That worked? Good morning. Let's open this morning's service
with hymn number 38 from the gospel hymn spiral hymn book.
Number 38, the debt of love. Let's all stand together. Come, every sinner saved by grace,
you who by faith God's Son embrace. Tell all who hear your voice
below the debt of love to Christ you owe. Dear Lord, I lift my
praise to Thee. All that I am or hope to be,
I owe alone, O Christ, to Thee. He left his father's throne above
and came to earth on wings of love. For us he lived the perfect
man and so fulfilled the law's demand. Dear Lord, I lift my
praise to Thee. All that I am, or hope to be,
I owe alone, O Christ, to Thee. Jesus endured His Father's ire
and died at the appointed hour. What He endured, no tongue can
tell, to save our souls from death and hell. Dear Lord, I
lift my praise to Thee, All that I am or hope to be, I owe alone,
O Christ, to Thee. From death's dark grave our King
arose, And triumphed over all his foes. Up through the skies
the victor rode, And reigns on high our Savior God. Dear Lord, I lift my praise to
Thee. All that I am, for hope to be,
I owe alone, O Christ, to Thee. From heaven Christ will quickly
come and bring his ransomed people home. There we shall see his
lovely face and chant the praises of his grace. Dear Lord, I lift
my praise to Thee. All that I am or hope to be I
owe alone, O Christ, to Thee. Please be seated. All I am or ever hope to be I owe to Christ alone." That's a good hymn. Good morning. We're going to be back in Malachi
chapter 2 for our Bible study this morning. If you'd like to
open your Bibles with me there to Malachi chapter 2. Have you ever had someone say
to you, a loving God would not send someone to hell. Well, I think I can give you
an accurate, truthful answer to that statement. Let's, from
the word of God, let's pray together and ask the Lord's blessings.
Our merciful Heavenly Father. We thank you that you are love. That your love is perfect and
pure and holy. We also come before you, Lord,
knowing that you are just. And that your justice demands
punishment for sin. Lord, what great hope you've
put in our hearts to know that the Lord Jesus Christ satisfied
your divine justice by the sacrifice of himself on Calvary's cross.
Lord, we pray that you would enable us to set our affections
on him. We pray that you would cause
us to enter into worship. We know, Lord, that you have
said that we are the true circumcision, circumcised in the heart, which
worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence
in the flesh. Lord, whatever remnants of confidence
we have in our flesh, we pray that you would strip it from
us. We pray that you would cause us to cast all our care upon
the one who cares for us. Lord, that we would. We would rest all the hope of our
salvation in the glorious person and accomplished work of thy
dear son. We pray for those that have yet to hear from you. And we ask Lord that you would
create the hearing ear and the seeing eye. And that you would
cause them Lord. To believe. We ask it in Christ
name. Amen. A loving God would not
send a person to hell. That's true. That's true. but a just God will. A just God will. Our God is the
God of justice. He requires punishment for sin. And those whom he sends to hell
by his justice, he never loved. So it's true, a loving God would
never send a person to hell. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that he loved us and gave his son as the propitiation
of our sins. Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. Scripture says he hates iniquity
and loves righteousness. He loves Christ And he loves
all those who are in Christ, all those he placed in Christ
from the foundation of the world. This idea that God loves everybody
and the loving God would not send anybody to hell. Well, it's
just not true. It's not true. Doesn't love everybody. And a just God will satisfy his
holy justice. By condemning those who are not
in Christ to any eternal separation in a devil's hell. Now that's
just the truth. That's the truth. Malachi chapter two. I know there's
some people who are thinking, boy, that's awful harsh way to
start the service on Sunday morning. If you know the truth, truth
will set you free. Oh, we didn't come here to pacify
people's feelings. We came here to declare the truth
about who God is, about who we are, and about how it is that
God's pleased to save sinners, because that's the only hope
we've got. If it's feeling good that you
want, you know, there's just a whole lot of entertainment
in this world to satisfy that need. We've come to worship God. the God who is, and worship Him
in spirit, and worship Him in truth. And most preachers are
trying to figure out a way not to offend folks. The gospel is
offensive, and God's called preachers, well, they want to be clear enough.
