that's the way Bill
does it, I kind of think you need to start with that salvation
is a matter of law and justice. You need to talk about that first
and then talk about that righteousness and then on down there. But I
didn't do that. I went right to the atonement
and I said, well, and I should have done, and I didn't, but
I said, you know, we believe that Christ died for his sheep
alone and that he didn't die for everybody in the world. and
uh... i thought you know that's where
you know that's where i don't believe that you know john three
sixteen god so love the world now he got there by and now says
that i was ready for the fight and that he didn't go there so
now i believe that too i said oh really he said uh... then what is the basis of ground
your salvation and he gave me the classic answer there was
all men i've accepted christ my personal side yes and all
you have I said, well, tell me a little bit more about it. And
he said, well, I invited Christ to come into my heart and that
kind of thing. And I said, well, let me just
share with you a couple of things. And I said, well, if You know,
do you believe that Christ died on the cross and you believe
that his death was the most important thing that we need in our life?
And he said, well, oh, yeah, yeah. And I said, well, did Christ,
when he said it, you remember on the cross, he said, it's finished? He said, I shall save my people
from sin? He said, oh, yeah. He said, well,
you're saying that you're adding something to what Christ has
already done. I'm just, you know, Christ did it all, but he said,
I'm, he said, I'm just accepting it. And I said, well, you know,
I, you know, in my awkward way, I said, look, most important
thing in, In order to be saved, the most important thing for
God is His glory. And God's not going to share
His glory with anyone. And if you add anything to the
finished work of Christ, be it your prayer, your faith, accepting
Him as Savior, getting baptized, whatever. I said, that's something
in addition, and that robs God of His glory. course you know
obviously he didn't well oh really and I you know we just went into
it that way so here's what I did and I and I don't know and in
this I went ahead and said let me tell you what I think the
gospel is and I'm gonna give you a real synopsis and it was
real fast I ran through it real fast and I'm not sure he he got
it into You know, sometimes when we share the gospel, God's word
doesn't come back void. You know, God will enlighten
somebody right there and give them eyes to see and ears to
hear. Sometimes you have to come, you know, a lot of times, you
know, to, to hear it. Uh, as for me personally, uh,
you know, and some of you, we came here when Bill first was
here. I sat down here. All right. You were here with a bunch of. I had to hear that thing for
about six months. I said, man, it's something different.
I knew something that there was a ring of truth to what he was
talking about, about Christ and that imputed righteousness. But
I said, what in the world is it? I kept coming back and finally
it hit me. And that's the way I thank God.
He hits different people at different times. But with me, it took several
months. Well, here's what I told him.
I said, listen, God, before time, before time began, he chose a
definite number of people who no man can number, who were gonna
be his sheep, who he was gonna save, not on account of what
they did, but based on his own choice. You know, why he did
it, I don't know. But before time, before the world
began, before he created this world, he chose a number of people,
and those were his sheep. And then, in time, you know,
He created man and Adam was the first man and Adam and sinned
in the garden of Eden. And, and, and after that, Adam
was our federal head and representative when we, he sinned, we sinned
and sin deserves death, whose death, our death, even though
we weren't even born, uh, because of Adam, we deserve to die. And
then in time, you know, God didn't just. God planned this. He wasn't
caught by surprise because he planned all this from the very
beginning. He was the originator of it. So God sent his son in
time and he died, he shed his blood, had our sins charged to
him, and then he established a righteousness which he charged
to his sheep. And then in time through the preaching of the
cross during our lifetimes, when somebody preaches about how God
can be just and justify an ungodly sinner and about his imputed
righteousness, the Holy Spirit will touch the hearts of the
sheep and they will enlighten them. They will see the truth
and they will cling to, and they will rejoice in the gospel that
Christ did it all. And it ain't got anything to
do with what we do. In other words, are we a better
sinner than anybody else? No. It's what he did. And that's, anyway, that's what
I, that's the way I presented it to him. And, you know, did
he, did he, did he say, man, I see, did he say it? No, I don't
believe he did. So, I just, as far as presenting
the gospel, I think it's real important that we, as I read
those three scriptures, you know, be ready to give an answer within
you and to be in meekness and to be sensitive and to listen
to what's bothering them, what's their bugaboo. And so what I
think, you've got the handout, and it's a little, as far as
my structure on the points that I was gonna make, they're a little
bit different than what's in that handout. But the first thing
that I think we need to know, first of all, we need to know
the gospel before we can share it. First of all, Everything
God does is a matter of law and justice. In our society, if someone
does a crime, he's got to pay the fine. It may be incarceration. It may be paying money. It may
be both. But everything God does in this
universe, law and justice, everything is in balance. And if we didn't
have law and justice in our society, it would be chaos. It'd be just
wars. It'd just be horrible. It'd be
nothing. But everything works together in balance. And same
thing for sinners. God is a matter of law and justice.
