I mentioned this morning in introduction
for our study in the scriptures in the morning service that I
was going to make an attempt to bring to you the message which
I preached out on the West Coast and that for two basic reasons.
Number one, and I'm sure you're more convinced of the first reason
after the report I've given tonight, There was not ample time to do
the adequate preparation for the next sections in 1 Thessalonians,
which for the sake of our visitors present, I'm preaching through
in the mornings, and Psalm 1 in the evenings. And for the second
reason, that the issues that we dealt with, I believe, are
so vital that though some of the areas may seem like old hat,
they are areas that are so vital to the ministry of any church
seeking to stand in this generation in all of its religious as well
as secular confusion. If the church is to have any
kind of an adequate ministry, it must intelligently as a church
be committed to the aspects of truth. with which I am seeking
to deal in this study of the scripture. It's not enough for
a pastor and a few elders and a few articulate laymen in the
church to share the vision. That church should be like a
well-trained army in which every foot soldier as well as those
who stand in rank and in places of authority have a clear objective
in mind, and in all of the involvement of battle are together, coordinated
in the attaining of that objective. So we, standing in our generation,
loving Christ and loving his truth and seeking to be set for
the defense and proclamation of the gospel, we should stand
intelligently, every last one of us, understanding the issues
that are at stake in our day, and seeking bipartisan efforts
to accomplish the purpose of God for us as a church. And I am increasingly convinced
that when Dr. Packer said in his introduction
to John Owen's book, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ,
that perhaps the greatest need of evangelicalism in this hour
is the recovery of the biblical gospel, I am increasingly convinced
that he was speaking very accurate, if not prophetic words. Therefore,
the question around which our study this morning and again
this evening clusters, the answered cluster
around this question, is the contemporary gospel the biblical
gospel? Is the gospel that is by and
large preached and believed in our evangelical circles today,
is it the biblical gospel? I sought to introduce the subject
by giving you several reasons why this was a vital issue, and
then by drawing the yellow line on the wall. Even my son got
that illustration straight on the way home. He said, Daddy,
I learned something this morning. And I said, What was that? And
he said that he proceeded to tell me that the only way we
could judge if a man is seven feet six inches tall is to measure
him by an inflexible standard. And if we are to discern Whether
or not the contemporary gospel is the biblical gospel, we must
bring that contemporary gospel to the objective, inflexible
standard of the word of God, to the law and to the testimony.
If they speak not according to this word, there is no light
in them. And I must warn you, as I must
warn myself again and again, that opinions of men And the
numerical strength of men or the influence of men does not
affect the line on the wall seven feet six inches tall, you see. This issue is so vital that we
dare not look out and take an opinion poll or a popularity
census of the contemporary gospel to determine whether or not it
is the true gospel. We must come to the touchstone
of scripture and judge everything by thus saith the Lord. And we must seek to do this with
what I would call, in quoting another servant of Christ, the
maximizing mentality, not the minimizing mentality. You see,
everything in our day is computerized, everything comes in capsule form.
Someone told me recently they saw a cartoon of what it'd be
like a few years from now, and there's a man sitting at a table
with a bib on, and he's cutting up a cube of some kind of concentrated
vitamins and minerals. In other words, he's not sitting
there drooling over a steak, but he's there cutting up his
cube. We've got everything in capsule
form. We have reader's digest and digest
of the digest. And everything in our age is
pushed toward this sense of running and hurrying and condensing and
shrinking and contracting. And this mentality is filtered
into the church, so when we approach the subject of preaching the
gospel, teaching the gospel, of proclaiming the gospel, we
think in a minimizing mentality. This is the attitude that most
people have. How little may we teach and still
have it be called gospel? Whereas the Bible would lead
us to approach the subject this way. How much must we teach in
order to be true to God? See the difference? One is the
maximizing mentality, the other is the minimizing mentality.
