God the Son agreed to come in
the flesh to ? Stood as my great surety ? ?
For my price he offered love ? ? To a piece of man of God
? ? God the spirit heav'nly God ? Bringing life and peace and grace
to the chosen Purchased race. He seeks the lost, heals the
lame, and He brings us to the Lamb. By His mighty sovereign
will, God's evil This poor sinner is secure for
God's sake ? It is sealed by God's own word
? ? By his spirit and his blood ? ? Blessed, holy, covenant God
? ? I am yours by ties of blood ? ? Ties of grace and ties of
love ? Please be seated. Good morning. I'm so very thankful for those
ties of grace and ties of love that hold us to our God above. If if our holding on to him was
what was required for the hope of our salvation, how often we
turn loose and yet he never turned loose of us. Let's open our Bibles together
to First Thessalonians, First Thessalonians chapter one. I've mentioned to you all that
there's a, church over in Clearwater that the Lord has revealed, I
believe, Christ and the gospel to their pastor. And he has been preaching to
the last several months a congregation of unbelievers and several of
our folks from that part of the state have joined him and are
trying to encourage him. His name is Billy Agaropoulos.
And he's asked me to come over and preach for them next weekend.
So Saturday night and twice on Sunday morning, I'll be over
there preaching for them. And he's very hopeful that the
Lord is going to raise up a church there. I told him, I said, one
of three things will happen. Either they're gonna run you
off, or they're gonna leave, or God's gonna save them. And
we hope for the last, but be prepared for any of those three
things, because one of those three things is gonna happen.
It's gonna happen. And so he knows that, and he's
good with that. Whatever the Lord does will be
right and good. And so, Lord enables you to pray
for them and pray for me. And Jeff and Hugo will be bringing
the messages here next Sunday morning. Ryan's father passed away Monday
night. Ryan, our hearts go out to you.
And he's meeting with the family today to make some arrangements.
So Ryan has two sisters and a stepmom that have lost their husband
and their father. So I want us to pray for them. Okay, let's pray together. Our
heavenly father, we thank you for those ties of
grace and ties of love. Lord, had you not united us to
yourself and you to us in the covenant of grace, Had you not
chosen us, had you not placed your everlasting love on us,
Lord, we would be hopelessly, hopelessly lost and undone and
hell bound. Lord, we're so very thankful.
Thankful for your grace. Thank you for the successful
work Our Savior, thank you for giving your son as a ransom to
satisfy your justice and to fulfill your righteousness that we might
be saved. Father, we pray that you'd be
pleased now to bless your word, bless our hearts, and send your
spirit and power, Lord, The words that we speak and what we hear
would not be in word only but would be in power and in the
Holy Ghost and that you would give much assurance to heart
as we find our hope and our rest in Christ. Lord, we pray for
Ryan and his sisters and stepmom and his family and pray, Lord,
that you would be pleased to minister mercy and grace in their
hearts. in this time of loss and grief. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. You have your Bibles open to
First Thessalonians chapter one, and we will begin reading in verse
five. For our gospel, and that is the
title of this message, our gospel. And clearly implied in that phrase,
our gospel, is that their gospel. There must be. If there is a
gospel that is ours, then there must be another gospel that is
theirs. And I so hope and trust that
the Lord will make our gospel the same gospel that the Apostle
Paul had, the same gospel that these believers in Thessalonica
had. And so he says, for our gospel
came not unto you in word only. We didn't just disseminate information
for you to glory in. No, we preach the gospel and
God was pleased to bless that with power. Not only in word
only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance. As you know, what manner of men
we were among you for your sake. and you became followers of us
and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with
joy of the Holy Ghost, so that you were examples to all that
believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the
word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also
in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad so that
we need not speak anything. For they themselves show of us
what manner of entering in we had unto you and how you turned
to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait
for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, even
Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. Gospel. That word is used by
a lot of people and it refers to a lot of different things.