If the soul that sinneth shall surely die. If somebody sins
and breaks our sin, then we deserve to die. And it's sins have to
be paid for. that according to God, you have
to know two things about, his main two things, and that's the
person and the work of Christ. You say, what is the person of
Christ? You know, the Bible says, who so shall call on the name
of the Lord shall be saved. You know, well, you better know
who you're calling on. What do you mean, who am I calling
on? Well, there are a lot of different Jesus. You better know his person. What
is his person? Though his attributes, those
are the things that make up his character. He's a God of love,
a God of, he's a God of mercy. But he's a God of wrath, and
he's a God of justice, and he's a God of immutability. He does
not change. He's a God of omnipotence. He's
all-powerful. So you have to know these things. You say, what do you mean? Why
do you need to know about that? I'll tell you why. Because when you
get right down to You have to know his person and his work.
For whom did he die? Did he die for all men without
exception? If he's all-powerful and he died
for all men without exception, then everybody's gonna be saved.
But if he died only for his sheep, then that's the whole, that's
the atonement. That's the whole thing that everything
balances. For whom did Christ die? His
person and his work, and that's critical. So I'm gonna follow
up with that in a minute. But I'm looking at the clock
here. I've already been told ahead
of time to keep this thing short. God's requirement, he's got one
requirement. What do we have to have to get
into heaven? We've got to have a perfect righteousness. We've
got to be righteous to the core. Well, how do you know that? Well, because
the Bible says so. Matthew 6, 33, seek ye first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Matthew 5, 6, blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall
be filled. Matthew 5.20, except your righteousness shall exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. You shall
in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5.20, and
then Proverbs 10.2, treasures of wickedness profit nothing
but righteousness delivereth from death. We gotta have righteousness. Well, you know, what is righteousness? Righteousness is, I looked in
the dictionary, and righteousness means upright, virtuous, justice. Righteous equals justice. That's
what the World Book Dictionary says. Well, we have a two-fold problem. Number
one, there's none righteousness. We need a righteousness, but
there's none righteous. There's none righteous, no, not
one. All right? Jeremiah 17, nine says the heart
is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can
know it? All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All the world may become guilty
before God. The soul that sinneth it shall die and the wages of
sin are death. We've heard those. So those are our problem. There's
none righteous. We're sinners and our sin, we deserve death.
And the second problem is that men by nature lack knowledge
of the truth. We don't have any knowledge.
Knowledge? What are you talking about knowledge?
Well, Romans 10, two through three,
they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. They're
being ignorant of God's righteousness, going about to establish a righteousness
of their own. They've not submitted themselves
to the righteousness of God. And then there's a way, Proverbs
14, 12, there's a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death. And then, of course, I mentioned
this, I already alluded to it. Matthew 7, 13, and 14, enter
in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate and broad is
the way that leadeth to destruction. In many there be which go in
there at, because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way
which leadeth to life. Few there be that find it. And
there's none that understandeth, none that seeketh there for God.
So we have to have a knowledge, and apart from, The knowledge,
you know, we've got a problem. We are unrighteous and we don't
even know the right way where to go. We don't know how to do
it. So it gets down to, we have to, how's righteousness attained? And most of us are kind of like
the Philippian jailer. And this is the way we think
by nature, just like the Philippian jailer. There'd been a big earthquake. And he was fixing to commit suicide.
He had a knife, I think, in the cut his throat. And there was
Paul and Silas there in the jail. And he says, sir, what must I
do to be saved? I mean, they, you know, when
all the prisoners hadn't left and he came running over to him,
cause he realized that, that, that they had something to do
with it. He, he came over and said, sir, what must I do to
be saved? And that's the biggest, you know,
misnomer of every of the gospel today. We all think, what must
I do if I can just quit sinning, if I can just quit doing this,
if I can quit doing... No, you have to come to understand
that Christ has already done it all and that he has already
done everything that we need and we need to rest on him and
his completed work. Do we have to have faith? Sure
we do. What's faith? Faith is the conduit. God gives
us faith to believe that Christ has already done it all. Without
faith it's impossible to please God. We have to have this, we
have to attain righteousness. How does a sinner attain righteousness?
Well, we talked about, here's the way that I explain
it. We talked about the person and work of Christ a little bit
very briefly, but it comes down to how can God be just and justify
an ungodly sinner. Now, I mentioned that to my brother.
