I do want to respond very sincerely,
not as a matter of social grace, though I do hope Yankees have
a little bit of that. Not much, but they do have a
little. And say that I counted a great privilege to be here,
to have the opportunity to see your pastor on his home territory,
to see faces I have seen, a few of them, in other places, and
then to meet many of what is In many ways, I regard it sort
of an unofficial, extended second congregation. It's always a delight
to meet those who say they've been helped by the ministry of
the Word of God that has come by means of the tapes, and to
see face to face those whom the Lord has been pleased to touch
by the ministry of his own holy work. And so I do thank you. for the gracious invitation to
come and share in this very special week, and I trust that God will
continue to meet with us, and even as I leave to return to
my own people on Saturday, that God will continue to meet with
you throughout this week of meetings. Now, those of you who are familiar
with the theme that has been announced, you are aware that
that theme has been announced as the glory of God. in the accomplishment
of redemption, the sermon for tonight, and then the glory of
God in the application of redemption. Now, as we come to this vast
and vital subject, I confess that I come to it with a deep
sense of wonder and also of privilege—a deep sense of wonder that I,
a who for eighteen years saw nothing beautiful in Christ,
nothing that captured my sin-loving, pleasure-loving heart. I heard
of Christ in a real sense from my mother's breast, where I was
privileged to be reared in a Christian home. I heard of Jesus, learned
songs of Jesus, heard sermons about Jesus. But Jesus did not
capture my heart, the world had my heart. Popularity, sport,
pleasure, those were the things that got me excited, those were
the things that possessed my heart. And as I thought of coming
to you and speaking on this subject, a fresh sense of wonder filled
my own heart. I said, what in the world am
I doing speaking about the glory of God in such a thing as And
in that sense, I'm a wonder to myself that I'm here to be able
to speak of something not in a detached and academic way,
but I trust not only out of the Word of God, but out of the fullness
of my own heart. And so I come with a sense of
wonder, but also with a sense of privilege that I can stand
in the midst of fellow sinners who deserve the same hell that
I deserve. and speak to you about the glory
of God, who has not consumed us in His wrath, as He could
well have done. No redemption was provided for
angels. When they got too big for their
angelic britches and said, We'll be like God, God said, You've
had it. And the Scripture says they were cast down to be held
in everlasting chains unto the judgment of the great day. And
when you and I got too big for our britches and said, we'll
run our own life. We'll do our own thing. We'll live the way
we want. God could have damned every last
one of us and magnified the glory of his justice and caused angels
to worship him in the damnation of every one of us. What a privilege
to stand among fellow hell-deserving sinners and talk about the glory
of a God who, instead of damning us all, has sent redemption in
the person of his own dear son. So not only do I come before
you with a sense of wonder and privilege, but as I thought upon
this subject, I also had a renewed sense of reluctance and of impotence
to speak on this subject, a sense of reluctance because the subject
is so vast and so glorious that one wonders how in the world
can a man with a human mind and a human tongue ever begin to
do justice to something that the Bible says angels desire
to look into. I believe there are angels who
are tempted to covetousness and envy tonight. They would count
it a privilege to speak of the great mysteries of God's glory
revealed in the gospel. And the subject is so vast and
glorious that I feel a reluctance that I might spoil it by even
attempting to speak upon it. And I feel that sense of impotence,
knowing that as much as I've sought to prepare to preach to
you, as much as I'll labor with every fiber of my being to preach
with every cell of my being in dependence upon the Holy Ghost,
I'm confident that I may as well be speaking in Chinese if I could
speak in Chinese, you will understand just as much if I were speaking
in Chinese. Though I may speak in the plainest
English, the most earnest, simple language, unless God the Holy
Spirit gives you eyes to behold his glory in the redemption accomplished
and applied by him, you'll go out of here saying, what's the
big deal? And I have no power to open your
eyes, and I feel that impotence, and yet in the midst of it I
know that God's Word says, He delights to take the weak things
to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring
to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory in
His presence. So in dependence upon the Holy
Spirit, let us all plead with God that God will come to and
that God will give us to see at least a few flashes of the
glory that burst forth from the biblical doctrine of redemption
accomplished and redemption applied. Now, we've been sitting for a
while, and you're going to be sitting for a while longer, and
God knows that we can't hear with profit any longer than we
can sit with comfort And God understands that, so I'm going
to ask that we all stand for a moment, and while we stand
in God's presence, let us pray together as I lead you to the
throne of grace in prayer. Let us pray. Holy Father, God before whom
angels cry, God, who in sovereign purpose
has privileged us to come together in freedom, in soundness of mind
and body, we thank you for the great privilege of being together
in this place tonight. Thank you that we have the Scripture.
Thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for the
expectation with which we can come to the preaching of your
words believing that as we cry to you to give us the Holy Spirit,
as a loving father delights to give good gifts to his children,
so will you give the Spirit to those who ask. And we are asking
that he may be given to us, not to give us tingles up and down
our spine, not to give us experiences that we may gloat in But, O,
to take away the blindness from our eyes, and the dullness from
our ears, and the slowness from our hearts, that we may hear,
and see, and feel the truth as the truth is in Jesus. Help your
servant so to preach, that the spirit will take of the things
of Christ, and reveal them with power. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, the dear folks in the choir,
I want you to know it pains me not to preach to your eyeballs.