And the Apostle Paul didn't have the minimizing mentality, he
had the maximizing mentality. For he said in Acts 20 and verse
26, Wherefore I take you to record this day, I am pure from the
blood of all men. Why? For I've given you three
little verses in a short amount of time? No. He said, Because
I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of
God. He said, the only reason I'm
free of your blood, and that's a figure of speech, as you ladies
heard this morning. in your Bible class. I'm clear
from the blood of all men, that is, I have discharged my responsibility
to their never-dying immortal souls. Why? Not because I've
given them a minimum amount of truth in a minimum amount of
time. No, no, he said, I am pure from
their blood because I have not shunned from declaring the whole
spectrum of God's saving message. Paul had the maximizing mentality,
not the minimizing mentality. And we must have that same mentality
as we approach this subject. Is the contemporary gospel the
biblical gospel? Now, I only had time to develop
one point this morning, and that point was this. Is the contemporary
gospel the biblical gospel if it fails to build on a sound
doctrine of God? Can we be truly evangelizing
if we don't take time to tell modern American pagans who God
is? Creator, Sovereign, Sustainer
of His world and of His creatures, and I hope that you had enough
material from Acts 14 and Acts 17 to help you to answer that
question. Rather than take a lot of time
to review, I will simply quote what one servant of God has said,
which summarizes all that I attempted to say in about 45 minutes this
morning. Quote, and we must not be afraid
to start with the basic facts about God the Creator. Revealed
truth has a structure. And this is its foundation, that
is, the facts about God. When Paul preached to the pagan
Athenians, he laid this foundation before going any further. He
had to, or else the point of his witness to our Lord would
not have been grasped. For knowledge of sin and salvation
presupposes some knowledge of the Creator. Nobody can see what
sin is till he's learned what God is. And that's why Richard
Baxter directed the seeking soul to fix his mind first and foremost
on the nature and majesty of God. In pagan England, and I
might add America today, we need to lay the same foundation as
Paul laid at Athens. We complain that our gospel preaching
in the modern sense does not register with those who hear
it. May not this be, in the first instance, because they know nothing
about the God with whom they have to do? Have we taken pains
to teach them who God is? The irony of our situation is
that if we spend time preaching to modern pagans about the character
of God, we should be told that we're not preaching the gospel.
But the Puritans would not tell us that, nor would Paul." End
of quote. This quote by J.I. Packer was
in the context of a lecture he delivered some years ago on the
subject of the Puritan concept of preaching the gospel. And
they saw this truth. That's why when you pick up Joseph
Alleyne's Alarm to the Unconverted, which I hope all of you have
and have read, though you may not be able to sit down and analyze
with the precision of a theologian what's different with the gospel
that Joseph Alleyne preached and the gospel that's preached
in our day as the biblical gospel, You sense that you're moving
in a totally different realm. There's a whole different mood
in the evangelism of Joseph Alene and the evangelism of the best
of our contemporary evangelists. And one of the factors of that
different mood is this. Alene was continually confronting
you with the greatness and the majesty of the God with whom
you had to do. He wasn't focusing primarily
upon man and his felt needs or his psychological quirks. He
wasn't focusing primarily upon the blessings that man gets.
He is continually confronting me with God and man's sin in
the light of the majesty of God, in the light of the law of God,
in the light of the judgment of God, in the light of the glory
of God's salvation in Jesus Christ. And I submit to you that if we
as a church are to biblically evangelize in our Sunday school,
over this pulpit, in confronting the community, in our homes,
We must build on a sound doctrine of God. That's why catechizing
your children is an essential part of evangelism. For though
teaching them the catechism has no power to create any love for
God in their hearts, it is laying great beams of truth about the
nature and character of God in that unregenerate heart and mind,
so that when the Spirit of God is pleased to give life, That
life then will take the form of those great underpinnings
of divine truth, and there will be spiritual stability and maturity. Now I move to the second question,
and I don't know how far we'll get tonight. I'll confess I haven't
determined tonight what I determined that Thursday night, I will tell
you that. The second question I would like
to ask is this. Is the contemporary gospel, the
biblical gospel, if it fails to make a proper use of the law
of God? The contemporary gospel preached
in the average gospel tract over the radio, preached, as many
of you have confessed to me, to you for years, from good evangelical
pulpit, is a gospel that is marked by its almost total ignorance
of and lack in using the holy law of God. Now, the gospel is
not the law, and the law is not the gospel, but the gospel establishes
the law, and the law establishes the gospel. After Paul had preached
the doctrine of God's saving grace apart from the works of
the law, he said, do we make void the law of God through faith? God forbid! By this message of
salvation, he says, we establish the law. Prophetically, we read
in Isaiah concerning the ministry of Christ that he would make
honorable the law of God and would magnify it in his salvation. And I'm speaking particularly
when I mention the law of God of the Ten Commandments and their
place in a true preaching of the gospel. Did Paul understand
the gospel in such a way that he would not use the law of God
in his preaching of the gospel? I think not. For he tells us
in Galatians chapter 3 and verse 24, wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, or, because those words
are in italics, there's no verb there in the Greek, could be
translated, wherefore the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ,
that we might be justified by faith. The law, he said, had
a function, and that function was to lead us unto Christ. The function of the law was not
to lead us to marry the law, no. The function of the law was
to strip us of every other hope, of every other recourse, until,
in a naked embrace of faith, we found ourselves married to
Jesus Christ. Paul's own testimony in Romans
chapter 7 was that he had not known sin as sin unless the holy
law of God had done its work preparing him to receive the
grace of God. Notice Paul's testimony in Romans
7 and in verse 7. What shall we say then? Is the
law sin? He's speaking of how the Christian
is released from the covenant of the law in terms of its condemning,
in terms of its negative, damning, condemning curse that hangs over