I'm not even going to tell you which one. One of them. I got
three of them. He said, Robert, what kind of
cult are you in talking about all this mumbo jumbo language
about how can God be just and justified? What are you talking?
Robert, where have you gone, man? And I said, buddy, I'm not
really in a cult. I said, if you'll turn to Isaiah
chapter 45. Let me see, I got it right here. If you'll turn to chapter 45. My goodness, I've lost, anyway,
I've lost my place. Is it 20, where is it, Jim? 45 well well anyway I've had it I had
it down here but but my point is this uh in in the 45th chapter
of Isaiah I think verse 20 21 It talks about that God is a
just God and a Savior. I'm not reading that verbatim,
but He is a just God and a Savior. So, here's the question. You
know, God is a just God and a Savior. God cannot save not one soul
without His justice being satisfied. according to strict justice,
the soul that sinned shall surely die. So God has got to punish
sin, and he cannot, it's one thing God can't do. He can't
do one thing, he can do anything, he's all powerful, but there's
one thing he can't do, and that he cannot save any sinner going
in any way inconsistent with any of his character attributes.
In other words, God is immutable. That's one of his character attributes.
That means he can't change. So how can God be just according
to strict justice? You deserve to die. A sinner,
I deserve to die. You deserve to die. How can God
be just and consistent with his character attributes and at the
same time pardon a sinner like me or you who deserve to die
without changing his character attribute of immutability? How
can he go ahead and pardon somebody who deserves to die? That is
the question. And the answer is by the imputed
righteousness of Christ. What in the world is the imputed?
You ever heard it before? Most people hadn't. I hadn't.
I said, my gosh, I never heard of this imputed righteousness.
What is this imputed righteousness? Well, you want to turn over to
the fourth book of Romans. We ain't turning over there now.
It's mentioned about seven or eight times, but Why didn't we
hear it when we were young? I don't know. It's a tragedy
that we didn't, we weren't taught about the imputed righteousness
of Christ, but it's a righteousness that's charged. Now, again, I
know I keep talking about Bill Parker, but I've never heard
a better preacher of righteousness in my life than Bill Parker.
And we got four good ones here in addition to him, but he's
one of the best, the best of the best. And he talked about
it last week. If you weren't here last week,
here's the example he gave. Maybe you can figure this out.
He said, you know, all this sounds complicated. He said, you know
about debt? We all know about debt, don't
we? You know, we charge it. He said, that's imputation. He
said, that's what God did for us, that Christ You know, we
had to have something. We talk about substitution, satisfaction,
imputation. We have to have that substitute.
We deserve death. We needed somebody. We needed
a substitute. We needed somebody to plead our
case, somebody to take, you know, we deserve to go to heaven. We
need to have somebody who's suitable to talk. We need a lawyer. We
need an advocate. But to stand before the throne
of grace and talk to God, we need somebody on our behalf.
Well, Christ, he was the suitable substitute because he was God
and man in one person. He was both God and man. He was
the lamb without spot and blemish. He didn't commit one sin while
he lived on this earth. He was without spot and blemish.
He was perfect. And so he was the suitable substitute. And what he did was he had all
our sins, present, past, future, charged to him. So all our sins
were taken off of us and put on Christ. That's called imputation. They were charged. And I always
talk about like, you know, when I played football at Auburn a
long time ago, and I remember one time I was late for practice.
Well, the whole team had to run an extra 10 wind sprints because
I was late. My being late was charged to
the team. That's imputation. God On charging
it, what he did was he charged our sins to Christ. But here's
the example that I think is so classic that Bill made a great,
great illustration, is that our brother, say we owe a million
dollars. He goes to the bank, we all got
a big note at the bank, we owe a million dollars. He goes and
he pays that debt off. You know, we didn't pay it off.
That bank can't come back to us and say, hey, you know, you
owe us. Yeah, somebody else. No, that'd
be double jeopardy. It's already been paid. It can't
be paid off again. Same way as a crime. If you've
been charged of a crime, you've been acquitted, they get some
evidence. Oh, we didn't have that evidence. Once you've been
acquitted in the state of Georgia, That's it. If they bring some
more evidence, if you try to prosecute him again, you can't
do it. Double jeopardy. Well, what Christ did, what the
brother did, he paid it off. That's imputation. He paid off
the debt. Christ paid the debt for us.