Will you assume that I've got two eyes back there, and I'm
conscious of you being there, and yet I don't want to have
you have the back of my head every few minutes, you who are
sitting before me. Now, as we take up this subject
tonight, I felt it was very important in our first study If we understand
what we're talking about, the subject assigned to me—and I'm
glad it was assigned to me—comes to us in some 25 cent or 50 cent
words. The glory of God in redemption
accomplished, and the glory of God in redemption applied. Now, first of all, I want to
give you a working description and definition of what those
words mean. That's my first purpose. When
we're going to school together, some of you kids thought, ah,
school was over at three o'clock, and now the preacher takes us
back into school. But don't you ever feel that
way, because if you're to know God and His salvation, you've
got to learn about Him and about His ways. Now, when we speak
of the glory of God, what do we mean? Well, when I use the
term in the sermon tonight and again tomorrow night, I'm speaking
of nothing less than the outshining of the perfections of God. The
glory of God is the outshining of God's perfection. Let me illustrate. The sun, that burning star off
so many hundreds of thousands of miles from us, The sun sends
out its beams or its rays, and we know that when we feel the
warmth of its beams or we see the light of its rays. So the
beams or the rays of the sun are to the sun what the glory
of God is to God. His own perfection, the manifestation
of His perfection, is His glory. Some have tried to describe it
as His manifested excellence. The heavens declare the glory
of God. What do the heavens do? They
show forth the perfections of God. They show the perfections
of His powers. Who but God could fill out stars
by the billions by the word of His mouth? Who but God can hold
the galaxies in their proper places? The heavens declare the
glory of God. The heavens show His manifested
excellence. The heavens are the outshining
of the perfections of God. And so, in these two messages,
we're going to be concentrating our attention upon considering
the outshining of God's perfections. Our eyes are not going to be
upon the preacher. They're not going to be upon
mere notions and ideas. They're not going to be primarily
upon our blessings, and certainly not upon ourselves. But we are
going to fix the eyes of our hearts and our minds upon the
glory of God. That is, the outshining of God's
perfection. That's what we want to see in
these two nights. of the shining force of God's
perfection. Now, where are we going to look
for that outshining? Psalm 19 says, The heavens declare
the glory of God. But you see, you've already considered
this week the glory of God in His creation. We're going to
look for the outshining of the perfections of God in redemption. Now, what's the big word redemption
mean? Well, simply this. That's the word used in the Bible
to describe God's mighty work of grace and power in releasing
sinners from sin and its consequences by the payment of a price. That's
what redemption is. God's mighty work of grace and
of power, releasing sinners from sin and its consequences by the
payment of a price. That's why Peter could write
in 1 Peter 1 18, for you were redeemed, not with corruptible
things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
Christ. And the whole biblical idea of
redemption takes its starting point from that which God did
with his people when they were down in Egyptian bondage. You
remember the Egyptian taskmasters were holding them as slaves and
making these terrible demands upon them and making life miserable
for them. And when God, through Moses,
delivered his people, that was called a redemption. It was a
work of God's grace and power delivering His people from bondage. That becomes a picture of the
great work of God's grace and power in delivering sinners from
the power and bondage of sin and its consequences by the payment
of a price. Now then, what do we mean by
redemption accomplished and applied? Well, when we speak of the accomplishment
of redemption, we're speaking of that which God did, that is,
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the triune
God did, in the life history of Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate
Son of God, in order to secure the salvation of man. When we
talk about the accomplishment of redemption, our minds are
thinking about that which God did from Bethlehem's cradle to
the cross and to Joseph's empty tomb and to his ascension back
into heaven. The accomplishment of redemption
is bounded by the life history of Jesus of Nazareth. So when
you think of the accomplishment of redemption, your mind must
always go back to Bethlehem, the life of obedience and humiliation
culminating in the cross and the open tomb, and then that
scene while they watched him ascend up into heaven, enveloped
in clouds, taken out of their sight, and he sat down at the
right hand of God the Father. That's the accomplishment of
redemption. Now, within that life history
of Jesus, the accomplishment of redemption, come all those
typical words. Atonement, sacrifice, propitiation,
reconciliation, Those words are not just used like a nose of
wax in the Bible. They refer to blessed realities
that were accomplished in the life history of Jesus of Nazareth. Now then, what do we mean by
redemption applied, or the application of redemption? Now think. If redemption accomplished, to
what God did in the life history of Jesus of Nazareth. Redemption
applied pertains to that which He does in the life history of
every single elect sinner. Redemption accomplished, the
life history of Jesus. Redemption applied, the life
history of every elect sinner It is that work of God in which
God confers upon every such sinner, working in him and for him, everything
purchased on his behalf when Jesus Christ lived out his life
history upon the earth. So within the application of
redemption come all those typical words, calling, regeneration,
Justification, Adoption, Sanctification, Holiness, and Glorification. And all of those fit not in the
accomplishment of redemption, but in the application of redemption. Now you see that distinction?
Suppose you were in prison. You were in jail, and someone
was going to post bail. And they posted your bail. Say
this young man was... I don't know what you do so bad
to land in jail, son. I hope you never do. But suppose
you were. You don't mind if I pick on you. Do I have your permission
to pick on you? Do I? Good. Thank you. I've got
his permission. All right? And they posted bail
for $50,000. And a wealthy man took compassion
on you and said, I'm going to post bail for that young man.