What is the gospel? Well, the word gospel means glad
tidings. It means good news. And there's, I remember hearing
a brother say one time, he said, he said, I haven't heard any
bad news since I heard the good news. And there's so much truth
in that. Since the good news of the gospel
is the person and the word. of the Lord Jesus Christ in accomplishing
the salvation of his people. That's the good news. That's
good news to a sinner. And only to a sinner, only to
one who has no hope and no ability to stand before God on their
own merit would they be interested and needful of the gospel. Paul says, our gospel. The gospel tells us that everything
that God requires from us, the Lord Jesus Christ provided, everything. That he looks to his son for
all that his holy justice requires in satisfying the demands of
right of our sin, payment for our sin. He looks to his son
for all the righteousness that he demands, that we stand before
him spotless, without sin, holy and righteous in his sight. We
have all of that in the Lord Jesus Christ. Truly, he is all. And he's in all. He's in all
our salvation. The gospel says to sinners that
salvation is of the Lord. It's all of him. In the election,
it was all of him. He sovereignly chose, according
to his own will and purpose, a particular people in the covenant
of grace before the world ever began. He placed them in Christ. He loved them with an everlasting
love. The very first cause of our salvation
is all found in him and all found in Christ. This is good news
that God's not looking to me to put my stamp of approval on
what Christ did in order for him to be able to save me. that
he's not looking to me to offer to him something that's going
to balance out the scale of justice for my sin. He's not looking
to me to perform or produce an act of righteousness that would
make me accepted in his sight. If I'm a sinner, that's good
news. That's good news because I don't
have it. I can't provide it. I can't produce it. And so Paul
says, our gospel came unto you, not in word only. Now he doesn't
say that there weren't words spoken, the gospel must be spoken. When we call on men to believe
the Lord Jesus Christ, we tell them who he is and what he has
done. We don't just, We don't just
call a man to believe what they want, they must believe what
God has revealed. And so we speak in word but we
know that the words that we speak will fall on deaf ears if the
Holy Spirit doesn't bless it. And so Paul said, our gospel
came to you not in word only, but in power and in the Holy
Ghost. You wouldn't have believed. You
wouldn't have been saved. You wouldn't have been converted.
The eyes of your understanding wouldn't have been opened. You
wouldn't have been given faith. You wouldn't have had any understanding. You wouldn't have had any need
had it not been for the power of the Holy Spirit blessing God's
word to your heart. These words do not come just
to the natural ear and the natural mind, they must come to the heart.
And that can only be done by the Spirit of God. No eloquence of delivery, no
power persuasion can make that happen. Only the Spirit of God
can make that happen. I'm reminded when Ezekiel was
commanded by God to preach the gospel to that valley of dry
bones. And the scripture makes it clear
in Ezekiel chapter 16 that that valley of dry bones is the whole
house of Israel. The whole house of Israel who
raised their fist in rebellion against God and suffered a death,
a spiritual death, separation from God. And here we have in
this valley bones that are bleached dry by the sun. They lost their
war against God and the only hope that these bones have of
being made alive is that the word of the gospel be preached
to them. And so Ezekiel begins to preach and the bones begin
to take, they begin to rattle, they begin to move. And then
they begin to connect to one another, bone to bone, and sinew
begins to connect. And they start showing a semblance
of life as a result of the word of God being preached to them.
And if I can back up for just a moment, you remember what the
Lord said to Ezekiel, son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel looks out over this
valley of dry bones and he said, Lord, thou knowest. No, I don't
see any way for them to live, but if they're going to live,
you're going to be the one to have to make them live. And so
in the preaching of the gospel, of our gospel, these bones began
to come together. And the scripture says, and yet,
and yet there was no life in them. There was no life in them. And so the Lord told Ezekiel,
he said, prophesy to the wind. Call on the Spirit of God to
come and anoint the words that you've spoken with power. And when God did that, when the
wind blew, the Spirit of God came, those bones became alive. That's what Paul's saying here.
