The Lord, as we saw in our earlier
message, said, not as the world gives. So the world gives the
peace. There is the false peace of religion. There is the peace that Satan
gives. Satan is a preacher of peace. And the Apostle Paul says that
we are not aware of his schemes, and I want us to have a look
at this. But I also want us to be reminded
yet again of the wonderful simplicity of the Gospel that we proclaim.
2 Corinthians chapter 11 and the context of course is a troubled
church where they've had all sorts of troubles in terms of
immorality within the church. They've had all sorts of problems
with divisions in the church. It was a troubled church in so
many ways. I love the fact that the Apostle
Paul speaks of all the troubles and the trials he had and the
greatest of all of those, it seems, is the challenge that
he has and the agony in his heart that he has for the churches
that have been deceived, the people in the churches that he
loves who have been deceived. He says, Verse 1, would to God
that you could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear
with me, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one
husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means,
As the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, his cunningness,
his craftiness, so your minds should be corrupted from the
simplicity that's in Christ, the singleness, the oneness that's
in the Lord Jesus Christ. For if he that cometh preaches
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 well bear with him. He's saying, you
bear with me, you've been bearing with these false teachers. For
I suppose I was not a whit behind in the very chiefists of apostles.
They were saying to Paul, you're not the genuine article when
it comes to apostleship, Paul. Peter and John and the others
lived and walked with the Lord Jesus Christ for three and a
half years, and you were an enemy of the church. He says in verse 10, as the truth
of Christ is in me, no man shall stop this boasting of me. Wherefore, because I love you
not, God knows. But what I do, that I will do,
that I may come of occasion for them which desire occasion, wherein
they glory, that they may be found even as we. For such, these
teachers and those who promote them and those who join with
them, for such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming
themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel, for
Satan himself Therefore it is no great thing
if his ministers be transformed as the ministers of righteousness,
whose end shall be according to their works. There is a simplicity. There's
a singleness, there's a simplicity in the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And where that singleness and
that simplicity is taken away from the children of God, their
peace is taken away, and so many, many, many are taken captive
to Satan. This world, this world today
is full of a religion. where the people leading the
other people are nothing other than the ministers of Satan. And that's the promise of God.
That is the promise of God. We looked earlier at the peace
that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith looks to Christ than Christ alone. It looks to him here as it will
look to him in heaven and as it will look to him in eternity.
What we do here is just a foretaste of what will be there and we
look to Christ alone because God requires righteousness from
our hearts and God requires satisfaction for sin. And there's only one way for
God to be satisfied, and there's only one place where God has
been satisfied, and that is in the finished work of the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's why the Gospel declares
Christ alone. When we're declaring the Gospel
we are describing from the Scriptures, by the Spirit, The Christ of
the Gospel, the Christ who is the Gospel, the Gospel is a person. The covenant of grace is a person. Our salvation is tied up in a
person. Life is in the Son. He that has the Son has life. And in that Son, in that glorious
Son, we love to declare, don't we, that all the fullness of
the Godhead dwells in Him. As he said to Philip, he said,
if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, you've seen God Almighty
when you see the Lord Jesus Christ. We love to declare His deity,
the fullness of God, the fullness of mercy, the fullness of grace,
and the fullness of truth, the fullness of pardon, the fullness
of forgiveness of sins, it's all in Him. We don't have any
reason to look anywhere else, and that's exactly what the false
teachers are saying. You can look to your own activities,
and you can look to the things of this world, and you can look
to your own obedience, and you look to your own knowledge. The
Gospel is not about you getting to change your ways. I've reprinted
an article by Philpott that's on their website called Reformation
is not Regeneration. The religious world is getting
people to reform their lives and to change their lives. And
it's a wonderful thing that people are living in some ways better
than they did. It's great that gamblers are
no longer gambling. It's great that alcoholics are
no longer alcoholics. It's great that murderers are
no longer murderers. It's great that thieves are no longer thieves.
But all of those things can happen completely without the Spirit
of God. The Gospel is not about getting
you to change your ways. It's about pointing you to the
One who is the Way. He is the Way, the Truth and
the Life. He is the Way. The Gospel is
not about you getting to make a decision. It's pointing you
to the One God has already decided. The decision is already made.