And so if your brother, and not only did he pay off that million
dollars, he put another million dollars in your account. And
that's what Christ did at the cross. Double, two-fold imputation. He imputed our sins to Him, charged
them to Him, and then He died and shed that blood on the cross,
and He established a righteousness, and He imputes the righteousness
to us, the million dollars in the account. He paid the debt
off, put the million dollars in, so it's two-fold empty. That's
what Christ did. Anyway, I'm about through, Jane. The last thing, the heart of
the gospel, and that's what Bill talked about, and I think I've
covered it, but 2 Corinthians 5, 21, for He, God the Father,
had made Him, God the Son, sin for us. He made Him sin by having
our sins charged to Him, who knew no sin. He was not contaminating,
was He, Jim? No, sir, that we might be made
the righteousness in him. That's how we get made righteous.
Are we ever going to be righteous in our character and conduct?
Are you kidding? No, we are sorry. And to the day we die, we're
going to have a sin nature. but we have a righteousness and
we stand before glory, we can say, thank God for what he did,
not for what I did, because I know that in my character and conduct,
I deserve hell, hell, hell. But thank God I have a substitute,
a suitable substitute. And then satisfaction, God was
satisfied. But even though there's one other
thing we must have, You can hear the gospel. Somebody can preach
to you the gospel. You can share the gospel to a
friend. He may or may not hear it, you know. This guy told me,
he said, Robert, God, I read Randy's book. I read two chapters. He said, man, that thing was,
God, so complicated. I couldn't understand it. I put it down.
Well, then I kind of, he said, Willie, you're kind of complicating
it. What does that mean when they say it's complicated? That
means that they hadn't had a revelation. They've had no revelation. They don't understand it because
God hadn't shown it to them. You know, so you may know, you
may know the gospel and, and you may know, uh, you may hear
it talk to your right. And you may have the knowledge.
God may give you the knowledge. Most people don't have the knowledge.
They don't realize that they never heard this stuff, but.
But, uh, sometimes you can, can have all the knowledge. You can
give you the knowledge and, and God just, you're not a sheep,
but one thing, sure. You've got to have the knowledge
to be a sheep. Uh, but you got to have a revelation. John 644
says this, no man can come to me except the father which sent
me draw him. Now, so we gotta know a couple
things. Who Christ is, that's his person,
we've already talked about it. What he did, why he did it, and
where he is now. Those things, those are some
of the things we need to know. And if you're talking to somebody
and you're witnessing, you're trying to share best you can,
it's hard. Look, man, you need to know this. You don't really
know what you're saying, Connor, but you're doing the best you
can. You can say, listen, it's three things that all I can tell
you is this. I can't answer all your questions.
You know, they going to have a lot of questions and they going
to disagree. They can, they can bring script
rest scripture from different places and tell you you're wrong,
but you tell them this three things, they'll have to agree
with this. Does it, does it glorify God? Does it exalt Christ in
every attribute of his character? And does it exclude boasting
in the center? And if it can do those three
things, then it's of God. And here's a little
illustration. This was a revelation. We have to have a revelation.
My illustration is about heart pine. And a lot of you know that
I've got a lot of heart pine in my house. I like heart pine.
And heart pine is a came from the long leaf yellow pine tree
that was plentiful back in the 1800s. And a lot of the old,
old houses that were built in the 1800s, 1830s, 40s, 50s, 60s,
the infrastructure was built with the heart pine. And that
is a The longleaf yellow pine is about 100-150 years old. It's
got a tight grain. It's got red-orange patina with
yellow streaks sometimes. It has burl and curved pinstripes.
It's a beautiful wood that a lot of the People, and in particular,
Jim Fuller's not here, but he's married to Kristen Wages. They
tear down all these old houses and they have all this hard pine,
they sell it, they do a good job. But if you first look at
an old board that was on a barn or in a house, it just looks
all marred and scuffed and all these seasoned cracks, it looks
worthless. But you've got to have a right,
and you say, man, how can, you want to put this in my house?
What do you, that looks terrible. I don't want to put that kind
of old beat up wood in my house. Well, you know, once you run
that thing through a hard industrial planer, and it cleans that thing
off, and you see that bright orange patina shining, and that
red, real pretty wood, and you put a little turpentine, boiled
linseed oil, that thing will just jump out at you. You talk
about a pretty piece of wood. until it doesn't matter if you've
got a product that somebody's trying to sell that you don't
know anything about, or until somebody shows you that heart
pine, you're not going to see it. You're not going to have
a review. You've got to be shown before it's revealed to you.
And you've got to have knowledge. And then it's revealed, you say,
oh my gosh, there it is. So what is my message? This is a hidden treasure, this
gospel of how God can be just and justify an ungodly sinner
based on the imputed righteousness of Christ. I'll just say this.
My advice is this. Do the, you know, be sensitive
to the needs of others. You know, see if you seek the
Lord with your whole heart, you'll find him seeking. You shall find. Thank you.