See, and our gospel came to you not in word only. but in power
and in the Holy Ghost with much assurance. Everything that God requires,
sinner, you have no hope of saving yourself. You have no hope of
producing something that's going to make you acceptable to God.
No hope within yourself. Here's the good news. Here's
the gospel. You know, as I was thinking about
good news, I was thinking about, you know, we have news that we
watch, and good news doesn't sell very well.
And so most of the news that we watch is bad news, isn't it? You know, that's what intrigues
the interest of men, bad news. Most of what men called the gospel
is not good news, not to a sinner. It's bad news. It's bad news. If God's requiring anything at
all from me, I'm going to mess it up. Now here's the good news, sinner.
You can't mess up the gospel. You can't mess it up. You can't
add anything to it, you can't take anything away from it. The
Lord Jesus Christ Himself is all and He's in all and He's
done everything that God requires in election, in revelation, In
the revelation of who God is and how it is that God saves
sinners and who we are in the sight of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ is all in that. In the volume of the book, it
is written of me. So this revelation that God's
given us of himself, it's not some sort of a religious rule
book for For living, it's a revelation of Christ. Christ himself is
our life. And so he's all in revelation.
He's all in redemption. Everything that God required
in order to redeem us, the Lord Jesus Christ did when he shed
his precious blood on Calvary's cross. This is the gospel. All we can do is speak the words.
God must add the power. He must add the Holy Ghost. He
must give assurance. You know, I remember having a
man tell me one time, you know, you need to speak peace to our
children's hearts. I can't speak peace to anyone's
heart. Heard someone say recently when
the preacher wanted to get rid of a big cross that was inside
this church, and one of the men said to the preacher, he said,
I get comfort when I look at that cross. The preacher said to him, he
said, you get comfort when you look at a piece of wood? That's
an idol. If that piece of wood is speaking
peace to your heart, that says a lot about you and about where
your peace is coming. Only God can speak peace to the
heart. We don't look to an idol. We don't look to me. Only God
can do that. Only the power of the Holy Ghost
can give assurance. The Lord Jesus Christ is everything
in regeneration. When he sends the Spirit of God
in power and makes us willing and causes us to believe, what
do we believe? We're believing on Christ. We're
believing who he is as the sovereign savior of sinners, of successful
savior of sinners. That's we're believing on Christ. He's everything in regeneration.
He's everything in sanctification. We don't contribute to our sanctification. We don't contribute to our holiness.
The Lord Jesus is, he's the gospel. His gospel is a person in glorification. He's gonna stand before God Almighty
and say, that's one of mine. We're gonna be found accepted
in the beloved and he's gonna present us faultless before the
throne of God. Paul said our gospel. Oh how
I want our gospel to be God's gospel. In another place Paul
calls it God's gospel. In another place he calls it
my gospel. I want God's gospel to be my gospel. I want God's
truth to be my truth. I want God's Christ to be my
Christ. And I want him to be yours. Turn with me to Galatians chapter
one. Galatians chapter one. As I mentioned already, The fact
that Paul identifies Christ as our gospel clearly implies that there is
their gospel, there's another gospel. And that's what the Lord
is telling us here in Galatians chapter 1 in verse 6 when Paul
says to the church at Galatia, I marvel that you are so soon
removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ
unto another gospel. Now, as most of you know, the
heresy at the Church of Galatia was progressive sanctification. That was the heresy. That these Judaizers came in
behind the Apostle Paul and they said to the believers in Galatia,
many of which would have been uneducated slaves, many of them
would have been Gentiles by nature, many of them would have been
unfamiliar with the scriptures. except for that which was told
to them. And so these Jews come in who
had the word of God and they said to these new believers,
the Christ that Paul preached to you is the Messiah. But Paul didn't tell you everything.