We're declaring what He done. This Gospel is not about people
accepting Jesus as their personal Savior. People say, you made
Jesus Lord of your life. I'm sorry, it's way, way too
late for that. God made Him Lord of your life
a long, long time ago and He rules sovereignly everything
in this universe. The results and the efficacy
of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ does not depend upon you
doing something. Your believing, your rejoicing,
your looking to the Prince of Peace depends upon the efficacy
of his work. Is what he did sufficient? Is he a sufficient saviour? Is he a successful saviour? Is he a sovereign saviour? Was
his substitution perfect and complete or did he in some effort
and some way try and save all the people of this world because
he loved them? Our God cannot fail. Our God sovereignly ordains all
things. Man is dead in trespasses and
sins. Seems like an extraordinary thing
you'd have to explain what deadness is to people. The only people
you have to explain what deadness is to are the religious people
who have no notion of what deadness is because they believe that
we're not really dead, that Adam really didn't die, that Adam
wasn't made spiritually dead and everyone in him in the garden
had just fell over and broke his little finger. And all he
needs to do is be patched up and caused and helped to do something
to make himself right. Listen to what God says. We are
dead in trespasses and sins. We're bound in change of darkness. We've fallen under the curse
of the law. We're blinded by the God of this
world. And as we read in 2 Corinthians
11, the God of this world is a religious, operates religiously. He operates in religion. His
greatest work in this world is behind the pulpits and in the
organisations of this world, the religious organisations of
this world. God's servants are sent out and
the Holy Spirit is given and poured out because of the sufficiency
of the sacrifice. I love what Galatians 4.6 says,
It says, because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son
into your heart, crying, Abba, Father. Because you are sons,
because you are sons, there's no gospel apart from Christ. There's no revelation, there's
no reconciliation, there's no regeneration. There is no peace
except where he is preached. And it comes in the new birth,
you must be born again, says our God to Nicodemus. Everyone
must be born again. They used to complain about,
I remember a lady complained, reading about a lady who complained
to Victor, why do you keep saying that people must be born again?
And he said, because the Lord says you must. It's a new life,
a new creation that sees and loves and repents and believes. The believer is brought into And it's a union of marriage. It's a union of a head and a
body. It's a union of a husband and
wife. And both come into agreement. Both giving themselves to one
another. Isn't marriage a beautiful picture
of the marriage of the Lord Jesus Christ with his bride? both giving
themselves to one another in love and in harmony. When one is offended, both are
offended. When one is despised, both are
despised. When one is heard, the other
is heard. When one is loved, the other
is loved. Faith embraces a person. And in regeneration, We are made,
as Paul did in his conversion, to have Christ revealed in him. this oneness in this union. This
is that simplicity that Paul is talking about. The Gospel
is simple. It's single, singular. That doesn't mean it's not deep
in so many remarkable ways that we can spend the rest of our
days studying just tiny parts of the glory of the Lord Jesus
Christ and we never get finished. How glorious is he! How glorious
is he in holiness! How glorious is he in all of
his sovereign power! How glorious is he in his revelation
to his people. And when he comes, when the Spirit
comes, as we read in John Chapter 14, the Holy Spirit takes the
things and he brings to remembrance and the Scriptures come alive
and make you to see that all of these promises are yea and
amen in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith embraces a person. Salvation embraces a person. It's Christ in you. It's a vital
union. Our teaching, our doctrine, comes
from Christ. You see Him, you will see all
the truths are in Him. If He makes you to be a sinner
by His regenerating work of power in you, You all put up the white
flag and no longer will you be interested in debating about
predestination and election and all of those things. If you're
made a sinner, you need a sovereign God to save you. If you're made
a sinner, you need a God to do all of the saving from beginning
to end. If you're made a sinner, you need a God that chose you
because you'd never choose him. You need a God who sovereignly
intervenes in all the things and orchestrates all of the events
of this world. Romans 8.28, to bring you to
Him and to keep you in Him. Faith looks to Christ alone in
its walk, its life, its perseverance in this world. Christ is our
guide. How should you live in this world?
You look to the Lord Jesus Christ. How should you be a husband?
You look to the Lord Jesus Christ. How should you obey as a wife?
