Our text is found in Galatians
chapter five, if you would like to turn there. Galatians chapter five. Galatians had accused Paul. of circumcising Timothy. I don't
know if I've told you this story or not, but Timothy had a Greek
father and a Jewish mother and he was not circumcised the eighth
day as it was per the custom of Israel. And because of that,
some of the Jewish believers would not hear him. And so Paul
said, well, better to take the offense out so that they'll hear
him than for the offense to continue to remain. So Paul had Timothy
circumcised. The Galatians were saying, well,
we're doing the same thing you're doing. You're preaching circumcision,
just like we're preaching it. But that's not true, is it? Paul
didn't do that as any part of Timothy's righteousness or the
need to establish a righteousness or evidence of righteousness.
He did it to simply remove an offense, simply remove an offense. That's where we're at here in
our text. Also, the removal of that offense,
it didn't work. It didn't do any good. I mean, it didn't really
change a whole lot and Paul suffered for it. Paul obviously had the
whole book of Galatians that he had to write and it's for
our good and Lord's glory. But because of him doing that,
we ended up seeing some of the criticisms, some of the slander
and things that he went under. He brought it upon himself by
doing that with Timothy. Now here in our text, he's clarifying
that if he was preaching circumcision, then the offense of the cross
has ceased. If I preach anything other than
Christ Jesus and him crucified as all the hope of my righteousness,
all the hope of my salvation, if I preach anything in addition
to that, then the offense of the gospel, the offense of the
cross has ceased. That's what Paul's saying here.
Let's read this. Galatians 5, 10 through 12. I have confidence
in you through the Lord that you will be none otherwise minded,
but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever
he be. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I
yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross
ceased. The offense of the cross ceased.
I would, they were even cut off, which trouble you, if I preach
circumcision, the offense of the cross has ceased, why? Because you've given man something
they can do in order to please God. You've given man something
that they can do in order to establish a righteousness, in
order to be saved, in order to show that they had been saved,
in order to have an outward evidence of something that can only be
seen by faith on the inward parts. He suffers persecution because
he's going around preaching the Gospel telling men that you have
no hope of saving yourself. It has to be of the Lord and
all by grace. And they hated him for it. And
they persecuted him for it. They put him in jail. They beat
him, left him for dead one time. Did you know that? Literally
left him for, he was called to the third heaven at that time,
scripture says, and heard things that it's not lawful for men
to other. The Lord gave him a glorious account of what glory is going
to sound like whenever he died. And yet the Lord sent him back
because he wasn't done with him yet. So we see his persecution
was not a result of him preaching works, but it was preaching grace.
That's where the offense of the gospel lies, in that it's all
by the grace of God. Salvation is of the Lord, freely
by his grace. The Galatians impostors are saying
to Paul, will you preach circumcision also? And this is what people
might say about us. Did you know that? People will
try to find something to latch onto that we do, in order to
say, okay, well, that's what they're, they have to do this,
or they have to do this in order to be saved, or in order to prove
their salvation. And what is the only two ordinances
that we have, that we observe? Lord's table and baptism. Now, people may come in and say,
well, you guys are preaching the same thing we're preaching.
We just say, you know, we just say, well, we're saved, but then
we have to do this. Under no circumstances is the Lord's table
or baptism a work. It's a confession, sure. It's
a God-honoring confession, but it's not a work. It's not a work. They believe that we get baptized, it's a work,
as part or evidence for our salvation. That's not true. Why are we baptized? Well, because number one, God
ordained it. Number two, God commands it.
And if you actually have heard the gospel, the Lord's going
to give you a desire to be baptized. He will do that. It's just how
it works. Now, why do we get baptized? That's not what this
message is. This is the offense of the cross. But it's also important
because the ordinances that we observe, we could be accused,
Lord forbid it, people would say, oh, well you're preaching
works because you talked about baptism, or you're preaching
works because you talked about the Lord's Table. And I want to be as clear
as I can on the two ordinances this morning and then talk about
what the offense of the cross and how that ties together. We
observe baptism, the Lord's table, for the simple fact that the
Lord ordained it. He said, do this in remembrance
of me. Told the disciples, go into all the world baptizing
every creature in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. God said that. Go do that. Go do that. Why? Why do that? To confess
before men and God what God has already done. It's not part of
salvation. It doesn't change your salvation.