his head. And he says, now after I've talked
in such strong terms of us being released from the law, what should
we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. No, no. Though the law has no
power to save, and though we've been released from the curse
and the condemnation of the law, he said, don't infer from this
that the law had no legitimate function in the realm of salvation. Oh, no, it did have a legitimate
function. Here it is. Nay, I have not known
sin, but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law
had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence, that
is, evil desire, for without the law sin was dead. Paul said,
until the law did its work, sin was not a living principle to
me. I had no true understanding of the nature and character of
sin, for I was alive without the law once. But when the commandment
came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment which was
ordained to life I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion
by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore
the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Was then that which is good made
deaf unto me? God forbid! But sin, now notice,
that it might appear, sin, working death in me by that which is
good, that is the law, that sin, by the commandment, might become
exceedingly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual,
but I am carnal, souled under sin." What's Paul saying? He's
telling us what the law did for him. And he says, essentially,
the law did this. It showed me the true nature
of sin. It showed me my heart. It showed
me that I stood slain by the condemning sentence of God. And it disposed me to receive
the grace of God. This is why the Apostle Paul
says in 1 Timothy 1.8, wherefore the law is good if a man use
it lawfully. And then he explains what the
lawful use of the law is. And he says in that passage in
1 Timothy 1.8, 9, and 10, that the function of the law is to
discover sin as sin. And we've never discovered sin
as sin until we see it as the breach of divine law. Now you
see how point one and point two are connected? There can be no
concept of sin as a breach of divine law until, first of all,
I understand God made me. Secondly, God has commanded me
as to how I should live with regard to Him. What is sin? Sin is the refusal to regard
the mandate of my creator. Sin is the refusal to submit
to the regulation of the God who made me and sustains my very
life. What makes sin so terrible? Sin
is anarchy. Sin is treason against the God
of heaven. Sin is a clenched fist to the
one who holds my very life in his hand. You see, when you begin
to realize that, you don't talk lightly about sin. You don't
begin to talk about little sin. you begin to see sin in its true
nature, the creature rebelling against the sovereign Creator. And yet in our day, this function
of the holy law of God is just almost completely passed over.
Why? Well, again, it might take some time to sit down with somebody
and say, You know about the Ten Commandments? He says, yeah,
I heard about them once upon a time. Well, you know where
they're found? Yeah, I think they're found in the Bible somewhere,
aren't they? That's right. Whereabouts? A friend, Mr. Riesinger, says that he's embarrassed
people in evangelical churches many times. He'll say, now let's
turn to the Ten Commandments. And he won't tell them where
it is. And he says, it's something deceitful. I don't even know where they're
found. See, he's mean and I'm sweet,
so I won't do that. But in Exodus chapter 20, you
have those 10 words of Moses. To sit down with someone and
begin to say, look, what do you think that means? Thou shalt
have no other gods before me. What's a god? That person begins
to see that idolatry is not going out and taking a little piece
of wood or stone and carving an image and bowing down, but
idolatry is setting anything or anyone in the place that belongs
to God. So that Paul says in Colossians
3, covetousness, one of the crowning sins of 20th century affluent
America, the love and grasping of things, is idolatry. It's making up God for things.
You move to the second commandment and the third and begin to lay
out the breadth and length of those laws that touch as Paul
discovered when he came to the tenth commandment. Not just the
deeds, but the very dispositions and the attitude of the heart.
Till someone begins to feel and hold. the way to this guilt and
this pollution, as did the apostle Paul, then the gospel becomes
good news. Then the cross makes sense! And
instead of the cross simply being a sentimental display of a self-sacrificing
spirit of Jesus, The cross becomes that awesome display of the mingling
of the infinite justice of God that would bruise His own Son
until He writhes in agony and cries out in brokenness, My God,
My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? And we see justice in all
of its strictness in those shrouded heavens, in the inky black skies,
in the piercing cry of the Son of God. And yet, wonder of wonders,
we see love mingled in all of its fullness. As the just dies
for the unjust, as he cries, Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do. As he cries, it is finished! And so, you see, the cross then
becomes that majestic display of infinite justice and of eternal
love. But it'll never become that unless
the law of God has its proper place in our thinking. An old
saint of God once stood with Professor Murray ministering
the Lord's Supper to some saints of God in Scotland and almost
in rapture he spoke out as he stood at the table, O cross whose
base is eternal justice and whose spirit is eternal love. Whose base is eternal justice. You try to plant the cross on
any other base but the justice of God, and you don't have the
biblical cross. Plant the cross in some kind
of oozy, crumb-principled, sentimental swash, and you don't have the
cross of Calvary that'll break your heart and make you a willing
love servant of Jesus Christ. But when you see that the cross
has as its base eternal justice, Galatians 3.13, Christ redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. When the cross is set on that
face of eternal justice, and you see God satisfying the demands
of His own law, this do and thou shalt live, this fail to do and
thou shalt die, and death is meted out upon the Son of God,
the substitute of sinners, Then you see love. Love becomes that
to us, as it was to Paul, a constraining, powerful, captivating principle. He said, the love of Christ constrains
me. Shouldn't they say, it turns
me loose to live like a please? He said, it constrains me, it
lays hold of me. Because it was love set in the
context of law. And yet, dear ones, in our day
the gospel is often offered as a panacea for all kinds of psychological
problems. Are you frustrated? Are you unresolved
in your inner conflicts? Come to Jesus. Philosophy of a man like Oral
Roberts, his whole theology, God is a good God. He made a
song about it now. God's so good that if you drive
in forks, he wants you to drive Cadillacs. Come to Jesus. In
three years' time, you'll be driving them. God's a good God. He doesn't want to see you sick.