He goes down to the proper clerk and posts the bail, and the proper
receipt is made out. Well, you see, when that money's
placed on the counter and the receipt is made out, your relief
has been accomplished. But you're still behind bars
until the man who keeps the jail comes and takes the key and opens
the door and says, you can go free. That's the application
of your release that was accomplished. You see? accomplished at the
desk with the clerk when the proper amount of money is paid,
but applied when the jailer comes, turns the key, and lets you free. Accomplishment, application.
Now that's not difficult to see the distinction, is it? Now that's
what we're talking about in these two nights. We want to behold
the glory of God, the outshining of the perfections of God, in
his work of accomplishing redemption for sinners, and in the application
of that redemption to the same sinners for whom it was accomplished. For when the man puts up the
fifty thousand dollars for my young friend in jail at the death,
he doesn't expect the jailer to let some other fellow out
of jail, but the one for whom the payment was made. You see
it? So the accomplishment and the
application are just two parts of the one and the same redemption,
purpose and design for the same sin. And that's what we're going
to talk about, God willing, in our time together. Now, in summary,
as we consider this matter of the definition, When we bring
all of this together, you see now what we're going to attempt
to do as we study the Word of God. We want to catch some gleam,
some little measure of the glory that breaks forth from the work
that God has done in the redemption of hell-deserving sinners. Now
then, the second thing I want to do tonight is sort of spreading
the table. is I want to sketch in the biblical
backdrop to the glory of God revealed in redemption. We should
not only have an understanding of the terms, and I've tried
to give that to you, but we must sketch in the biblical backdrop
to the glory of God revealed in redemption. And here again,
let me use a simple illustration. Imagine, if you will, some of
you young ladies, that a young man has set his heart upon you,
And you have not only, quote, fallen in love, but don't ever
get married because you just fell in love. All right? The divorce courts are full of
people who fell in love and got married because they fell in
love. Falling in love is not the basis of a good marriage.
Commitment in biblical love to live by the word of God, that's
the basis for a good marriage. OK? So let's assume, young ladies,
you've had sense enough to wait until there's commitment in biblical
love before you say, I do. All right? I'm getting a little
fatherly bite on the side. All right? And I'm thankful I've
seen one of my daughters go that route of commitment to biblical
love, and the other one well in the process. So I think I've
earned the right maybe to say a few words. But anyway, back
to my illustration. And the time comes when the young
man is going to get you a ring. And he searches and searches
and searches until he takes almost his life savings. He wants to
show his love. He gets a diamond that is registered
in all of them. I mean, right at the top of the
scale. Perfect in color, cut perfectly, polished perfectly.
Now that diamond has an intrinsic, a self-contained beauty and glory
simply because it is a flawless, perfectly cut, perfectly polished
diamond. Now, no matter where you put
it, that diamond has a glory in itself. It might be placed
in a pocket, it still has its glory. It might be placed in
a dresser drawer, it still has its glory. You might take and
bury it in mud. Don't ask me why you would, but
even if you did, it would lose none of its intrinsic glory and
beauty, wouldn't it? You can take it out and hold
it up against a clear blue sky, no matter where you put it—in
the sand, in the mud, in your pocket, in the dresser drawer,
against the sky. The diamond in itself, because
it is a flawless, perfectly cut, polished diamond, has its own
intrinsic beauty. But if you want that beauty to
be fully displayed, what do you do? You take a dark piece of
black or navy blue velvet, make sure there's no lint on it, and
you place that diamond right in the center of that piece of
velvet, and then you shine a light upon it at such an angle that
it maximizes all of that facet. And then all the beauty and the
glory that is there in the diamond, the velvet doesn't create its
beauty, the light doesn't create its beauty, it simply puts it
in a backdrop that does what? That highlights and lets it manifest
its own intrinsic glory. Now that's exactly what we've
got to do with the glory of God revealed in redemption accomplished
and redemption applied. God's glory is revealed in redemption. Whether we see it, whether we
appreciate it, whether we try to bury it in the mud of woolly
thinking, whether we try to stick it in the pocket of indistinct
thinking, whether we try to cover it in the drawer of indifference,
God's redemption in Christ has an intrinsic glory and beauty.
But what we want to do is to put it on the backdrop of the
velvet of what God has revealed in His Word as the backdrop on
which the glory of His redemption shines forth. And do you know
what that backdrop is? It's nothing less than the undiluted
teaching of the Bible regarding man's tragic, horrible condition
as a sinner. The glory of God in redemption
is set against the backdrop of the horrible tragedy of man's
terrible condition as a sinner. Now, follow me closely. In direct
proportion to our ignorance or indifference or denial of that
backdrop will be our failure to see the glory of God. in the redemption in Jesus Christ. It is only when we take seriously
the biblical backdrop to redemption that all the facets of its glory
sparkle and dazzle before our eyes and cause us to cry out,
Oh, the death! Oh, for the riches of the wisdom
and the knowledge of God! Searchable are his judgments
and his ways past, tracing out. For who has known the mind of
the Lord, or, being his counselor, has taught him? For of him, and
through him, and unto him are all things, to whom be the glory
forever and ever. Amen." You see, it's only when
we take seriously that backdrop And so I would not be a faithful
teacher and preacher if I came assigned to speak on the subject,
the glory of God in redemption, redemption in its accomplishment,
redemption in its application, if I didn't take time to define
my terms and then take the time to sketch in the biblical backdrop
of the glory of God in that redemption. Every facet of redemption accomplished
and applied is God's gracious answer to a facet of man's need
as a sinner. There are no luxuries in God's
salvation, no expedients. There's no stripped-down model
and then a loaded model. There's only one model. That's
the redemption in Christ accomplished and applied, and every part of
it is needed because it answers to a certain aspect of our need
as sinners. downplay what we are as sinners,
and you will downgrade the glory of the redemption of sinners
in Jesus Christ. It always happens. Now then,
how can I sketch it in? Well, let's try to look at that
tablet and see it comprised of four, as it were, pieces of cloth. The first one is this, the frightening
reality of human guilt. the frightening reality of human
guilt. To be guilty before the law is
to be liable to punishment. Man, as God's creature, was obligated
to keep God's law. And when God put Adam and Eve
in the garden, he didn't sit down and say, now Adam and Eve,
look, I've made you, and you seem to be happy about that.
