Turn with me to the book of Ephesians,
chapter 2. Chapter 2, the book of Ephesians. Chapter 2. here in this twelfth verse, that twelfth verse. And the first line of the verse
says, that at that time, referring back to what he had previously
said. In verse 11, Wherefore remember,
recollect, that ye, being in times past
Gentiles in the flesh, the Ephesian church was made up primarily
of Gentiles. You are either a Jew or you are
a Gentile. If you are not of Jacob's stock,
then you are not a Jew, you are a Gentile. Well, the Jews were
commanded by God to be circumcised. Every Jewish boy at a certain
time, a certain period in his young life, was to be taken to
the temple and the priest would circumcise him. That is not binding
upon Gentile children. That is the difference between
Jews and Gentiles in some respects. that at that time you were without
Christ, that is, you Gentiles. You were aliens. You know what
an alien is? Well, they refer to, in the language
of our day, that aliens come from another planet. things you see in the sky, or
some of them do. I haven't seen any of them. You
say, well, them's aliens. Well, if you're not a bona fide
citizen of the United States of America, you're an alien.
You come from some other country and you have not been granted
as of yet citizenship to the United States of America, you're
an alien. Well, these Gentiles were aliens
from Israel, from the commonwealth of Israel, and they were strangers
to the covenant of promise. God had come to deal with Israel,
not with the Gentiles, of course, in his overhaul overall plan
and purpose and his mind and his will, he did, but primarily. You're strangers from the covenant
of promise. And here's the statement that
I want to emphasize a little bit, a few minutes here this
morning, you bear with me. Having no hope, these Gentiles,
uncircumcised, they had no hope. and they were without God in
the world. Now, the Bible tells us in no
uncertain terms that God's people are accepted in Christ. It says over here in the first
chapter of the book of Ephesians, Verse 6, if you'll read that
along with me, in connection with the statement that I've
just made, the Bible tells us that God's people are accepted
in Christ. Now, Paul, writing to the Ephesians,
tells them about the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 3, he says, Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,
according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before
him in love. It says, God having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children. We were adopted into the family
of God. The Israelites are the nation
that was the apple of God's eye, and the Gentiles were looked
upon as Gentile dogs. But we were adopted. the adoption
of children by Jesus Christ to himself, and it gives his reason,
it was according to the good pleasure of his will, and this
is the verse that I want to get to, to the praise of the glory
of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. I said at the outset that God
throughout the Bible says that his people are accepted in Christ,
accepted in the Beloved. The Beloved is the Lord Jesus
Christ. So, if we are without Christ, now
if we are accepted in Christ, if we are without Christ, then
we have nothing that God will accept. Now they are, I mean,
just face this naked truth, this stark truth
that they are people, human beings that think like us, talk like
us, and look like us, and dress like us, that are not accepted
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And why are they not accepted? Because they do not believe in
the testimony of God concerning His Son. Who is Jesus? What did Jesus do? Why did Jesus do it? And where is Jesus at? They have no inkling to the answers
to the question. So they are not accepted. You
can only be accepted before God in Christ. I read to you where
he said, Wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved, accepted
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, the Scriptures say that God's
people are accepted in Christ, and so, if you are without Christ,
then you have nothing that God will accept. Is that plain? That's as plain as I can make
it. If you don't have Christ as your Lord, your Master, your
God, your Savior, your Hope, your Righteousness, your Sanctification,
your Justification, your Savior, your Sin, if you don't have Him,
you have nothing that God will accept. You cannot even pray. unto God if you don't have Christ. We're taught by God Himself that
if we come to Him in prayer, we've got to come in His name. So then, if His people are accepted
in Christ, then if we are without Christ, We have nothing that
God will accept because his people are accepted in Christ. Now, God has said that no man
can come to the Father except by Christ. That's what God says. No man, no man, black man, white
man, yellow man, red man, no man, no woman, No boy, no girl
can come to God except by Christ. No man comes unto the Father
except by Christ. Therefore, if we are without
Christ, we have no basis, we have no ground upon which we
can approach God if we are without Christ. You see how important
this makes Christ? He's the most, I want to say
thing, but Christ is not a thing, Christ is a person. He's the
most important person, personage, in this world or in the unseen
world or in the world to come. He's the most important of is
the Lord Jesus Christ because no one can be accepted by God
apart from this man that they call Jesus. Now, Christ says,
I am the way, the truth, and the life, and I say in light
of that, If He is the way, then there is no other way. I'm not
interested in what this fellow says out here, that I think I've
got something of my own here. I think I can make God hear me.