You look to the Lord Jesus Christ. How should you witness and walk
in this world? You look to the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's why I love what Hebrews 12 says. You don't take your
eyes off him. You look at him and he's glorious. Even when
you've sinned, I love what Song of Solomon says in chapter 5,
and we don't have time to look at it, but if you look at chapter
5 of Song of Solomon, she behaves in the most extraordinary, wicked
way. And the Lord leaves the emblems
of his grace on the door of her room, and she says, I'm too busy,
I've done my things, I'm doing my things, and he just walks
away. And she walks through that city
looking for him, and she's asked the great question, do you love
me? What is he to you? You call him your beloved? And
I love her response. In her fallenness, and her wickedness,
and her sin, she describes the Lord Jesus Christ from head to
toe in all the glories of his beautiness. In the darkness,
the child of God clings to the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he
comes to her, people and there's not a single
mention of her sin. In fact he talks about how she
ravishes his heart and he's overcome with love for her. What a saviour
we have! What a saviour! Faith looks to
Christ alone. Faith looks to Christ for everything
alone. Faith looks to Christ in terms
of all of my works and all of my righteousness before God.
There is nothing that we need to know that we can't learn in
the Lord Jesus Christ. There's nothing that we can't
learn in the Lord Jesus Christ. How glorious, how glorious is
our Saviour. Which is why, to go back to our
passage in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is distressed that this
beguiling, deceitful prince of this world slithers like a snake
into the churches of this world and says to people, He hasn't
quite done enough. Did God really say? Did God really say? Is the character
of God as he revealed sufficiently glorious? Is his justice sufficient? Satan tempts always with pleasure. Satan's beguiling word is to
harass the saints and to take their peace from them. Satan
always tempts with pleasures of the flesh. See, it's not pleasure
that brings us to the Lord Jesus Christ, it's need. In the parable
of the sower, it was the pleasures of this world and the troubles
that come from the word of God that cause that seed to be taken
away and to be unproductive. Satan tempts with pleasure. Satan always blinds men to the
power and dominion of sin. Sinners in their own minds always
believe that they can be saved. He says, give me enough time.
Give me the right opportunities. They can come and be saved any
time they want. God is waiting for you. I read
a thing the other day that I'd written some years ago on the
bottom of some Sermon notes of mine, it says, and this is from
a church that was nearby and the Lord was merciful, he's closed
it down. He said, the Bible, this is the end of the script,
the Bible is a love story about a father desperately trying to
bring restoration and freedom to his children. Isn't that sweet? What a terrible, terrible, blessingless
lie that God can try and file. What a terrible blessing. The great challenge of Satan
is that he wants to sit on the throne of God. Who gets the glory
in that situation? Our peace and our rest and our
comfort in this world comes most when the Lord Jesus Christ is
glorified the most. And all false religion is dethroning
God in some way or other. Satan beguiles by pleasure, Satan
beguiles by blinding men to the power and dominion of sin. Satan
affords sinners who are deceived with an excuse. It's extraordinary
isn't it when sinners are exposed in the scriptures like Aaron
was at the bottom of that Mount Sinai. They just gave me the
gold and it popped into the fire and out popped these golden calves. We've done the same, brothers
and sisters. You squeeze any of Adam's children
a little tiny bit and out will come self-justifying lies. Satan beguiles men by making
false professions of faith. 2 Timothy 3 says they have a
form of godliness and deny the power thereof. They have all
of their religion and they deny the gospel which is the power
thereof. They have a form of godliness.
What's godliness? Godliness is God in you. Godliness
is Christ in you, the hope of glory. A believer is a man indwelt
by God and he reigns and rules in his house. God works in the
hearts of his believers and where God abides, light abides and
wisdom abides and grace abides and Christ is glorified. is a turning to Christ and not
turning to dead works. A few pages earlier in 2nd Corinthians
he speaks about the God of this world If our gospel be hid, it's
hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world hath
blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of
the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine upon them. For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. For God, who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. For we have this treasure in
earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and
not of us. As I said earlier, false religion
brings a peace, a peace of man's righteousness, a peace of man's
doing. And how often the religious of
this world can be stripped of their so-called peace when they
are told that their righteousnesses are nothing but filthy rags,
that God must choose them and not them choose him. that God
does all the work of salvation from beginning to end and not
them. God works in the hearts of his
people by sovereign grace. God regenerates his people and
they are born again from heaven to see heaven's glory in the
Lord Jesus Christ. There's a seamfulness and a singleness
about the true gospel. There's a complexity, a complexity
added. Man puts his hand to the work
of salvation. So simplicity, that word simplicity
in 2 Corinthians 3 means singleness. There's an oneness. I pray that
the Lord would cause us to love a simple gospel. A simple gospel
that declares the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in simpleness,
in plainness, in impossible to be mistaken terms. of God the Father for the Church
in the Lord Jesus Christ. The everlasting love of God the
Son to the Church, who loved his bride. and gave himself for
his bride, and shed his blood for his bride, and comes to his
bride in this world. When she's hiding in her darkness,
when she's hiding in her religion, he comes and he takes her out
of all that, and he brings her to himself. The everlasting love
of God the Father, the everlasting love of God the Son, the everlasting
love of God the Holy Spirit to his church. He's loved us. He
loves his people. It's simple, all of our mercies
and all of our blessings flow from this one united source,
singleness in will and purpose of our great God. In closing,
I want us to just spend some time looking at the simplicity We preach Christ. We preach the
mysteries revealed, the glorious, high, holy God. We have a simple
reason for being chosen. We are chosen in Him. We have
a simple reason for standing before God without any sins.