It doesn't reveal salvation. It is your confession. My thoughts
as I was studying this was marriage. Why did you get married? Why
did you get married? Because you loved each other,
I hope. I mean, it might not have been the case. There's a
range of marriages, but I hope it was love. In America, I guess
there's still a range of marriages, I hope you loved each other.
That's why me and Bobby got married. We loved each other. Now, why
did I want to get married though? Marriage is ordained of God. It's ordained of God. God said,
man shall leave his father and mother, shall cleave unto his
wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. It's very simple.
But why be married? Why have an affiliate? Why have
a minister perform a wedding? Why have witnesses? Why is it
necessary to have witnesses? Because you're confessing your
love for your spouse before God and before men. You're saying,
I love this, in my case, woman. And the woman would say, I love
this man. And you take vows. And your vows
are, till death do us part. Baptism, You're not taking vows,
but you're confessing what God has already done on the inside.
We didn't get married to fall in love. Some people might, it
might work that way for some people, but normally in this
Western culture, you get married because you are in love and you
want to confess that love. You don't ever take the Lord's
table. for righteousness. You take the
Lord's table because you're confessing His righteousness. That's why
we take the Lord's table. You don't get baptized in order
to become a believer. You get baptized because you
believe that Christ is all and you want to confess that outwardly.
These are the ordinances that the Lord gave us. We didn't get
married to fall in love. We wanted to confess before God
and before men. It's the same thing in baptism. On the other hand, what about
those that say they believe, but they don't want to get baptized?
Well, what about those that say they love each other, but they
don't want to get married? That's all, there's a lot of those in it. A lot of
people, we used, I don't know if this is still a popular word
or not, we called it shacking up. Is that still a term everybody
uses? Okay, I'm getting some nods.
Why do people do that? Well, because they don't want
to confess their love for one another publicly. That's the
only conclusion you can come to. They don't want to commit
to the vows. They don't want to commit to
that responsibility, to that forsaking all other portion.
Well, what if it doesn't work out and there's a lot of fear?
And society pushes that. But if you love, then you're going to
want to confess that love. And we do that before the Lord
in baptism. If anybody wants to be baptized
for any other reason other than confessing that your only hope
of salvation is that when He lived, you lived in Him perfectly. And when He died, you died in
Him perfectly. And when He was resurrected,
your hope is that you were resurrected in Him perfectly. If that is
your confession, that's a good confession. That's why, that's
a good reason to be baptized. But if it's not your confession,
that Christ is not all in salvation, then you don't meet the qualifications
for baptism or the Lord's table. It's that simple. You'd be taking
the table unworthily. This brings us back to our title,
the offense of the cross. If your confession is the finished
work of Christ, that you believe he is all in salvation and that
he successfully redeemed his people, you're going to love
the offense of the cross. You're going to want to confess
that, that it's your only hope, that it's your only hope, the
offense of the cross. But what is the offense of the cross?
That's the question this morning, and that's where we have arrived
to now. So I talked about the ordinances
that we observe and how it's possible for men to mistake while
we do what we do here, and I've cleared that up as best I can.
But I want us to now look at the offense of the gospel, which
is the title of the message. Because if the gospel offends
you, you'll never want to confess Christ because you're not a believer.
But to the believer, the Lord's elect, the offense of the gospel
is our only, only, only hope. Our only hope. Usually brethren,
you know, this is true. When I ask a question, I say,
what is the offense of the gospel? I'll say, well, let me tell you
what it's not first. I'm not doing that today by the
Lord's leadership. I want to get straight to the
point as quick as I can, and I want to camp there if the Lord would
be our teacher for the next, well, however long the Lord enables
me to speak. I just want to go straight to
the point and stay on that point, and I hope for the next time,
for the remainder of our time together, that the Lord would
show us what the offense of the gospel is, and that we will rejoice. We will rejoice in the offense,
because it's offensive to the flesh, but to the new man, it's
life. It's life eternal. The offense of the gospel is
that God is the one that determines who is saved. And God determines
the ones who are not saved. All he has to do for a person
to not be saved is to leave them to themselves. That's offensive. That's offensive to the flesh.