I'm not interested in that. I wouldn't give two seconds to
hear a man tell me how good He is and what His hope is of getting
into heaven by doing something good. Because the Lord Jesus
Christ said, I am the way. And if He's the way, there's
no other way. I mean, you're shut up. You're
shut up. You're forced in a corner. Nowhere
to turn. He said, I am the way. Now, he
said, I am the truth. When he said, I am the way, then
his next phrase was, I am the truth. Now, if he is the truth,
everything else is a lie. Any old way conceived in the
minds of men, or in the devil himself, that you can be accepted
in God apart from him being the way and the truth. Everything
else is a lie. And if he is the life, I am the
way, the truth, and the life. And if he is the life, then everything
else is death. Everything else. Oh, you say,
I think God will have mercy on me. No, He won't. No, He won't. You're thinking wrong. God shows
no mercy apart from Christ. Ever! God has to put all of His
eggs in one basket, and that basket is the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll either face up to Him
either as your Savior or as your Judge, one of the two. All right? Now, let me, after I've said
that, let me ask this question. Is this your case this morning? Are you without Christ? If you
are without Christ this morning, whatever you possess besides,
it will not do for you to bring it to God, because He won't have
it. Whatever else you have, You may
have various virtues that are admired by other folks. You may
have a pleasant personality. You may have intellectual knowledge
of other things, a high IQ and all that. Don't bring it with
you. It will do you no good, because he's the way, he's the
truth, and he's the life, and nothing that you possess will
do you any good. Don't bring it. Don't even think
about it. Whatever you possess, don't bring
it. Now, in light of what I said,
if there be any poor, rooted-up, broken-hearted, down-in-the-mouth,
cast-down, poor, hopeless, helpless sinner under the sound of my
voice, who feels like he is ruined, who feels like he is guilty,
who feels like he is filthy, and he is ready to cry out, I
am vile. I'm vile. I am so vile. I am so guilty. I'm so black
that God could not and would not receive such a vile sinner
as I. Well, let me tell you that a
sinner never was received by God through Christ since the
world began but on the ground of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
your felt sinfulness, vileness, wretchedness are good reasons,
more so than anybody else, that would cause you to fall flat,
flat on your face and call upon the Lord Jesus Christ. to be
your all-sufficient Savior. If there is such a hopeless,
helpless, wandering, poor sinner without any righteousness of
his own, so filthy, so mean and contemptible of a sinner that
he can hardly lift his eyes to heaven and say, I'm guilty, if
a poor, foul sinner is like that, He has more reason to hope that
God will hear him than some self-righteous sinner saying, well, I'll make
it on my own. Well, you won't make it on your
own. Now, if a man is without Christ,
then he is without righteousness, because the Lord Jesus Christ
is our righteousness. So if you don't have Christ,
you don't have righteousness. Without Christ you have no righteousness
and everything else that we have will leave us when we come down
to that point in time when we give up the ghost and they take
us to the undertaker and from the undertaker to the graveyard. Everything but Christ will leave
behind. Someone said, One of the Rockefellers
died. I believe that's who it was. John D. Rockefeller died. Wonder how much he left here
on this earth after he departed. Well, I can tell you how much
he left. He left it all. That's how much he left. He left
everything. He didn't take anything with
him. Here without Christ. You'll go
the same way. Everything we have apart from
Christ will go when we go. When the time comes, it may be
sudden death. It may be a lingering death. crash into us and kill us instantly.