But now we need to negotiate on how we're going to operate
around here. You know, I wouldn't want to bully you, and I wouldn't
want to appear as though I was overbearing and overpowering
and intimidating. So Adam and Eve, let's sit down
and talk on how we're going to run things around here. Is that
what God did? No. It says He made the man,
made the woman, took the man, put the man, told the man, and
commanded him. That's what the Bible says. He
took the man, put him in a garden, and commanded him to sing. of
every tree of the garden you may freely eat. Of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil which is in the midst of the
garden you shall not eat, for in the day you eat you shall
die." And then he told the woman, now look, I want you to sit around
and figure out what your role is. I wouldn't want you to feel
that I'm a chauvinist. I wouldn't want you to think
or see that there's any kind of concept that women have distinct
roles than men. So Eve, you go off down a rock
somewhere and scratch your head, and when you come up with a list
of what you think you'd like to do, come and we'll discuss
it." That isn't what God said. God said, it's not good for the
man to be alone. I will make a helper answering
to his needs. And it says, he put the man to
sleep, made a woman, brought the woman to the man, and he
said, Here is the counterpart, here's the woman made for you.
And in our day, the feminists say, look, girls, find your identity
totally independent of men, of marriage, and of the home. That's
high treason against the God of heaven. That's treason against
the God of heaven. And you precious young ladies,
don't you buy that claptrap and junk. It's hogswill. That's what it is. It's been
sitting around for so long it stinks in its homes. It's that
bad. You ever seen swill that stinks in homes I have? Makes
you want to barf. That's right. That's right. And that's what that business
is. This is not an innocent thing. I grieve that that school teacher
lost her life. I'm not a hard-hearted man. She
had no business leaving her family for four months. a little girl
crying, Muffet, please don't go, please don't go. My Bible
says the older women are to train the younger women to be keepers
of the home. And don't you allow the feminists to say your liberty
comes in finding your identity on your own. Eve's liberty was
in doing what God made her to do. So God put them there. God
says, you're accountable to me. And everything was fine, wonderful,
full of joy, fellowship with God, a perfect man, a perfect
woman, in a perfect environment. And God says, it will go on being
this way just so long as you continue to be creatures and
let me be God. As God, I call the shots and I tell you what
to do. And as long as that arrangement continues, everything's going
to be fine. But the minute it's not set, death will come, and
the day needs to die. And you know what God gave me
here is a strange thing. He took Adam, and he piggybacked
the whole human race on Adam. That's right, he piggybacked
the whole human race on Adam. And he said to Adam, Adam, when
you stand, all the human race stands in you and with you. You
fall, and the whole human race falls. And my Bible says, in
Romans 5, 12, Wherefore, as through one man's sin entered into the
world, and death passed upon all men, why? For that all sin
When did all sin? All sinned when our first father
sinned. And when Adam took that fruit
from Eve and disobeyed God, in a real sense, my hand was in
Adam's hand, and my mouth ate with Adam's mouth, and my heart
went astray from God with Adam's heart. Therefore, through one
man, sin entered into the world, and death passed upon all men,
for that all sinned in Adam. That's why Paul can say in 1
Corinthians 15, 22, as in Adam, all died. What is the backdrop
to the glory of God in redemption? The backdrop to the glory of
God in redemption begins with a frightening reality of human
guilt. And where did our human guilt
start? It started in the Garden of Eden. Don't let anybody give
you this stuff about, we're not sinners until we come to an age
of accountability. Our age of accountability is
thousands of years past. It passed in the Garden of Eden. I wasn't asked to vote on it."
No, you weren't. Nor was I. But that's reality,
and God runs His world, not you and not me. Reality's a stubborn
thing. You might meet a six-foot-thick
concrete wall and say, I don't like it. It's in my way. I don't
like it. You bust your head against it. Concrete wall isn't going
to say, ouch. You'll go away with a bloody
head. That's all you'll get for your troubles, and that's reality. Men, women, boys, girls, God
arranged it, that if Adam stood, we would have stood with him
and in him. But when he fell, we fell in him and with him in
that first sin, and we are guilty because of our involvement with
Adam, the head of the human race. The redemption comes to us against
the backdrop of the guilt. That guilt that is ours because
of the sin of our first father, but also that guilt which is
increased because of our own personal sin, our individual
sins. Psalm 58-3 says, they go astray
from the womb, speaking lies. They hardly have breathed their
first breath, and cried their first cry, and wept their first
pamper before their lying. They go astray from the womb,
speaking lies. Scripture tells us that the wages
of sin is death. And what does that mean? You
mean every single time I've not perfectly loved God with all
my heart, mind, and soul, and strength, I'm guilty? Every single time I've taken
his name in vain, every single time I've not honored him on
his day, every time I've taught mean, rotten thoughts about mom
and dad, and I've groused under my breath, and I've grumbled
against their requirements. You mean every single time I've
done that, God is aware of it, and God is committed to punish
that sin? Yes. Every single sin. God knows, God sees. Sins of
the heart, sins of thought, sins of tongue, sins of desire, sins
of intention. That's why Jesus said, hatred
in the heart is murder. It's not just murder when the
man pulls the trigger and hits his mark, or takes the dagger
and plunges it into the heart. Oh, you've got to feel in your
heart, if I could, I'd kill him. God says, if his good is done,
guilty of mercy. The hands of your soul are red
with blood. That's why he said, who so looks
to lust upon a woman has committed adultery already in his heart.