They want to be compassionate. They want to be convicted in
their own souls. But they want to be clear enough
that folks either get mad or they get glad. I'm tired of preaching
the gospel to people who don't believe and they walk away thinking
that everything they heard was exactly what they've always believed.
I want to be more clear than I've ever been in my whole life. Tell folks that they're sinners
and that they have no righteousness whatsoever and they come up to
you afterwards and they start telling you about their righteousness.
It's just unbelievable. I mean, I know that God's got
to give a person a year to hear if they're going to hear the
truth, but I'd like for them to at least hear enough to get
mad and get offended. You know, um, the gospel is offensive. It is. There are two covenants spoken
of in the scriptures and the only two is the covenant of works. and the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is infinitely
older than the covenant of works. The covenant of grace goes back
before time when God almighty entered into a covenant relationship
with the son and with the spirit to save a particular people whom
God chose according to his will and purpose. That's a covenant
of grace. Saved by for by grace. Are you saved? Through faith
and that not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not of works,
lest any man should boast. What a man boasts in. They boast
in their works. They boast in their righteousness
and all all men are self righteous. All the. I'm going to say this
twice today. I'm going to say it now. I'm
going to say it again the second hour. You've heard me say it
before. It is so, so true. And it rings
true to my experience in dealing with people. And that is that
all without exception, all the unrighteous believe themselves
to be righteous. And it doesn't matter if they're
outwardly moral and religious or if it's the murderer pointing
to the child abuser in prison saying, well, at least I'm not
like him. You see, it doesn't matter where they fit on that
scale. All the unrighteous believe themselves to be righteous. And
all the righteous, all the righteous believe themselves to be unrighteous. This covenant of grace is what
the righteous need. Uh, because they know that apart
from the grace of God, they have no righteousness in themselves.
There's nothing in them to merit favor with God in any way. And
they're completely dependent upon that covenant of grace for
the hope of their salvation. They're completely dependent
upon the Lord Jesus Christ. who ordered that covenant of
grace and made it sure by the sacrifice of himself. He's the
one who offered himself not to man, but he offered himself to
the father and the father accepted the offering that Christ made.
And the father saw the travail of his soul and the father was
satisfied. God, the Holy Spirit now comes
And in the day of his power, he unstops the ears, he opens
the eyes, and he causes those whom God chose, those whom Christ
died for, he causes them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. To
believe themselves to be sinners and to believe Christ to be the
only hope of their salvation. Now that's the covenant of grace. The covenant of works is the
covenant that God put Adam under in the garden. When God created
Adam, put him in the garden and told Adam not to eat of the fruit
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For in the
day in which you eat of it, you will surely die. The hope of
your salvation is dependent upon whether you do what's right or
whether you do what's wrong. Now when God put Adam under the
covenant of works, God knew all along that Adam wasn't going
to be able to keep it. He wasn't going to be able to
keep it. He was going to break that covenant. That's why the
covenant of grace was already established before the covenant
of works. And so what did the Lord do when Adam broke that
covenant of works? What did he do? He slew a lamb
right there in the garden. Shed blood. Adam had tried to
cover his nakedness with more works. He said, well, I didn't
work. I didn't do the right work when
I ate of the tree that I wasn't supposed to eat from. So now
I'm going to work some more. And he was adding, he was adding
works to his works and adding sin to sin and making himself,
you see, the truth is that self-righteousness is the most offensive sin to
God of all sins. The world thinks of sin as those
shameful, heinous acts of rebellion, and they are, they are. But self-righteousness,
that strikes at the heart of the nature of God. When man sets
himself up on the throne of God and thinks that he can obligate
God to save him by something that he does, and strips Christ
of his glory, So God took the fleece of that
lamb. We know who that lamb was. That
lamb was Christ. He's the lamb that was slain
before the foundation of the world. He's the lamb seen all
the way through scripture. He's that Paschal lamb in Egypt.