But if it does and we have not Christ, everything else we have
won't do. When this world is on fire, the
only thing that will help us is being in Him, hiding in Him. If we have Christ, we have righteousness. If we have Christ, we have His
blood. Without the shedding of the blood,
there is no remission of sin. We have his blood for pardon.
We have his righteousness for justification. We have his fullness
to supply our needs. We have his promises to cheer
us up. We have his strength to support
us. We have his wisdom to guide us
in all of our ways. in all of his offices, all the
offices that Christ sustains, we have him in each one of them
as a prophet. The Bible says that the Lord
Jesus Christ is prophet, priest, and king. If we have him, if
we have Christ, we have him as our prophet to teach us, to instruct
us, to guide us, If we have him as our priest, we have him to
atone for our sins with his own precious blood. And if we have
him, we have him at the right hand of God as our advocate. He pleads our case. He's our
lawyer. He never lost a case. Our Lord
Jesus Christ, as he presents our case before God, he's never
lost one case. We have these great lawyers.
We've seen them on the television. Some of them are high prized. Some of them take on these cases
that there's just no seemingly reason why they ought to. And
sometimes they win, sometimes they fail. They don't win them
all. But our Lord Jesus Christ is our priest, is our advocate,
our lawyer, our days man. Our surety. He pleads our case,
and He never has lost a case, and He never will lose one. If
we have Him, we have all that. Prophet, priest, and king. If we don't have Him, we have
nothing. We stand alone, naked, bare. We'll have to stand there
before God, empty-handed. We have nothing to offer. We'll
just be ashamed our heads are down. We have nothing. But Christ is available to any
poor sinner that's vile and guilty and knows he's guilty and asks
God for mercy. Christ is there. All right? We have him as a king to rule
over us. We have him in all the characteristics
that he bears. We have him as our shepherd,
the good shepherd. The Lord himself said, I'm the
good shepherd. I love my sheep. I give my life
for my sheep. Why, he said, I'm the good shepherd. And he said, all those who are my sheep, He
said, I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. And he said, listen to me now.
And he said, no man shall pluck them out of my hand. No man can
take them away from me. They're in my hand. I bought
them. I shed my blood for them. The
Father gave them to me. I'm their shepherd. I give unto
them eternal life. and they shall never perish.
He's our captain. He's the captain of our salvation.
He's our bread. Jesus said, I'm the bread of
life. Jesus said, I'm the water of life. And I'm the wine of
God to cheer my people. Oh, and that which is an endearing
relationship that the believer has with God in Christ is that
the Lord Jesus Christ is our elder brother. Think of that. Elder brother. I've got an elder
brother, and I haven't seen him for years and years. And just
yesterday, by the way, the telephone rang, and my elder brother was
on the phone. He said, how are you doing? I
said, doing just fine. Elder brother, that's a close
relationship. It hasn't been so close with
my brother and I, but it's a close relationship between the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit and His children. That endearing
relationship, elder brother. And that, brethren, which is
best of all, the Lord Jesus Christ becomes our husbands, we're the
bride. The church, the believers that
make up the church, that's his bride. And he's coming for his
bride. There's going to be a marriage
supper. There's going to be a consummation of the marriage. He's coming
for his people. If you're without Christ, you're
going to be on the sidelines. You see, we have this relationship which
is best of all. We have him as our husband and
he does not, you ladies listen to me, he does not take his bride
as we are in the habit of taking ours. We take ours for better
or for worse, but my soul, he knew that she would have no better
about her, it would be all worse. That's us. Sinners of the deepest
die. Save sinner, save sinner, but
yet sin is in there. Sin works and struggles in me
practically every minute of every day. I'm a saved sinner. I'm still