God says adultery is not only in the act of the joining of
the body of one to another in an illicit relationship, but
when the heart is committed to it, and you say, if I could,
I would. If the circumstances were right,
please, he said, that's adultery. Now, is it true that God's holy
law is the standard by which God judges every thought, every
motive, every attitude? And anything short of absolute
obedience to His law makes us guilty and provokes His wrath? Who sitting here tonight would
dare to stand up in the presence of this many people and say,
I have no guilt? I've never fallen short of God's
standard of perfect righteousness. From the very moment that I can
remember anything, I've loved God with all my heart, mind,
soul, and strength. Every moment of every hour of
every day of every week of every year I live. Who among you is
so stupid as to even think that you could make such a claim? Now, what is the glory of God
in redemption? It's never to be understood until
we see that we've got real guilt. provoked by real sin, and that
that guilt is a frightening reality. Why a frightening reality? Because
we read in Hebrews 10, 30 and 31, vengeance is mine, I will
repay, saith the Lord. It is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God. It is a fearful thing. to fall into the hands of the
living God. If God has said every sin will
receive just punishment, if God formed the Garden of Eden to
Adam and Eve for one sin, my friend, what will He do to you
and to me for the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of sins? Dr. Robert Schuller parades his
rotten, hell-producing gospel of self-esteem. That what we
need, he says, is to be convinced we're not half as bad as we think
we are. That's not our problem. We're
not one hundredth the part aware of how bad our plight is. And the glory of God in the redemption
of Christ will never be appreciated until there is returned again
to the Church? This backdrop of a consciousness
of the frightening reality of human guilt? When God is permitted
to uphold His law and punish every sin, who can escape? That's why the Bible tells us
in the Day of Judgment, in that horrible picture at the end of
Revelation 6, In that day, the kings of the earth, the great
ones and the little ones, the slaves and the free, what will
they do when God begins to pour out His wrath? This is what they'll
do. It says in Revelation 6, 15 and
16 that they will hide themselves in the caves and the rocks of
the mountains, and they'll say to the mountains and to the rocks,
Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him that sits on the
throne. and from the wrath of the Lamb,
for the great day of their wrath is come, and who is able to stand? Guilt makes us liable to God's
wrath, and the day is coming, Paul says, when there will be
the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, and He will
come in flaming fire to take vengeance on those who know not
God and obey not the Vengeance is mine, God says, I will repay. Vengeance is never right for
you and me. Never right for us to get even. But one day God
will get even. He'll get even with sinners who
said, I don't care what God said, I'm going to do my own thing.
I don't care that God says I'm going to love him with all my
heart. I want to love my friends more than God. I want to love
my sports. I want to love my fun. I want to love my pleasure.
I want to love my business. I want to love my weekend cottage. I want to love my bars. I want
to love my golf clubs. I want to love this. I don't
care what God said. Oh, I'll give him a little corner
of my heart, but not the whole heart. Who the world's God think
he is? No, sir, I'll give God just as much as I want to. And
I don't care if God says, remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
Who cares what God says? I've got to have a day in the
week, man, when I can putter around the house and watch the
football games and do my own thing. Oh, yeah, I'll go to church,
throw a little sock to God and stab my conscience and do God
a favor. But keep one whole day unto God as a day for specific
worship? A whole day unto God? No way,
man! I've done no right to mess around
with my leisure time. Honor thy father and thy mother.
I'm not going to do that. Why should I? I know more than
my old man knows. I know more than my mom knows. I know more
than my daddy knows. I'm not going to honor them.
I'll only honor them so much as I think it's... You see what
that's saying? It's saying I don't care about
God's law. And what does God do? Does he
split the heavens with thunderbolts? No. He patiently does. upon another,
upon another, upon another, upon another, until Paul says, these
things like putting money in the bank. You pray for nothing. Every sin, you put more money
in the bank, and it's gaining interest. Put it in the bank,
put it in the bank, put it in the bank. And what's building
is a capital of divine wrath. And a day is coming when God
says, I'm going to open up your bank account. I'm going to open
it up! And then what do men do? they
find the nearest mountain, they start praying to a mountain.
They wouldn't pray to God, but they pray to a mountain. Poor
mountain, poor mountain, poor rock, tumble down upon it. Why? They realize God meant this.