He wants to see you well, so claim your healing. Put your
hand on the radio. You see, the whole philosophy is one that
utterly bypasses the concept that God is a just God and a
holy God who's expressed his will in his holy law, and we
have broken that law and deserve the wrath and the curse of God.
And it's a miracle of miracles that every one of us is not burning
in hell this day. And when people begin to understand
that and see the law of God in all of its burning holiness and
all of its justness, in all of its, what Paul calls here, its
spirituality, and see how far they've fallen short of that
standard, then grace becomes a glorious sound. In the only
systematic treatise of the Gospel in the entire New Testament,
excuse me, the Book of Romans, Paul gives us the pattern as
to how the gospel should be taught and how it should be preached.
We turn for a moment to the Book of Romans as I seek to develop
this thought for a moment. After some general introductory
words just to establish his hearing, Paul announces the theme of his
letter in verses 6, I'm sorry, in verses 16 and 17. Or perhaps
we could back up to verse 15. So as much as in me is, I'm ready
to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I'm not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It's the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek. For therein, that is, for within
the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. What
is his theme going to be? The gospel of Christ. which has
as its central blessing a righteousness, a right standing with God that
comes from God and is received by faith. That's the theme. All right, now, how is he going
to develop his theme? He starts in verse 18 with the
doctrine of divine wrath against human sin. Notice, for the wrath
of God is revealed from heaven. And then from verse 18 of chapter
1, all the way through the end of chapter 1, all the way through
chapter 2, all the way through chapter 3, until he comes to
verse 19, he doesn't preach the gospel as we would define it,
he preaches them all! And he brings one segment of
humanity after another, like some judge who has been given
the responsibility of summoning criminals before a bar of justice,
and he brings in those who had nothing but natural revelation.
I hope you got that on your test today, men. Now, what kinds of
revelation are there? Natural and spiritual revelation,
or special revelation. And he deals with those who have
nothing but natural revelation, and he shows in the light of
that revelation they're guilty. Then he brings in those who have
special revelation, and he shows that they're guilty, and he shows
that they are all guilty in terms of law. Those with natural revelation
have violated the remains of the law written upon the conscience.
Those who have special revelation have broken the law that was
uttered in thunder and lightning upon Mount Sinai. But whether
the law transgressed has been the law in the conscience, natural
revelation? The law given from Mount Sinai,
special revelation? What's the summary of the whole
issue? Look at verse 19. Now we know that what thing soever
the law saith it saith to them who are under the law that every
mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before
God. Therefore, and now he launches
into the gospel. But there's no gospel for that
whole part of chapter 1, chapter 2, and half of chapter 3. He
must, first of all, corral the whole of humanity, and bring
humanity before the bar of eternal justice, and pronounce it, notice,
duty before God in terms of breaking his law. Now that's all the difference
in the world between psychological or natural guilt. Let me illustrate
from personal experience. Having a mother and father who
were deeply concerned for my spiritual condition as a child
and still concerned for my spiritual condition as an adult, when they
would get wind from the neighbors that I had been cursing or maybe
that I had been doing some things I shouldn't. My mom and dad would
sit me down and always remember we had some swinging French doors
in that old house on 94 Soundview Avenue, Stansford, Connecticut.
Six-room house into which we were squeezed, I don't know,
before we put the addition on, seven or eight kids. And I can
remember when everybody would go to bed, they'd close those
doors because they let out into the living room and up the stairs
into the bedroom area and then I knew that the time of judgment
would come. Mom and Dad were going to talk
to me about something. So the French doors would close
and I'd sit down by the big dining room table and Dad and Mom would
sit there and then they'd begin to talk to me and maybe they,
Mrs. Yates across the street had heard me cursing and so they're
going to talk to me about my cursing. And you know, I can't
remember a time when they'd talk to me about some of my bad behavior,
but I would not break down and weep like a baby. I mean, slobber
and cry just uncontrollably at times. Weep and sob and then
I'd even get down on my knees and pray with them. And as far
as I know, I wasn't turning on those tears. And you talk about
guilt. Oh, how guilty I felt. How rotten
I felt. But listen, I did not feel guilty
before God. Mom and Dad had found me out. But if they had not found me
out, I wouldn't have been shedding any tears. I wouldn't have been
sobbing and crying. My concern was that Mom and Dad
had found me guilty. Not that I was guilty before
my Creator. Not that I was guilty before
my Sovereign. Not that I was guilty before
the One who held my life in His hands. He could have caused me
to drop into hell at any moment. See the difference between mere
psychological guilt and Holy Ghost? Sense it, you. In one, the reference is inward
or outward on a horizontal level. In the other, it's the recognition
of the vertical relationship. I developed this at some length
when I preached through the 51st Psalm, when David said, against
thee, O God, and thee only have I sinned. Now, what does that,
the teaching and preaching of the holy law of God? And my question then is this.