a sinner. I was a sinner when I was born,
and I'll be a sinner when I die. But I'll be a saved sinner. Sin's in me, but sin's not on
me. because my sins was laid on him,
and he bore what was due my sins. He paid my debts. My elder brother,
my husband, my friend, my prophet, my priest, my king, my shepherd,
my water of life, my bread of life, my all in all, paid all
my debts and set me free. Well, cannot some of you here this
morning recall a time that you were without Christ? I can recall
a time when I was in my twenties, in my twenties. I went to the
war and endured all of that. And when I was about 25, the
Lord stopped me and revealed to me how hopeless my case was. And I heard, I heard the voice,
not audible, but a still, small voice convincing me that I was
a sinner. And when it convinced me that
I was a sinner, I said, I plead guilty. I plead guilty and I
condemned myself. And God brought his free grace
to my soul and saved my soul on the ground of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Well, I've been saved by the... I'm in my late 70s. I'm in my
late 70s. I was saved in my early 20s,
but now I'm in my late 70s, and I feel, up to this moment, as
much need of Jesus Christ as ever. The 21st century. Oh, and since that time I have
preached hundreds and hundreds of sermons. How many times have
I stood here, right here, on this same roster, this same background,
and preached hundreds of times? Sometimes three times a week,
sometimes more. Sometimes I used to preach four
times a week. Sometimes I used to go off on
the weekend and preach for other churches, Friday and Saturday
and Sunday. I preached hundreds and hundreds
of times, traveled thousands and thousands of miles preaching
Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you would take away Christ
from me this morning, I would assume trust the devil as I would
my good works. If you'd take evil away, you
can't, but for the sake of argument, if you took evil away. I would assume trust the devil
as I would anything that I have ever done, anything that I ever
will do. I'd trust him, for I'd trust
my own words. Well, if I did that, the devil would
have as good a hope as I have. If you're without Christ, then
what have you got? You've got wretchedness and you've
got sin. That's all you've got. Having
no hope, you've got no real hope. All people, you say, have some
sort of hope. Well, what sort of a hope do
you have? Well, you say, I have hope of
getting to heaven. Well, what do you base that hope
on? Well, I think God is too merciful
to send anybody to hell. Well, if that be true, if that
be true, you think that God is too merciful to tell the truth. For he says, the wicked shall
be turned into hell. Another says, I have some hope
of being saved, for I am as good as my neighbor and better than
most of them, and that's my hope. Well, after all, I have a little
hope. Well, there's no such thing as
a little hope. If you just, if I, well, some
say, well, I'm just a little sinner. I just, I haven't got
out in that stuff. I'm just, maybe I haven't told
the truth like it ought to be told at times. I'm just a little
sinner. If there's only one sin, Megan,
here's how little it is. The Bible says if a man offendeth
in one point of the law, he's guilty of breaking it all. There's
no excuse. You've got no hope. If you're
without Christ, you've got nothing. You haven't got anything. You
haven't got anything to plead. You're going to have to stand
before God naked. You've got no garment of praise
or garment of righteousness to wear. That comes by imputation. That individual who believes
on God's Christ and receives Him, He's got him as prophet,
priest, and king. He's got him as his righteousness,
the righteousness that the Lord Jesus Christ wrought himself
alone, thirty-three years, thirty-three years of righteousness, no sin
in him, a spotless, perfect, sinless sacrifice. He offered
himself in the sinner's place. I'm a sinner. I am a low-down
guilty sinner. I have no hope in myself. My hope's in Him. I trust Him. I believe in Him. I embrace Him. I love Him. I follow Him. He's my all and my all. I have nothing else. You see
what I'm talking about? I believe you do. I've got a
lot more to say, but I'm not going to say it. I'll save it
for some other time. I'm about wore out and you are
too. Let's stand and we'll go home. Pat, you pray for us, will you?