When, when they put the blood of the lamb on the door of the,
of the homes and, and the death angel came by and God's people
were saved because of the blood of the lamb. God said, when I
see the blood, I'll pass by you. Not when I see your good works,
not when I see your righteousness, when I see the blood, I'll pass
by you. So the Lord covered Adam's nakedness
with the fleece of that lamb and put him out of the garden. stationed flaming swords at the
gate of the garden, lest he enter back in and live in his fallen
state forever. Adam had to die. He had to die
physically in order to enjoy the benefits of that eternal
covenant of grace that God had established before the foundation
of the world. Some wondered whether Adam was
saved or not. Sure he was. Sure he was. If the Lord didn't save Adam,
he wouldn't have put a fleece on him. He would have left him
in his fig leaves. And that's where God leaves most
men. He leaves them in their fig leaves. And there's no question, a person
who draws their last breath, dressed in fig leaves, God's
gonna send to hell. He won't do it out of love. He'll
do it out of justice. Now these are the two covenants.
Look at Malachi chapter two, look at verse six. The law of truth was in his mouth. Now who are we talking about
here? We saw this last Sunday. This is Levi. This is the covenant
of Levi. Who is Levi? Levi was the priest.
You know, one of my favorite passages of scriptures is where
the Lord told Moses to put the headdress on Aaron's head. Levi was the descendant of Aaron
and the priestly tribe. And it was to put the headdress
on Aaron's head. Well, Aaron was a descendant
of Levi actually. And on the headdress, it was supposed to,
it was to say holiness unto the Lord. And the scripture says
for Aaron must bear the iniquity of the Holy things. Aaron as God's high priest, a
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Levi, a picture of the Lord Jesus
Christ as our priest, our intercessor. Our advocate with the father,
our sin bearer has to bear the iniquity of what you and I are
doing right now in order for them to be acceptable to God. I'm trying as clearly as I can
to tell you what God says about, about Christ and about salvation.
But I know just sure as I know, I'm standing here. that all my
attempts are so fraught with sin. And if the Lord doesn't
forgive me, I'll go to hell for what I'm doing right now. And you'll go to hell for what
you're doing right now. Is that clear? If Aaron, Levi, the Lord Jesus
Christ does not bear in his body upon that tree, the iniquity
of our holy things will go to hell for going to church. That's right. Now, where are
you going to hear that? You're not going to hear that
anywhere else, are you? But that's the truth. There's so much freedom in that. Or I've got no righteousness.
I've got no hope in and of myself. I can't produce anything. I can't pray a prayer. I can't
engage in a worship. I can't perform a work that's
going to earn me favor with God. I'm completely dependent upon
another who did it perfectly. And so the scripture says, look
to Christ, look to him. What did John say?
Behold the lamb of God, which take it the way of the sins of
the world. Come the spirit and the bride say, calm, calm, drink
of the water of life freely. You can't pay for it. You can't
pay for it. Our most sincere. Acts of worship
apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, bearing the iniquity of our holy
things will send us to hell. We need grace. The covenant of works is all
about justice. All about. Man trying to earn
favor with God by something that he does and satisfy the justice
of God, you can't do it. The covenant of grace is the
fulfillment of that justice. Where the Lord Jesus Christ gave
to the father what the father required for the sins of his
people. And so the law of truth was in
his mouth. That's what I'm just trying to
speak the truth. I just. Like I said, I'm tired of talking
to people about the gospel and having them pat me on the back
and say, oh, well, that was a wonderful message and we're so encouraged.
And I preached a message right here Thursday. And my own sister-in-law
comes up to me and says, well, that's wonderful. Abby must be
looking down from heaven and just rejoicing right now. She
did not hear a word, not a word. Listen, wherever the tree falls,
there it lies. If it falls to the north or it
falls to the south, there it lies. No one who leaves this
world looks back on this world. The law of truth was in his mouth.
Who was it that was offended by the words of the Lord Jesus
Christ? It was the religious, wasn't
it? It was the self-righteous. It was the Pharisees. They were
the ones that were offended and nothing's changed. Nothing's
changed. The publicans and the sinners,
they come running. They're so thankful. The law of truth was in his mouth
and iniquity was not found in his lips. He walked with me in
peace and equity and did turn many away from inequity." That's
what the Lord does, doesn't he? By nature, we trust in our iniquity
for the hope of our salvation. And the Lord turns us away from
our iniquity. and causes us to realize that
he's the only one that balanced the scales. That's what equity
means, isn't it? In his mouth is truth and he
established equity and peace for the priest lips should keep
knowledge. Now he's talking about, he's
talking about the, the old Testament priests that were supposed to
be preaching the gospel. You see, the gospel hasn't changed.