Is the contemporary gospel which comes with a message of God's
salvation from sin, is it the biblical gospel if it doesn't
first of all teach people what sin is in a biblical sense? How can the gospel be salvation
from sin, biblical sin, until first of all people know what
sin is? And what's God's instrument to teach the nature of sin? The
holy law of God. The holy law of God. So if we're committed for the
defense and proclamation of the gospel, we must be committed
to an opening up of those ten words of Moses in all their length
and breadth. We must be committed to, by the
grace of God, taking time to show people the holy righteous
requirement of God, which they had miserably and willfully broken,
For the whole disposition of the unregenerate man is so graphically
described in Romans 8, 7, the carnal mind is enmity against
God, it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can
it be. Every man's a rebel to the law
of God. But he doesn't know that. Walk
up to the average man in Bloomfield Avenue tonight, just coming out
of Grunnings with an ice cream cone in his hand, tap him on
the shoulder and say, hey, Max, do you know that you're a rebel
against God? He'd say, what are you talking about? I went to
church today. I like God, I love God as much as anybody. I mean,
I don't take my religion as seriously as I should, but don't tell me
I hate God. You do, Max. You've got a clenched fist in
the face of God. He said, wait a minute now, who in the world
do you think you are? I know I feel kind of nice because
I didn't give a dollar a week in the church. You see, he doesn't
look upon himself as described in Romans 8, 7. Enmity against
God? Not subject to the law of God?
What's the only thing that'll make him realize that? Well,
the Holy Spirit, yes. But what is God's instrument?
Paul says, by the commandment, sin will begin to appear as sin. And I say, do you know what your
creator requires of you? You think he requires you to
go to church once a week and throw a nickel or a dollar in
the plate? Well, he says, sure, I thought that's pretty good.
Now listen, here's what God requires of you, look. I turn him to the
Bible where Jesus said, this is the first commandment, thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind,
with all thy soul, with all thy strength. The God who made you,
upon whom you're dependent for your very life and breath and
existence, in whom you live and move and have your being, this
God requires that He be the supreme object of your affection, of
your love, of your desire, that in every plan, in every project,
in every projection of your intent of life, He should be central. Is He? You know, I never thought
of that. No, I guess you haven't. Let's
go on to the next commandment. You begin to take him through
those 10 words of Moses. If God is pleased to give you
a hearing and open his eyes, he's going to begin to see something.
He's been walking around in a fool's paradise thinking he liked God,
and he'll begin to see why I've been just what the Bible says.
I've been a clenched fist rebel. Where can I flee? I dare to live
this way before this great and mighty God. What shall I do to
be saved? See? That's how the law works in your
children, in my children, you Sunday school teachers. May God
give you wisdom as you pray how to apply the law to the conscience
of those youngsters so that they'll have a biblical sense of sin.
Well, I don't want to enlarge this anymore, but I hope I've
given you sufficient biblical data to answer the question,
is the contemporary gospel, the biblical gospel, And in the time
that remains tonight, let me just give one more point. How
I ever got all five of these in one message, I don't know. But here's the third, and I want
you to listen carefully. We have visitors here tonight,
and I'm particularly in earnest that This that may be, as I mentioned
earlier, not unfamiliar ground to some of our own people, may
be less familiar to you, and so I trust you'll listen carefully,
all of you, as I ask the third question and then give you some
biblical material with which to answer. Is the contemporary
gospel, the biblical gospel, if it fails to sound a clear
note of repentance, I have a series of messages on
the subject of repentance. I've never preached here at the
church. In fact, it's frustrating. I go out in meetings and I figure,
well, you know, this will be a little bit of relaxing from
preparing new messages. I'll ask the Lord to lay in my
heart something I've preached back in Caldwell and just pray
over it and have a little less pressure. And then I end up preparing
a whole new series to preach out there. And then I come back
thinking, well, boy, the pressure will be off me. I can give that
series there and the Lord won't let me do it. a stack of messages
that I've preached elsewhere that I haven't preached here,
and a bigger stack that I've preached here that I haven't
preached elsewhere. And I have a series on the subject of repentance
that I want to preach sometime, but now would not be the opportune
time. But we've sought to sound this
note of repentance, and it has come to many of you, as you remember,
almost like a new gospel. Why? The gospel of contemporary
evangelicalism doesn't sound this biblical note of repentance.