God meant this. And they see the wrath of the
Lamb coming. My friends, the glory of God in redemption is
set against the backdrop of the reality Have you ever felt your
guilt? Have you ever felt and known
the fact that every sin you've ever committed has been a voice
that cries up to heaven daring God to damn your soul in hell? Every selfish, mean, ugly, envious,
covetous thought was a voice that cried to heaven's courts
for judgment. My friend, if you've never taken
that seriously, you better begin to. For you'll never, never see
the glory of God in the redemption that is in Christ. You'll never
have a clue about what the cross is all about. The cross will
be to you just a lovely, mushy symbol of something called the
love of God. But you'll never see the cross
in its true light as the place where. I think the public. Where the fury of God's justice
for the white. Until it comes through the phone. Of the reality of your. Then on the page in the backdrop
of the second friend of the clock in the And it's not only the frightening
reality of human guilt, but the sickening reality of human defilement. The sickening reality of human
defilement. What does it mean to be defiled?
It means to be unclean, to be polluted, to be filthy. And the
Bible makes it abundantly clear that when sin enters, we not
only got a problem up in God's court and became guilty, He admits
and to the human soul and defiles the entirety of man's soul and
his being, so that the human heart is now nothing but a cesspool
of sin. You say, where do you find that
in the Bible? Very quickly you go from Old to New Testament,
4 to 10, Genesis chapter 6. You all know about the flood
in Noah's day. Why did God send the flood? Well,
this Bible tells us very clearly why he did. Genesis 6-5, the
Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, now notice,
and that every imagination of the thought of his heart was
only evil continued. What did God see that provoked
him? What did God's seed that caused the Lord to say, it repents
me that I've made man, I will destroy man whom I have created? What did he see? Notice, though
the chapter begins by saying that there was this horrible
condition of the godly seed mingling with the ungodly, the earth was
full of violence, the thing that provoked God to send the flood. The thing that most triggered
God's anger was this, the condition of man's heart, you see? And
it says, the imagination of the thought of the heart. And you
can't get any deeper than that. Here's my heart, the seed of
my being. I think a thought. Behind the
thought is an imagination. Behind the imagination is something
that triggers that. In other words, it's describing
the very first spring of human thought and desire and perspective. Every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart was evil continually. That's why Jeremiah said, you
all know the verse, don't you? Jeremiah 17. The heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Who can know it? The heart is
so polluted that the Prophet asked, who can plumb the depths
of this death pool called the human heart? Who can reach down
the thick and measurous depths? Who can put it into a flask and
take it into the laboratory and analyze the density of its filth
and its vileness? The next verse answers the question,
I, the Lord, will die. Only an infinite God can plumb
the depths. That's what the text says. Then you come into the New Testament
in Mark chapter 7, and you had Jesus dealing with these Pharisees.
They were the people that thought, well, religion is believing the
right thing, being in the right place at the right time, and
going through the right motions. If you do all that, you're off
itself. You know anybody like that? If they're in the right
place at the right time, saying the right thing, believing the
right thing, they can do all right. That's what the Pharisees
were like. And people like that are very
concerned about preserving their man-made traditions. And Jesus
was dancing and walking to the beat of a different drum, and
they didn't like it. Everywhere Jesus went, there
they were. How can he be a holy man? He's sitting with
Pilate and with the riffraff of Jerusalem and the Palestinian
mafia. Look at that. And look at his
disciples. They come into the marketplace
and they grab an apple and a banana and they don't go through all
these washings like some Gentile might have been there in the
marketplace five hours before and seen. And some of the vapors
you see is on their body. That's defiling! Oh, how terrible! And so they came to Jesus and
said, How come these disciples don't keep the traditions? Traditions! We've got to keep our traditions!
Jesus said, You bunch of hypocrites! You bunch of hypocrites! God
isn't concerned about the skin and whether or not you've got
the vapor from a Gentile's nose on your skin. He's concerned
about the heart! If you draw near with your lips
but your hearts are far from in listening, in direct proportion
to people being all taken up with their human traditions,
they lose the reality of true religion. And Jesus said, You
people will never get back to true religion until you understand
something. And then he told them what they need to understand.
Look at Mark chapter 7 and where Jesus takes them. He says, Defilement
is not something that comes from without. It's something that
comes from within. And now he says in verse 19,
he says, nothing from without can defile a man. That is food
that may have a few Gentile germs on it. It goes into, not his
heart, but into his stomach, and it goes out in the processes
of bodily elimination. That's exactly what Jesus said.
And then it says, verse 20, that which proceeds out of the man,
that defiles the man. For from within, out of the what? Out of the heart of men, evil
thoughts proceed, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting,
wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, look at this, an evil eye, breeding
in bad motives, all the time taking the works of people listed
right along with his other sins, railing, you know what railing
is? Mouthing off. That would be a contemporary
rendering of the Greek word. Abusive speech, mouthing off,
railing. That's what it means. Pride. Pride of faith. Pride of background. Pride of clothes. Pride of body. Pride of ability. Pride of heritage. Pride in your church. Pride,
where does it come from? Out of the heart and qualities,
qualities, physical qualities. These things come from within,
from within. You see what Jesus is saying?
Every man has within him, every woman, every boy, every girl.
You know what you have within you from your conception? An
artesian well of every kind of thing in the world. Now you know
what an artesian well is? That's a well where you don't
need to sink a pipe and have a pump to pull the water up.
The pressure's all there. All you need to do is make a
hole and let the water pressure force the water out. Now God
says the human heart is an artesian well, better than artesian sex
tools and equipment. Out of the heart! Not from society! You see how we're being brainwashed?
Somebody goes down the street in cold blood, intelligent enough
to know who he wants to Intelligent enough to put a shell in the
chamber, intelligent enough to take off the safety lock, aim
it and shoot it, and the moment the guy topples over, the first
question people ask is, who inflicted this poor man that he did such
a horrible thing? Who can we blame in society?