You have to. You have to do certain things,
you have to submit to the Old Testament laws of Israel, of
Judaism in order to progress in your salvation. And so these
young believers were tempted to think that maybe these Jews
knew something that they didn't know. And Paul writes to them after
he hears what's going on. And he says to them, I marvel
that you are so soon removed. that you are so soon removed
from Him that called you by His grace into another gospel. That's another gospel. You add
anything to the finished work and glorious person of the Lord
Jesus Christ for the hope of your salvation, that is another
gospel. That's not our gospel, that's
their gospel. That's their gospel and that's
not good news to a sinner. Now that may be good news to
a self-righteous man who's looking to something that he's doing
for the hope of his salvation and it might affirm him in his
salvation, it might give him false assurance because he's
looking to something that he's done. But to a sinner who knows
that he has nothing and can do nothing and he knows nothing
outside of Christ and his grace And that's not good news, that's
bad news. That's bad news. And look at verse seven, which
in fact is not another gospel. It's not another gospel, there's
only one gospel. But there be some that trouble
you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Their gospel perverts
our gospel. That's why we can't tolerate
their gospel. We can't find any common ground
with their gospel. Our gospel is exclusive. Our
gospel cannot find any place of compromise with their gospel.
It's a different gospel. It's a different God. And if
there's any truth to what they're saying, then I have no hope. You're robbing me of my hope.
You're robbing me of my salvation because my hope is completely
in Christ. And if you're saying that I have
to add something to what he's done. Then you're robbing me
of my hope. You're robbing me of my assurance. You see why it's so. Why it's
why we must be and why God is so intolerant. To their gospel. Paul said, our gospel did not
come to you in word only but in power and in the Holy Ghost
and in much assurance. You are sure, child of God, you
may waver in whether or not Christ died for you. I pray that when you hear the
gospel, the Lord will speak that peace to your heart. But if God
has shown you Christ, You are completely sure that
what he did was successful in saving all of God's people. We have times of doubts and question
whether or not we might be one of them, but we are certain.
We are certain. I brought this up before. You've
heard it. If you had asked Peter, after
he had denied the Lord, are you saved? Peter probably would have
said, he'd already said I go fishing, I'm going back to fishing,
I've ruined everything. There's no hope for me. What
I did was unconscionable, it was unforgivable, it was inexcusable,
it was evil. There's no way that I could be
a believer. Child of God, have you felt that
way? Sure you have. But if you had asked Peter at
that same time, Peter, do you believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the son of the living God, and that he actually made himself
an offering to his father and that he's satisfied to everything
that God Almighty requires for the salvation of all of God's
people? What do you think Peter would
have said? Oh, no doubt about it. I am sure. I'm sure of that. I'm sure of that. When the gospel
comes empowered in the Holy Ghost, the gospel brings much assurance. It brings an unquestionable assurance
about who Christ is and what he's done. And by God's grace and by his
spirit, he speaks assurance to our hearts. peace to our hearts. Look at verse 8 in Galatians
chapter 1, but though we, if we change the gospel that we
preach to you, if we adjust it or compromise it or add anything
to it or take anything away from it, If we or if an angel from
heaven comes down and tells you any other gospel than the one
in which we preach to you, let him be accursed. That word means to be cut off
from God for all eternity. Let him go to hell is what the
apostle Paul is saying. It's what God's saying. Change the gospel, that's the
end result of taking away or adding to the glorious person and accomplished
work of Christ. Our gospel is the only gospel. Paul said, I think it's in 2
Corinthians chapter 12, he said, No man speaking by the Spirit
of God calleth Jesus Christ accursed. No man speaking by the Spirit
of God calleth Jesus Christ accursed. Now, the word accursed means to be
cut off, as I just said, from God without any hope of redemption. It means to suffer the full wrath
of God's justice without any hope of redemption. That's what
it means to be accursed. To even suggest in any way that
the Lord Jesus Christ died for one person who ends up in hell
is to call Jesus Christ accursed. Do you see that? It means that
he suffered the full wrath of God's justice without the hope
of redemption for that one person. And yet the world says, the religious
world says, oh, Christ died for everybody and he loves everybody
and he wants everybody to be saved. And what they're doing
is they're calling Jesus Christ accursed. They're saying that
he suffered the wrath of God's justice without the hope of redemption. When the Lord Jesus Christ received
the full fury of God's wrath on Calvary's cross, he actually
successfully redeemed all for whom he died, every one of them.