If it says anything, it says, all you need do if you admit
you're a sinner is believe Jesus died on the cross and accept
him as your personal savior or commit yourself to him or terms
of that nature. Now my question is, is that the
biblical gospel if it is devoid not only of a little trilly note
once in a while way out on the end of the keyboard on repentance,
But if it's devoid of a note, it's right smack dead center
in the main chord. That's my question. Now, to help
you to answer that, let me give you three passages of scripture,
and then we'll be done. Luke chapter 24, beginning with
verse 45. Our Lord is preparing his disciples
for the ministry they are to have after his return to the
Father. And we read in the 45th verse
that then he, Jesus, opened their understanding that they might
understand the scripture. That's the only way anyone will
ever understand. That's the most humbling thing for a preacher.
He studies, he prays, he tries to be clear, he tries to illustrate. He tries to feel his audience,
and if he feels he's losing them, he tries to brighten them up
maybe with a little humor, with another illustration, tries to
capture their minds. He labors to communicate simply
and clearly. He gives his life to it. Gives
his blood to it. He's willing to die if necessary
in doing it. And he counts that a joy. God
bearing me witness, that's my testimony. If I have to die suddenly,
I want to die preaching. I want to die preaching. No better
way I'd love to go. and right out of the body into
the presence of the Lord while declaring His truth. But you
know, it's the most humbling thing to realize, though you
study to be simple, though you throw your heart and soul into
it, though you try to follow and feel your audience and catch
them with a little humor here and catch them with an illustration
here, if the Lord Jesus is not pleased to pull back the veil,
you might as well be talking in Chinese. They won't understand. They may be sitting back and
be impressed with your zeal, Or they may scratch their head
and say, what in the world is he getting all worked up about?
Or they may go away wondering if you've got all your senses.
There may be all kinds of reactions, but one thing there will not
be, there will be no understanding unless the Lord opens the understanding. But blessed be God, He's pleased
to do that. and he did it here and he opened
their understanding to understand the scriptures and he said in
essence and they understood this here's the core of the scriptural
message of salvation verse 46 and he said unto them thus it
is written and thus it behold Christ old English word for necessary
thus it is written thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer
and You women, remember this morning, you've got to pay attention
to grammar, word order, and as a conjunction. It's joining some
thoughts here. It behooved Christ to suffer,
and to rise from the dead for third day, and that repentance
and remission of sin should be preached in his name among all
the nations beginning at Jerusalem, and ye are witnesses of these
things. What things are they to bear
witness to? Three great areas of truth. First of all, the truth
that clusters around the cross. It behooved Christ to suffer. What does it mean that we as
a church, if we as a church, are to be a gospel-preaching,
teaching, evangelizing church? We must continually bear witness
to the truths that cluster around the cross. We must tell men the
necessity of the sufferings of Christ. That means teaching them
about God, and about man, about sin, about the justice of God,
the wrath of God, and the infinite grace of God, that He would send
His Son to die, the just for the unjust, that He might bring
us to God, as the scripture says. We must continually reiterate
all of those truths that cluster around the cross. The necessity
of the sufferings of Christ, the nature of the sufferings
of Christ, the benefits that flow from His sufferings, And
oh, beloved, the minute our hearts grow cold to those truths, we're
on the way out. When we cease to thrill at the
truths that cluster around the cross, when we can no longer
say with pause, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross. of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's
the first great area of truth. Second great area of truth clusters
around this open tomb and to rise from the dead the third
day. We must declare to men, we must
receive and believe and appropriate for ourselves and then declare
to men the fact of the resurrection. There's an open tomb somewhere
in Palestine. I don't know if it's the one
they take you on the tours. I got a sneaking suspicion. A
lot of that may be a money-making gimmick. And if I thought that
walking under a gnarled olive tree where Jesus supposedly prayed
would make me a better man of God, I think I might sell my
car, my wife, and my kids and get a plane ticket and go. No,
you're not going to love Christ more sitting under a gnarled
olive tree. The disciples fell asleep right under the right
tree. Didn't do much for them, and
it won't do anything for you either. So save your pennies
for something far more worthwhile than a trip to the Holy Land
if you think it's going to make you more spiritual. Now, if you're
going for other reasons, we've got one or two of our number
who are going, and you go with my blessing and the blessing
of the Church, but don't go thinking that's going to make you more
spiritual. No, it won't do it. Won't do it. But somewhere over
there, there's a slab of stone, if it's still around, that once
held the lifeless, blue, dead body of Jesus Christ. And then
he's gone. Come out! That word had declared
him, and the fact of his resurrection, the implications of his resurrection.