And they start looking for someone to blame. Oh, murder doesn't
come from the heart, but Jesus did it just. Adultery comes from
the heart. Pride comes out of the heart,
not from the pressure of society, not from a bad example, not from
a poor self-image. Out of the heart! Out of the
heart! And that's the sickening reality
of human defilement, that the heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wishes. Let me ask you something. Have
you ever fallen in the presence of God? But now, oh God, there's
not a thing I've ever heard about committed on the face of the
earth. That's left to myself. I'm not perfectly capable of
this. Have you ever had such a sight in your heart that you
really believe that? Haven't? If not, my friend, I doubt you've
ever seen your heart with eyes opened by the Holy Ghost. God
wonderfully restrained my heart example in a Christian home,
by godly standards. While I was playing football
in high school, can you imagine an eleven o'clock curfew? If
you want to know something, I entered marriage a virgin because of
that curfew. When things began to get steamy
with the girlfriends about ten, ten-thirty, and I had to get
the bus home, I thanked God for those standards. I thanked God
for those standards. Though God kept me from a lot
of outward sin, I stand before you to say there's nothing I've
ever read in the Bible of what anyone's ever done. There's nothing
I've ever heard poured out in the counseling room over thirty-plus
years in the ministry. There's nothing I've ever read
in the paper but what I've had to say, O God, O God, but to
your grace, I come unto you. My heart is capable of that. If you would withdraw your Well, you've got the heart of
a pharisee. My friend, you don't know anything
about the redemption in Christ. He didn't come for people who
prune their feathers that their hearts are not so bad. He came
to bring the redemption for people with hearts just as bad. He came
to bring a redemption to people in the midst of the frightening
reality of human guilt, yes, but in the sickening reality
of human defilement. But then the backdrop, and here
I should be stringing the other two patterns. He came for a people in a condition
of what I'm calling the withering reality of human bondage. The
withering, the withering reality of human bondage. What is more
withering to the spirit than to say, I'm a slave, I'm held
in chains, there's no hope? And yet that's precisely the
condition every one of us is in by nature. Jesus said in John
8 in verse 34, Whosoever commits sin is the born slave of sin. The committing of sin is the
evidence of our slavery to sin. And in Romans, chapter 6, where Paul
describes the condition of every Roman Christian before he became
a Christian, notice how he describes their condition in Romans, chapter
6. Romans, chapter 6, and verse 17, He said, all of you were the
slaves of sin, and in the Roman Church you had many people who
were Roman slaves. They knew what slavery was, not
by reading about it in a book. Man, they were slaves. They had
been taken, some of them, from their homelands in the Roman
conquest and brought against their will to Rome. They knew
to be a slave meant they had no will of their own. Their will
was the will of their master. They had no freedom to their
own. They knew what slavery was, and when Paul said, you were
the slaves of sin, then in verse 22 he says the same thing, but
now being made free from sin and become slaves to God. He
said, before you become God's slaves, you're the slaves of
sin. And that's the withering reality
of human bondage. Can you imagine going by a man
whose chains were post, with chain links two inches thick,
and the chain was forty feet long? He drags his chain around
thirty feet this way, thirty feet that way, and he breaks
out of his trunk. I'm a free man! I'm a free man! I'm a free
man! Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. He's
only as free as the forty-foot chain. And when he stretches
that chain out to forty feet, he'll know and gain his trunk
and slave in time of trouble. You may not think you're a slave.
Do you want me to prove it to you? Right here and now, you
determine that you will start loving God with all your heart,
mind, soul, and strength, right here and now. Try it. Try it. That you will, here and now,
take that envy, that pride, that vicious, slandering, gossiping
tongue, that evil ear that listens to gossip, those things that
are your sins, and say, I'll just take them and throw them
behind me. Try it, my friend. He thought
he was free until he began to realize what he was left with. And he said, I felt a galling
bondage of my sin, Romans chapter 7. My friend, the glory of God
in redemption is set against a dark backdrop. Not only of
the frightening reality of human guilt, the sickening reality
of human defilement, but the wizarding reality of human bondage. And finally, the humbling reality
of spiritual death. Thank God for the song of Brother
Samson. The humbling reality of spiritual
death. What did God say to Adam in the
day? And we read in Romans 6, 23, the ways of sin and death. If you eat to one, you have to
be made alive. Who were dead through your trespasses
and sins. What does that mean? It doesn't
mean we're fixed in stone. We can think, we can act, we
can feel, we can laugh, we can cry, we make choices. But it
means that in terms of life, which is truly life, communion
with God, the knowledge of God, Delight in God, we are as separated
from that as the soul of a dead man separated from his body. And I tell you that's a humbling
reality. There's no other spark of divine light in you that can
be tanned into the flame of spiritual light. We are spiritually as
dead as Lazarus was in that tomb. And what Lazarus needed was not
somebody to come and put a warm cloth on his head and rub his
wrist. And he didn't need to have somebody come and speak
some sweet words in his ears. He needed a voice of omnipotence
that could say, Lazarus didn't come out of that
grave patting himself on the back, saying, hey, you know,
I decided to get out of this grave today. It was great, wonderful
feeling. Hey, everybody listen, I made
my decision today to get out of the grave. He didn't do that.
He went around, people said, you Lazarus, you look like Lazarus.