He paid for every sin. Not a single one, not a single
one will be judged. God was satisfied. Do you see how their gospel robs
us of our hope? Do you see how their gospel robs
Christ of his glory? Do you see how their gospel accuses
him of being accursed? Now, if it's not the Spirit of
God that calls the Lord Jesus Christ accursed, we know where
that spirit comes from. There's only one other spirit. Verse nine, as we said before,
so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto
you than you have received, let him be accursed. Brethren, I know you've had your
friends and family members say to you when trying to share the
gospel with them, you think you're the only people that are saved? Let me give you a very simple
and clear answer to that. Absolutely not. We didn't, I
never said that. But I believe that there's only
one gospel that does save. There's only one gospel that
does save. No, I'm not saying I'm the only one saved or our
church is the only people saved. Well, that the people, the believers
that we know are the only ones that are saved. That's not what
we're saying at all. What we're saying is that there's only one
savior and there's only one gospel. And any message of salvation
that deviates from him is another gospel and unable to save. That's all we're saying. And
we're just saying what God says. Our gospel, our gospel came unto
you, not in word only, but in power and in the Holy Ghost and
in much assurance. How do I know if God has spoken
to me in power and the Holy Ghost and much assurance? Well, that's
a work of grace in the heart that only he can do. But I would suggest that your
unwillingness to compromise the gospel is a good indication of a work
of grace. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians
11. 2 Corinthians 11. We quote this verse often, but
I want you to see the verse following this verse. 2 Corinthians 11,
verse 3, but I fear lest by any means, and there are many
means that Satan will use to divert our attention away from
Christ through his subtlety. Tim and
I were talking, I'll just add this to what I want to say about
this passage. We were talking about the fall
this morning and how the scripture makes it clear that Eve was deceived
and yet when Adam took the forbidden fruit he did it with his eyes
wide open, he wasn't deceived. And we're not giving any virtue
to what Adam did He disobeyed God, he sinned, he rebelled against
God when he took that fruit and ate it. But as is true with all the scriptures,
do you see the beautiful picture of Christ and his church? The Lord Jesus Christ being the
bridegroom. When he went to the cross and
bore the sins of his people on Calvary's cross, he wasn't deceived. He did it with his eyes wide
open. When we came into this world,
we came into this world speaking lies from the womb and drinking
iniquity as if it was water. And we remain that way. We continue
to be deceived by Satan, don't we? We're very easily deceived, we're
foolish people who can be led astray very easily. But the Lord
Jesus Christ, he went to the cross with his eyes wide open
and he bore the full wrath of God's justice. I fear, lest by any means, as
the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtleties, so your mind
should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."
What is the simplicity that is in Christ? Christ is all and
He's in all. It is finished. All of my justification, all
of my sanctification, all of my righteousness, all of my redemption,
everything is in Christ. I can't add to Him. That's our
gospel. He is our gospel. And anything
else is their gospel. But look at verse four. For if
he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached,
or if you receive another spirit, which you have not received,
or another gospel, which you have not accepted, you might bear with him In other words, he's saying to
these Corinthians, you're listening to some men. You're bearing with
another that has brought another gospel in another spirit, preaching
another Christ. A Jesus who is not successful
in saving his people is another Christ. It is another gospel. Our gospel. I so. I fear and I desire and I long
for. The spirit of God. To do a work
of grace in my heart. And in your heart. That the word. and we don't separate the written
word from the living word, that the word of God might come to
us, not in word only, but in power and in the Holy Ghost and
in much assurance. Let's take a break.