God must determine to save. God alone is how this was accomplished. You and I are powerless. powerless
when it comes to spiritual things, powerless to choose because we're
bound by our nature of this flesh, powerless to come to Him because
we're dead in trespasses and in sin. If God does not save
us, we will not be saved. And we can't change anything
about it. Salvation's of the Lord. That is one of the offenses
of the gospel. The offense of the gospel secondly
is, and I didn't put numbers beside these, I have no idea
how many they are, but another offense of the gospel that's
very clear is that we don't have the will, as I said earlier,
just a moment ago, nor the ability. That was what I just said. Our
will is bound to our nature, therefore we cannot come to God.
Christ even said, you will not come to me that you might have
eternal life, but we don't have the ability either because we're dead. We're
dead, a dead man can't do anything. You can give a dead man a choice
all you want to, but he's not gonna hear and he's not gonna
respond. That's offensive to the flesh. The offense of the
gospel is that God doesn't love everybody. God doesn't love everybody. He loves his chosen people because
they're in Christ. God loves his son. He loves his son. And I must
be found in him to have a righteousness or I have no righteousness. The
offense of the gospel is that Jesus didn't die for everyone.
He didn't die for everyone. He didn't try to accomplish something.
He accomplished something. He accomplished salvation. It's
offensive to hear people preach the truth that says the Lord
does not love everyone. But what's amazing is, is He
chose to love creatures of dust. We think ourselves as too high
most of the time, because we're human beings around other human
beings, but we cannot see past that point. We can't see the
spiritual until the Lord gives us faith to believe it. But around
us, we're just a bunch of walking corpses. We're just a bunch of
creatures of dust. And yet the Lord chose in His
sovereignty and His grace to become a creature of dust to
save creatures of dust. Do we see that? Not only that,
but to make them the righteousness of God in Christ by his own will
and purpose. This was his choice. That's offensive
to the flesh because the flesh says, you mean I don't have a
choice? You mean I don't have any power? No, you're dust. We're
dust. The offense of the cross is that
Christ didn't shed his blood in order for you to accept it
or reject it. He shed his blood to give it
on the altar of God, and the Father accepted it, and it washed
all the sins away of the Lord's people. That's what the blood
accomplished, salvation for the Lord's elect. Not that it was
shed for everyone. It was shed for the remission
of sins of many, many. He offered unto his Father, and
the Father was satisfied. The offense of the cross is that
God chose some unto salvation and others he passed by. He told
Moses, he said, I am the Lord, that is my name. I will have
mercy on whom I will have mercy and whom I will, I will harden.
How does he harden someone? He leaves them to themselves,
leaves them to their own devices. But here's the good news. He
said, I will. have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Salvation
is the choice of the Lord alone. Defense of the cross is not that
he hated Jacob, but that he hated Esau. Everybody thinks God loves
everybody. No, he doesn't. Jacob have I
loved, Esau have I hated. He hates all workers of iniquity.
The Lord loves with a perfect love and he hates with a perfect
hatred, perfect hatred. This is offensive to the flesh.
This is the offense of the gospel, the offense of the cross. Another offense of the cross
that people get twisted a lot, they say, well, God loves the
sinner, but he hates the sin. No, he doesn't. God hates the
sinner. God has never seen his people
as sinners. Did you know that? He's always
seen them in Christ as perfectly righteous. We see ourself as
sinners. And the Lord said, I came to
seek and to save that which is lost. I came not to call the
righteous but sinners to repentance. But he's always seen his people
in Christ Jesus. He doesn't love the sinner and
hate the sin. Because that's all we are, brethren,
is sin. From the top of our head to the
bottom of our feet. Sin is not what we do. Sin is what we are. Men preach all the time that
you need to clean up your life and get rid of the sin in your
life. You can't. If you're breathing, you're sinning because it's what
we are. It's what we are. That's offensive to the flesh
because if all I can do is sin, I cannot do anything that would
please God. That's exactly right. They that are in the flesh cannot
please God. That's the offense of the cross. The offense of the cross. Also
is this, the cross reveals how God deals with sin, how God deals
with sin without, with extreme prejudice, extreme prejudice,
with extreme fury and wrath, no mercy, no grace. He that spared not his own son,
but gave him up freely for us, He didn't, he's not a respecter
of person. When he saw sin upon his son, what did he do? Was
he easy upon him because he loves his son? Or did he pour his,
he poured the fuel, full fury and wrath of God upon his darling
son. If you and I are found with one
sin, we are guilty of all. And therefore that will be the
fury that we must endure through eternity because we are tainted
creatures. That's offensive to the flesh.