He said, sure I am, what happened to you? He said, somebody hope
you're dead now. And with that voice came in life. Who was that somebody? Jesus
of Nazareth. That's who it is. We didn't talk about him making
a decision to come out of his tomb. We talked about Jesus,
who decided to seek life in the midst of death. My friends, the
glory of God in the events can be said against that backdrop. Now, I've spent more time on
this than I thought I would, but I've not preached this message
before, so I didn't know where it would go and how long it would
take to get there. I do believe if God spares us
and we're able to come together tomorrow night, though I'll have
to condense what I hope to say tonight about redemption, the
conference. We'll give a little mini-sermon
of that, and then the sermon I prepared on redemption applies.
I believe, though we won't be able to go into as much detail,
I hope our appreciation will be great, because we'll look
at it against that backdrop. Now, friends, I have not changed
the picture. I've not changed the backdrop. I've only set the
human situation in the reality of real guilt, and the wrath
of God hanging over our heads like a dark, thick, but deadly
cold, about to burst upon the head of every human. And then
the sickening reality of human detriment, the heart, the mind,
the affections, all defiled and polluted, the withering reality
that we are bound to our sins and cannot break our chains,
and the humbling reality of spiritual death. No wonder the Bible says
redemption comes to this kind of people when we were without
faith. In due time Christ died for the
undaunted. We were by nature children of
what? The Bible says we're so bad off
that we can't even see the remedy when it's set in front of us,
for the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit
of God, neither can he know them. We're so bad off when the remedy's
in front of us, we can't see it. So bad off, we can't even come
to it when it's offered to us, for no man can come to me except
the Father which is sent to draw him. Now, my friends, I didn't
write the Bible, but I am committed to preaching it. Now, that's
our condition. We're that bad. We're that bad. Now, has that ever Not as a doctrine,
the Bible's doctrine of human sin and guilt and depravity,
but has it ever graced you as a revelation of what you are? Beauty before a holy and righteous
God. Politic in every fiber of your
soul. Bound and chained by your sins. Dead. And this war is the life
of God. I can't answer for you, but my
friend, I plead not as a preaching device, but with all of my heart. Had I the time, I'd start with
you kids, and I thank God for your attention to the Word. May
you never get too big for your britches to listen attentively
to the Word. I thank you for the way you've
listened to God's Word tonight. But I'd like to take every one
of you Put my hand on your shoulders and look me straight in your
eyeballs and ask you, have you ever seen that that's what you
are? Guilty, polluted, chained, and dead. You say, well, what a terrible
thing to see that. Oh, no, my son. Because the doctrine
is this. Christ Jesus came into the world. Sinners! To say. Sinners! To say. What kind of sinners?
guilty, polluted, found, dead, finished. And that's the only
time he's finished. And he has accomplished, and
he applies his redemption, not to people who think it's a luxury,
but to those who've come to see it. It is a necessity, and nothing
less than redemption by his blood, and the mighty transforming power
of his can take away the guilt, can cleanse that bond to the
pain, can break the chains, and can bring it to life. That's the redemption of Jesus.
It's not patching up sinners with a little bit of religion,
a little bit of Jesus, a little bit of a Bible, a little bit
of church. My friend, that's the devil's business, to patch
you up with just enough religion to make you stupidly unaware
that you're on your way to hell. God's in the business of making
Christ the pearl of great Christ, making Jesus the altogether lovely
one, making Jesus in our lives so lovely and beautiful and attractive
that we want to give the whole of our being to Him. Oh, if you
don't see Him, it's just through the Holy Ghost showing you tonight,
and may you throw yourself upon Him and say, Lord, I don't understand
everything I heard, but if the preacher And if your word was
read and quoted and expounded and illustrated, oh God, oh God,
I've been conscious, I've been conscious. Somebody else has
been here besides the priest. Oh God, I don't understand all,
but I know, I know, I've seen myself like I've never seen myself
before in God. I don't want to walk out of this
place with that dark, pregnant cloud of your wrath hanging over
me. I know I deserve it. I know I
deserve hell. to break that cloud upon my head
and send me to hell. But oh God, have mercy on a sinner
like me. Have mercy because Christ dies
and Christ rose and Christ lives. My friend, you have the promise
of God, Him that comes to me. Are we all right? I won't ask
you to raise a hand. Christ is nearer than the end
of your time here. The Bible says the word of faith
we preach is near in your mouth and in your heart. There, sitting
where you are, looking to Christ alone, laying hold of him and
his promise, God says, Christ is yours if you will have him. Oh, may you lay hold of him by
faith and know the blessing of himself. Oh, our Father, what thanks can
we give to you for such a Redeemer as your dear son? We confess,
Lord, that we feel afresh the horror and the shame of what
we are listening to. We would acknowledge again our
guilt and our pollution and our bondage and our debt, but we
would glorify you, every one of us who is We would glorify
you by acknowledging that we do believe that all of our guilt
is removed because of his obedience unto death. We believe you have
credited to us the perfect record of your own son. We believe that
by grace your spirit has come and taken out our hearts of stone,
that you have cleansed us in the blood of your son. You've
broken our bondage, You've brought us to life, and we glorify You
for so great a salvation. O Lord, for those who have no
such joy, no certain knowledge of this salvation, mercifully
open their eyes to see their desperate state, and then give
them to see Your glory in the face of Christ, and draw them
to Your Son. We ask these mercies for his
glory. Amen.