It's the same gospel that God gave Adam back there in the garden.
It's never changed. The revelation of the gospel
has become more clear. And in the Old Testament, we
had types and shadows and pictures of Christ and the gospel of grace. And in the New Testament, we
have the fulfillment of all those types in the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's what it says in Hebrews.
God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto our
fathers through the prophets in the past, but now in these
last days has spoken unto us by his son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
the express image of his person, the fullness of his glory. Christ
has come and fulfilled everything that was promised and pictured
in the Old Testament of the gospel. The old Testament is not the
covenant of works and the new Testament, the covenant of grace,
the covenant of grace threads all the way through the old and
the new works is what men do when God
doesn't have grace on them. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord, didn't he? And Noah's name, you know what
your name means. Don't you know? It means rest. Rest, that's what
Noah means. We rest all the hope of our salvation. In the glorious person of the
Lord Jesus Christ, in his finished work, Noah found grace in the
eyes of the Lord. Was Noah a sinner? Oh yeah. Was
he just like everybody else in his generation? Yeah. God had
grace upon him. Oh, that's my hope that God would
have grace upon me. and that God would have grace
upon you. Because if he doesn't, we're going to cover up our nakedness
with fig leaves and we're going to suffer the wrath and justice
of God. The priest lips should keep knowledge. Now I take that, I take that
passage very personal. Because right now I am serving
as a priest, declaring the truth of God. Paul told Timothy, he
said, Timothy, you preach the word, preach the word in season
and out of season, rebuke and reprove. And give them instruction
of righteousness for the day will come when men won't hear
it. They'll have itching ears and
they'll gather for themselves teachers to tell them what they
want to hear. And we're in that day right now. Right now, right
this very hour, there are church buildings all over this country
that are filled with people who have men standing behind pulpits
telling them what they want to hear. Scratching their itching
ears, making them feel good about themselves. But it's a false
peace. The false prophet says peace,
peace when there is no peace and men all believe the lie.
They believe the lie, but there's no, there's no peace like the
truth. So the priest lips should keep
knowledge and they should seek the law at his mouth for he is
the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But, but, and this is to these priests,
these false prophets. But you are departed out of the
way. You have caused many to stumble
at the law. You have corrupted the covenant
of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore, have I also made you
contemptible and base before all the people, according as
you have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law. You've corrupted the covenant
of Levi and you've been partial. You've just told them half truths. You haven't told them the whole
truth. And a half truth is a lie. The most important part of the
truth is being left out. And the Lord says, those priests,
those priests are contemptible in the eyes of the people. And
they're contemptible in your eyes, aren't they? Why do they, why? You see, men
go, men preach the law. They put burdens on people that
they themselves cannot carry is what the Lord said to the
Pharisees. They merchandise men's soul. They put them under the
law. They tell them that they do this and they do that. You
pray this prayer and God will have favor on you, but you got
to do something. And you know, I used to, I'm
still very suspicious of conspiracy theories. But there is one conspiracy theory
that everybody has bought into. Hook, line, and sinker, they've
swallowed it whole. And it's this idea that you can
be saved by works. The man's got a free will that
God loves everybody. Christ died for everybody. God
wants everybody to be saved and and he's doing his best to get
it done. And won't you let him have his way? And everybody believes
it. Goes back to the garden, doesn't
it? When Satan? Said to Eve. God knows. You're not going to die. God
knows in the day in which you eat of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God.