That's offensive. No wonder the writer said, how
shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at
first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us
by them that heard him. The offense of the cross is that
God doesn't want your faith. Your faith has nothing to do
with your salvation. Not a bit. It is the faith of
God given freely by His grace that determines whether you have
faith to believe in Jesus Christ or not. Faith is not the cause
of salvation. Faith is the result of salvation. Faith is not the cause of righteousness. Faith is the result of righteousness
obtained by the Lord Jesus Christ given freely by His grace to
his people. Scripture tells us clearly, for
by grace are you saved through faith, and it's not of you, not
of yourself, or we would boast about it. We would say, well,
you've heard people say this. I decided 47 years ago to put
my faith in Jesus Christ. You ever heard that before? I
have, a bunch. No, you didn't. God didn't want
your faith. You have to have the faith of
Christ if we're going to please God. It has to be freely given
by grace. That's offensive to the flesh. Fence of the cross is that it
reveals there's none good, no not one. Not that we do a little
bit of good and a little bit of bad, and no one's gonna put
it on a scale and see what weighs out and maybe we'll be all right. There's none good at all but
God. There's none good. We are born
in sin. We are shapen into iniquity.
And furthermore, we cannot do any one thing, regardless of
what it is, to change our sin, to get rid of one sin, to make
it go away. All we do is just add to it by trying to change
it. It's called iniquity. Only God being just and the justifier
of his people can do that. Only God is the one that actually
successfully put away sin. The offense of the cross is not
that God so loved the world as men foolishly make general love
out of it. When God said in John 3, 16,
for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting
life. That's a true statement. But he was speaking to Nicodemus
because Nicodemus was a Jew. And furthermore, he was a Pharisee.
He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was very proud of himself
and had a righteousness of being a Jew. And he said, Nicodemus,
for God so loved the world, It's not by creed. It's not by race. It's not by bloodline. It's not
what you know. It's not what you don't know.
God loved the world. There's the difference in salvation.
That's the difference in salvation. God so loved that he gave. So the offense is that God chose
to love some, but he didn't choose to love others. That offends
men. We, by nature, see ourself as
lovable. We see ourself. Well, what's
wrong with me? Why am I so bad? When the gospel comes to you
and the gospel comes to me, we loathe ourself. We say, why would
the Lord save a creature like me? And we don't stay there too
long because that's not faith. We're reminded that it's by grace
alone. That's why it's not you. It's
not your race. It's not your age. It's not your
intelligence. It's not, hey, this, this is
encouraging to me. It's not our lack of intelligence because
I'd be in trouble. It's by grace alone. God chose
to have mercy on whom he chose to have mercy. God chose to do
that. God chose to love. God didn't choose to love you
or I because of anything in us. If we can look at one thing inside
of us and say, okay, that's the reason the Lord Jesus Christ
died for me right there, then we have a righteousness that
is outside of Christ. But if you can look at yourself
and see that you're nothing but putrefied sores from the top
of your head to the bottom of your feet, and your only hope
is the righteousness that's found in Christ, the Lord's given you
faith to believe in him. The Lord's given you faith to
believe in him. God's love is very, men say this
all the time. God has unconditional love. That
is a lie. God's love is very, very, very
conditional. It's conditioned entirely upon
the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you are not
in Christ, God hates you. God hates me. We have to be found
in Christ, not having our own righteousness, which is of the
law, but by the righteousness, which is by the faith of the
Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. That's our hope.
It's his faith. It's his faith bestowed. God's love is very conditional,
only found in his Son. I've got to be found in Christ. That's the offense of the cross.
Next offense of the cross is that salvation is all of grace,
meaning, and we don't delve into this a whole lot, but what does
it mean to be all of grace? Well, we talked about this earlier
on today in Galatians. I can say it this way. If it's
something that you can see with your eyes, if it's something
that you can touch with your hands, if it's something that
you can do physically, whether it's a movement, whether it's
a thought, it's something that you produce. then it's a work
if you're looking at it as righteousness, as any part of your righteousness.
And that means it's not of grace. Grace is literally what you did
not deserve. And if you do something, that
means you've earned it. That means you've merited it.
But the Lord's saying, no, if you've earned it and you've merited
it, then it's of works and not of grace. So if you're doing
something to earn salvation, or to see evidence of salvation.