He lives! For what purpose? Why, he lives
now to make good all that he purchased then! Do we need a
Christ on the cross to save us? Yes, but we need a Christ upon
the throne to save us. And so we declare to men, He
lives. He lives, Christ Jesus lives today. He lives to save,
to grant repentance, remission of sin, to transform life. We're
to proclaim that. But now, what are we to proclaim
after we've proclaimed the truths that cluster around the cross,
around the open tomb? What are we to tell people? Nod
your head to those facts and you'll get remission of sin?
No. Notice the coordinating conjunction, verse 47, and In the light of
His cross and His tomb, repentance unto remission of sin should
be preached in His name among all the nations beginning at
Jerusalem. They are witness to this fact,
that men seeing themselves in need of the work of His cross
and the benefits of His open tomb, will stack arms and fall
down in repentance and in faith and in praise to the Lord Jesus.
Don't you dare tell them if they simply nod to the fact that the
cross and the tomb all is well. Don't tell them simply embracing
those facts and making some kind of a decision or profession with
reference to the facts is all that God requires. No. The God
who made us and sent his son to die for us, and raised him
from the dead on behalf of sinners, is the God who says to people,
now turn from that state of rebellion that necessitated the death of
my son, turn from that sin which opened up his wounds, and in
repentance, which is unto life, fall down before him and plead
his mercy. Let me ask you a very simple
question. In the light of this passage, which is so clear, so
simple, the outline of it very, very structured so we all can
see it, am I authorized to preach a gospel that is silent about
the cross? What would you think of me if
you heard me and some other preachers pleading with God that the Holy
Ghost would bless with power the preaching of a gospel that
was cross-led? What would you think of such
praying? You'd think it was presumption, wouldn't you? You're praying
for the Holy Ghost to bless a gospel that Christ never authorized.
What would you think if you heard a group of preachers praying,
Oh God, bless the preaching of the gospel! But it was devoid
of the message of the open tomb. You'd say that's presumption.
Alright, but it's no less presumption. to pray for God's blessing upon
a gospel that is true to the cross and to the tomb, but is
silent about the nature and fruits and necessity of true biblical
repentance. And why has most of the preaching
of our generation been marked by the lack of Holy Ghost unction? By that grip of God? I'll tell
you why. The Holy Spirit of truth cannot
come upon a gospel that is a hat For a half-truth presented as
a whole truth is a whole untruth. One of the shocking revelations
to me, and I still reel and stagger from it every time I'm reminded
of it inwardly, is apparently, beloved, we have lived in a day
when preaching anointed of the Holy Ghost that brought men to
realize when they heard preachers, God is here! God is speaking! They saw beyond the instrument!
They heard something more than the voice of the preacher! This
has been well nigh unknown to our generation. And one of the
reasons is the Holy Spirit of Truth will not endue with power
a message which He's never authorized. Do we want the gospel to be powerful
through our witness in our community to our children, to our loved
ones, and whatever other means God will open to us? Then it
must not only be a gospel of the cross and of the tomb, but
a gospel of repentance. So I ask the question, is the
contemporary gospel the biblical gospel when it doesn't sound
a clear note of repentance? When it doesn't tell men, unless
they turn as well as trust, they will perish. But if they do not
turn from the sin as dear as the right hand and the right
eye, that they shall burn according to the words of Christ. To other
scriptures, Acts chapter 20 and verse 21. And I hope every one
of you will be familiar with these scriptures. When I was preaching on the subject
of repentance at the Biola Seminary last week, I had a young Indian student from,
where are the Indians tonight? We don't have any of our Indians
here with us tonight, from Kerala, knows my good friend Chandrapilla.
And he said that he was in a local church with a man with a couple
of degrees, a good evangelical church. And he asked him something
along these lines. How come I don't hear anything
about repentance? And he looked at him and said, You a Jew? He
said, No, I'm an Indian. He said, Repentance is for the
Jew. The only message to the Gentiles is belief. Is that so? Well, let's see how Paul thought
about it. Look, Acts chapter 20 and verse 20 and 21. I kept back nothing that was
profitable unto you." Oh, to be able to say that. He didn't
say, I kept back nothing of what you wanted. He said, I kept
back nothing that was profitable. What determined the content of
Paul's preaching is not what people wanted, but what they
needed. Oh, for grace to be that faithful.