We are washed in His blood. We are justified by His righteousness. When I stand before God, when
God's children stand before Him, they'll be there robed in the
very righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And though they
don't have that robe on, they will not be there. All of God's
children will be robed. We have a simple redemption,
isn't it? Our sins, we are redeemed by
His blood. We have a simple message of calling. He calls by His Spirit. We have
a simple reason for being forgiven of our sins. God in Christ forgave
you. God for Christ's sake forgives
you, not because of your sake. We have a simple reason for not
being condemned. It is Christ that died, Romans
8, 1 and 8, 34. We have a simple reason for all
that God gives us. It's all been delivered to us
freely by His grace. Romans 8.32. We have a simple
reason for being saved. The unmerited favour of God Almighty. We have a simple ground of assurance. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save. He didn't come to the righteous.
They don't need a saviour. He comes, are you a sinner? Has
God made you a sinner? We have a simple object of faith.
We look unto Jesus who is the author and the finisher of faith. We have a simple motive for service. We have a simple desire in Philippians
3 to be found When God comes looking for me,
I don't want Him to look anywhere else other than His dear and
precious Son. I have a simple objective. When
I awake in his likeness, I'll be satisfied. I have a simple
hope regarding judgment. I have confidence on the day
of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. Paul speaks of another Jesus. There is another Jesus being
preached all over this world today. By the promise of God
and by the evidence of God's witness throughout the scriptures,
there's another Jesus being preached. Is there another Jesus more lovely,
more divine, more majestic, more powerful to save? Is there another
Jesus more accessible for sinners? Is there another Jesus? Another
Jesus unto whom people commit all of their salvation. This
Jesus can bear the weight of all of the sins of all of his
people. There's another spirit. Is there another spirit more
lovely, more effective to bring to life the dead, more effective
in leading his people to the Saviour, more comforting in the
words of promise that he's written? Another gospel. Is there better
news? Is there better news? There is news being proclaimed
all over this world. There is news being proclaimed
all over this town, and it goes by the name of gospel, and it's
proclaimed in churches, and it speaks of a Jesus, but it's another
Jesus. Is Christ all you have? How lovely our Saviour. How simple
our Gospel. How subtle the corruption. May
God keep us faithful. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we do thank and praise you for the simplicity, the singleness,
the oneness of the Gospel of all of our salvation. You entrusted
into the hands of your dear and precious Son. and we praise you
heavenly father for a trinitarian salvation that you elect to the
people and put them in your son before the foundation of the
world and your son took full responsibility to come into this
world and to save them and to redeem them and the blessed holy
spirit has promised to come and take the finished work of the
lord jesus christ and just to reveal it to us that we might
be found looking to him and not looking anywhere else that we
might be found rescued and redeemed from this present evil world
and the crookedness of its religion, that we might find his blood
precious, our Father. We do thank you for your work
of grace in the hearts of your people. We thank you for the
promises that you've made and we pray that as we take these
elements that remind us of his body and his blood, broken for
you, shed for you. Our Heavenly Father, for those
of us who know him, may it be a cause to remember how glorious
he is. We pray your mercy upon us. Pray
for those who can't be with us and pray for our visitors who
have gone and our visitors coming and we pray for all of the events
that surround the death of Joe Terrell in the States, Heavenly
Father, and for us to be able to weep with our brothers and
sisters who we don't know but still love in you. Be merciful
to them altogether, our Father. We thank you in Jesus' name.
Amen.