The Lord says, no, salvation is all by the grace of God. Not any work I can do, not a
prayer to pray, not a ceremony, not an altar I came to, but by
the finished work of Christ alone. If you hear a man say, you have
to do this to be saved, that's a lie. Christ successfully saved
his people from their sin on the cross of Calvary once and
for all. And when he had by himself purged our sin, he sat down at
the right hand of God. Furthermore, a prayer that we
pray doesn't do us any good because we're born in sin and shaped
into iniquity unless the Lord's made us born again, which having
the righteousness of Christ there, the Lord takes our prayer and
washes it in his blood and present it to the father is perfect.
But prior to that happening, the only hope that we had for
salvation is the intercessory prayer of Christ to his father.
Not our prayer. It's that he prayed for me. Peter
was talking to the Lord, and the Lord said to them, Peter
said, Lord, I'll go with you all the way even to death. I'm
gonna die with you. I'm gonna die with you. They're gonna come
after you. I'm going down with you. The Lord said, get behind me,
Satan. That's what he told him. Because
that thought is confidence in the flesh. Do we see that? For
Satan hath desire to sift thee as wheat. But he tells him this,
but I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith fail not. If the Lord Jesus Christ didn't
pray for us when he prayed to his father in John 17, we have
no hope of eternal life. It's his intercessory prayer
that made the difference for his people. It's not a prayer
that we pray. It's not a ceremony that we do,
but it was the ceremony that took place. And that's what that
was on Calvary. That was a ceremony. That was
a ceremonial sacrifice of the Old Testament when the Lamb of
God was slain before the world, when His blood was shed for the
remission of sin for His chosen people. That was a ceremony.
That's the only ceremony that God's looking to is that one,
the ordained ceremony of the sacrifice of the Son of God. And it's not about an altar that
I came to, it's the altar of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is
the mercy seat, but he placed that blood upon that altar of
God, and God was well pleased to forgive the sin of his people
forever and ever. Matter of fact, they're not just
forgiven, they're gone. They're gone, that's what the
blood accomplished. That's what the blood accomplished. Brethren, you know this is true,
what I'm about to say. In the flesh. The offense of the gospel
is the most monstrous, ugly, egregious, unfair thing that
the flesh has ever heard. That's unfair. That's unfair. That's unfair. You know how many
times I've heard that in my life? You know what's unfair? Not that
we deserve hell, but that we get the righteousness of God. That's the only reason I say
that that's fair is because Christ is the one that accomplished
it. But in and of ourself, examining ourself, that's unfair. I don't deserve that. That's
why it's called grace. That's why it's called grace.
That's why we rejoice in the grace of the Lord. What's unfair
is that God chose to choose me. Why me? Grace. It's the only reason.
It's the only reason God would choose you or God would choose
me or choose any sinner into salvation. It's all by his grace,
by his love, by his own purpose and will. Fence of the cross is unfair
to the flesh, but to our flesh, it's unfair as well, the flesh. But unto our new man, the Lord's
people, born again, oh, it's the best news. Whenever you hear,
for by grace are you saved through faith and the not of yourself,
don't you take a deep breath for a second, say, thank you,
Lord, that it's grace, that it's not of works, because if it was
of works, I couldn't be saved. There's no way. There's no way. The offense of the cross is to
them that perish foolishness, but to those who are made the
righteousness of God in Christ, it is everything. It is everything
that we cling to for our hope of eternal life. It's our only
hope of salvation. Yeah, it offends the flesh, but
it's manna. It's manna because of the subject,
the Lord Jesus Christ, his death, how he died according to the
scripture, his burial, how he was buried according to the scripture,
his resurrection, how he was raised again according to the
scripture. This is offensive to those who don't know the Lord,
but to us, who the Lord has given grace to believe, it's our only
hope. It's our only hope. When the
Lord had made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him. This is what we plead
as our hope of eternal life. It's only freely, the only way
we can receive it, we sung that song and I did that on purpose
because it talks about will his grace you receive today. The
only way we can receive his grace is freely by his grace. The only
way we can believe is freely by grace through fairly bestowed
faith. Everything about it is him. I'll
rejoice that everything required he provides. He has given us
the ability to love the offense of the gospel. So here's the
summary. I'll sum the whole message up in one sentence, if the Lord
be my helper. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of Christ. Can you say that? Can you say
that? Let's pray. Father, thank you. That you have taken the offense
of the gospel. And you have made it our only
hope. Calls us to believe. In Christ name. Amen.