But I've showed you publicly, taught you publicly, and from
house to house testifying. Here's my message, both to the
Jews and also to the Greeks. They're the same kind of sinners,
lost and under the same condemnation. They need the same Savior, and
they'll get it in the same way. Testifying both to the Jews and
to the Greeks, two great areas of truth, repentance toward God,
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And what do those two
great notes of truth comprise? Listen, verse 24, But none of
these things move me, neither count I my life dear to myself,
that I might finish my course with joy in the ministry which
I received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the
grace of God. How do you testify of the grace
of God? Tell people that in their sins,
wedded to their lusts, walking in a course of rebellion, if
they will but nod their head to the fact that Jesus died,
all is well, No, not according to Paul. He said to testify the
gospel of the grace of God is to proclaim God Proclaim Christ
proclaim the mercy of God in Christ, but then tell men that
they must stack arms There must be repentance toward God, a turning
from the disposition of sin, of rebellion, of pride, of self-will,
of self-glory, of self-righteousness. And there must be faith toward
our Lord Jesus Christ, not accepting Jesus as personal Savior, not
simply believing in the fact of the incarnation or the crucifixion,
But that whole soul, commitment to the whole Christ, faith toward
our Lord Jesus Christ, he said, that's the gospel of the grace
of God. And a gospel that doesn't sound
that note of repentance is not a gospel of the grace of God,
it's a gospel of life. It's a gospel that encourages
men to believe they can stick a pardon in their pocket and
go tripping on their way to heaven doing as they please. Whereas
the gospel of grace is a gospel that freely confers pardon upon
the sinner, subdues the sinner, and makes him a servant of Jesus
Christ. And that's grace. The law could never do it. All
the law can do is show me my vileness and my wretchedness,
and show me that seething cauldron of rebellion against God. But
when the grace of God is revealed, It brings me to bow in subjection
to the Lord Jesus as my Sovereign and as my Savior. Last verse,
Acts 26 and verse 20. Here the Apostle Paul is reviewing
his ministry of some three and a half years before the Ephesians. And he says, I'm sorry, this
was the Acts 20 passage, Acts 26 is before King Agrippa. And
he says in this portion, verse 19, whereupon old King Agrippa,
I was not disobedient of the heavenly vision, but showed first
unto them of Damascus and at Jerusalem and throughout all
the coast of Judea and then to the Gentiles. This is what I
preached, that they should repent and turn to God and through works
meet for, that is, answering to, consistent with repentance. And then verse 21, I think, has
more than a literary connection. For these causes the Jews caught
me in the temple and went about to kill me. You see, when a man
preaches, it's not enough to have a notion about Christ in
a head full of facts, but that there must be a plowing up of
the heart, the turning from sin, to use the definition of the
shorter catechism, That repentance unto life, out of which a sinner,
seeing himself as a sinner, turns with full purpose of and endeavor
after a new obedience. He'll stir up the venom in the
hearts of men, as the Apostle Paul did, and the Jews sought
to kill him. Why? Because he refused to deceive
them into thinking that religious privilege and religious knowledge
were all that were necessary. He said there must be vital experience
in the context of repentance. See, that's what he insists. And so I ask the question tonight,
is the contemporary gospel, the biblical gospel, when it fails
to sound this clear note of repentance that Paul sounds, I'll leave
you to answer that question. The two other questions I would
have asked if I'd had time, we'll have to leave for another time.
But I hope that this study today has sharpened your understanding
of the biblical doctrine. You've seen the line on the wall
in a new way. And that you'll evaluate everything
by that line on the wall. Bring everything to that line
on the wall. And what does this mean to us
practically now? It means that as a church, By the grace of
God, we must stand together for the full-orbed biblical gospel
and be willing to pay any price to bear witness to that gospel
in our generation for Jesus. For Paul said in Galatians chapter
1, the curse of God is upon those who bring any others up. It means
that we who are put in places of leadership must jealously
guard each one who comes to a place of teaching responsibility in
the church, everyone who comes into this pulpit to preach, everyone
whom we will stand behind and support in the cause of missions
at home and abroad. It means, beloved, we've got
to take seriously this gospel and refuse to be involved with
our efforts, our money, and our time with anything less than
the biblical gospel, this gospel. That's what it means. It means
that when we give out tracts, we ought to seek to make sure
that they're tracts that have the biblical gospel. When we
pray and labor in the cause of witness, we must seek to give
the true product, communicate the biblical message. I hope
that our study today has helped you in some measure to answer
more clearly this question. Is the contemporary gospel the
biblical gospel? If it fails to build on the sound
doctrine of God, if it fails to make proper use of the law
of God, if it fails to sound a clarion call to repentance,
I think I know what some of you may be saying. You say, Pastor,
it looks like we've misproposed, doesn't it? In our day, they
sure have. That's why we're in the mass
grave. It's just as foundational as this matter of what is the
gospel. What is the gospel? And where liberalism has filled
churches with a bloodless, tombless gospel, no cross, no open tomb,
we filled our churches with people that are strangers to the gospel.
And they're just as deceived. I think it's even worse deception.
Even worse. May God grant that our hearts
may be so stirred that we shall determine anew by the grace of
God that all our energies, our reputation, and everything else
are going to be laid on the line. We're going to go for broke.
May God help us to go for broke that this generation will hear
the biblical gospel. And that we might see just one
day of what Whitefield saw for years, when that gospel, under
the power of the Holy Ghost, swept multitude into the kingdom
of God. To this end, let us leave. Let us pray.