And everybody in this world has got a God complex. Everybody
wants to be God, don't they? Everybody wants to be God. They
want to sit on the throne of God. They want to be the captain
of their own soul and their own destiny. The priest lip should speak the
truth, but they've corrupted the covenant of Levi, the covenant
of grace, and they've replaced the covenant of grace with a
covenant of works. And everybody loves it. Everybody
believes it because it gives them something to boast in. I
did this and I did that. I did the other. And they robbed Christ all along
of his glory. Turn with me to Galatians chapter
six, Galatians chapter six, verse 12. As many as desire to
make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised. Now circumcision is symbolic
in the Bible of works. It's something that man does
in order to earn merit and favor with God. It's a covenant of
works. He's circumcised and so he's
saying there's these false prophets And they're constraining you
to be certain. By the way, the false prophets
that Paul's talking about in Galatians, without exception,
every one of them would have said that Jesus is the Christ,
the son of the living God. They believe that Jesus was the
Messiah, that he was the one promised all down through the
old Testament to come. And they believed that you had
to believe on Jesus Christ in order to be saved. And here's
the problem. Here's the rub. They believed
that Jesus was necessary for salvation, but they did not believe
he was sufficient. It was Jesus plus the law, Jesus
plus circumcision. That's what the book of Galatians
is all about. It's all about. These were the
Judaizers. And they came in behind the Apostle
Paul and they said, yeah, what Paul said about Jesus of Nazareth
dying on a Roman cross and being the Messiah, that's all true.
That's all true. But you got to have something
more. You got to have the works of
the law. As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh,
they constrain you to be circumcised. Paul's talking to these believers
in the church. There's men coming in behind
me that are constraining you to be circumcised only lest they
should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. They refuse to confess Christ
is all. Why? Because it robs them of
their glory. It robs them of their hope. It's
the offense of the cross. Christ being all leaves us with
nothing but him. For neither they themselves who
are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised
that they may glory in your flesh. They want you to keep the law.
so they can glory in your flesh, and that's what religion's all
about. Men glorying and how many, sometimes
people ask me, how many folks do you have come to your church?
I'm scared to death to count heads. David did that one time,
and God sent a plague, and I forgot, I think there was 20,000 people
that died as a result of David counting the Israelite army. We don't do that. But what do
men do? They glory in their flesh. They glory in the size of their
ministry and how many people they... Salvation's of the Lord. Nothing anybody can do to make
that happen. God's gone. And when he does
it, he gets all the glory for it, doesn't he? But God forbid
that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
by whom the world is crucified unto me and I to the world. For
in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything. Now you just
replace that word circumcision with works. For in Christ Jesus, works availeth
nothing. nor uncircumcision, nor lack
thereof, but a new creation, a new creature, a new nature,
a new heart. They've corrupted the covenant of Levi. Go back with
me to Malachi chapter one. Galatians chapter 3 says, for
as many as are of the works of the law are under the law. For it is written, cursed is
everyone that continueeth not in all that is written in the
book of the law to do them. So if a man's going to be saved
by law, he's got to keep the whole law. And the Lord Jesus
Christ is the one who was cursed for our inability to keep God's
law. Verse 10 of Malachi chapter two,
have we not all one father? Has God changed? There's one
God. There's one gospel. There's one
Christ. There's one baptism. There is
only one church. Somebody show me in the word
of God where there's any mention of denominations. You won't find it. You won't
find it. They're not of God. There's one
church. It's the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what the Lord and all of God's people, regardless
of where they meet or what language they speak, they all believe
the same thing. They all believe that Christ
is not divided. They're all in perfect unison with one another. Have we not all one Father? Hath
not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously
every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of
our fathers? Why would you put a man under
the law and profane the covenant of grace? Our God is the same yesterday
to he's the same God today as he was before Adam. When he made
Adam from the dust of the earth and go back before Adam, when
God established the covenant of grace in eternity past, he
hasn't changed. Our God is immutable. He's the same yesterday, today
and forever. He said, I am the Lord and I
change not. And that's the reason why you
sons of Jacob are not consumed. You change. But I don't. I don't change. And the hope
of your salvation is completely dependent upon the fact that
I change not. We're saved by grace, not by
works. Saved by grace. Where is their
boasting? Where is their boasting then,
Paul asks in Romans? There is no boasting. No, he
gets all the glory, doesn't he? He did all the work and he gets
all the glory. All right, let's take a break.