Let's go to Romans chapter 1. Verse 1 begins, Paul, a servant
of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the
gospel of God. And that's our subject, the gospel.
The gospel. What is the gospel? What is the
gospel? What does God accomplish through
the gospel? And for those who believe the
gospel, what is our purpose for being separated unto the gospel? Those are three questions I want
to answer from the first seven verses. Now in this brief salutation,
the Holy Spirit of God gave Paul the words to define in plain
language what the gospel is. That's what we have here, a plain
declaration of what the gospel is. He says the gospel is the gospel
of God which He had promised before by His prophets in the
Holy Scriptures. That's what the gospel is. It's
the gospel which He promised before in the Holy Scriptures. Everything in the Old Testament
declares the Lord Jesus Christ. Whenever the Lord met the two
men on the road to Emmaus, you recall He said, it says, beginning
at Moses, in all the scriptures, in all the prophets, in all the
law and the prophets, He declared the things concerning Himself. He said, all things must be fulfilled. which are written in the Law
and in the Psalms and in the Prophets concerning me. Everything
in the Old Testament is concerning Christ. There's nothing, there's
no new Gospel. The Gospel was declared in the
Garden. As soon as Adam and Eve fell
in the Garden, God came to Adam and Eve and He declared the seed
of woman was coming to crush the serpent's head. Why was that
necessary? Why does Genesis 3.15 say that
Christ is coming and it says He's the seed of woman. He's
that one born of a woman without who never knew a man. He had
to be holy, harmless, separate from sinners if He would represent
sinners. That's why He was born of a virgin.
He's the seed of woman. But why did He need to come and
crush the serpent's head? Go to Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2. Alright, Hebrews chapter 2, he
says here. Verse 14, For as much as the
children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise
took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that
had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them
who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to
bondage. Whenever we sinned in Adam, we
were guilty before God, we became guilty before God, so when we're
born, as Ephesians 2 tells us, the power of the prince of the
air. We're under the power of the
devil. And the only way we could be freed, we couldn't free ourselves,
Christ had to come. And He had to, as Genesis 3.15
says, the devil bruised His heel on the cross. But on the cross,
Christ crushed His head. He put away the sin of His people
and delivered His people from death. And then He comes and
He binds the strong man and delivers us from His power in regeneration. Well, right after, in the garden
right after that, after He declared the seed of woman, Genesis 3
tells us, verse 21, It says, Genesis 3.21 says, Unto
Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins
and clothed them. God sent forth His Son to manifest
His righteousness and to be the righteousness of His people.
And Christ came forth. We couldn't keep the law. God
gave the law to declare us guilty. And Romans 3 tells us that now
is the righteousness of the law manifested without our obedience
to it. But it's witnessed by the law
and the prophets. That's what Paul's telling us in our text.
All these Old Testament Scriptures declared Christ, declared His
righteousness, that He's the righteousness of His people.
And so He came forth. But God not only provided righteousness
for us by His Son, God also comes and clothes us in the righteousness
of His Son. That's how ruined we are in the
fall. We not only could not work out
a righteousness for ourselves, but even when that righteousness
was worked out by Christ for His people, we couldn't clothe
ourselves with that righteousness. God had to do both. And then
shortly after that, the first murder committed in this world.
I'm just showing you that all the old scriptures, all the Old
Testament scriptures are concerning Christ. The first murder ever
committed in the world was committed by a wheel worshiper persecuting
a child of God's grace. Cain, they were brothers, Cain
came with the works of his hands. The works He tended the ground
and broke up the ground. The ground is a picture of you
and me. We were created from the ground. The ground is a picture
of the flesh. And Cain brought forth the fruit of the ground,
just like a sinner trying to come to God by the works of his
own flesh. Abel came in the blood of a lamb,
a picture of Christ. And God accepted Abel and rejected
Cain. And for that, the will-worshipper
killed the child of God's grace. Then what do we read shortly
after that about Noah? All the years passed and man
corrupted himself more and more and more and more. And the scripture
says God looked down upon the children of men and it says He
looked on the hearts of men And he said, every imagination of
the thoughts of their hearts is only evil continually. That's you and me by nature.
Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually. Because God's not in our thoughts,
not the true God. And so, what does scripture say
about Noah? Noah found grace. in the eyes
of the Lord. That doesn't mean Noah went out
and did something to obtain grace. It means Noah found out God had
been gracious to him without a cause in him. And so there
we have the ark, a picture of Christ. And God shut Noah up
in the ark. And He shut the door. and the
rains came down. That's the judgment of God, the
righteous wrath of God on that whole world of sinners. And Noah
was no different from all the rest of them. The difference
was, God chose to be gracious to Noah. And so, he put him in
that ark and when the rain came down, in type and picture, Noah
died just like everybody else died. But the ark bore the reign
of justice for Noah. And he lived. While the rest
had to bear that flood of judgment themselves and they perished.
You see that all through the old scriptures Christ is declared. Christ is declared. God called
Abraham. Called him out of a land of idolatry. And He gave Abraham one son. His only true son was Isaac. And God told him all the promises. This is the one that the Messiah
is coming through. And all the promises of God are
going to be fulfilled in the Christ when He comes forth. He's
coming forth through Isaac. And that's the one in whom all
my elect are going to be saved. Now Abraham, you take that only
begotten son and you take him up to the mount and you kill
him. You sacrifice him. Can you imagine that? Can you
imagine how Abraham thought, Lord, you just told me Christ
is coming through my son. You just told me that all the
promises of God are going to be fulfilled in Christ. And now
this one you tell me he's coming through, you want me to go kill
my son? But Noah believed God, so he didn't say that. He didn't
murmur against God. He went up to the mountain. And
Isaac said, here's the fire, here's the wood, where's the
lamb? And he said, my son, God will
provide himself a lamb. And he put Isaac on that altar
and Abraham killed his son. That's what the scripture said.
In the intent of his heart, Abraham raised the knife up. He was going to slay his son
and he did according to God. That was in his heart because
God told him to. But right before he He plunged
that knife into Isaac. God provided a lamb. There he
was, caught in a thicket, caught in a thorn bush. And all those
many years later, we see Christ bearing the crown of thorns.
And John said, Behold, the Lamb of God. There he is. God providing
himself a lamb. God providing himself a lamb.
all through the scriptures is concerning His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. Whenever it came time for the
night of the Passover and God's going to bring Him out of Egypt,
He provided a lamb. He provided a lamb. And He said,
I'm going to pass through Egypt and I'm going to slay all the
firstborn in the land of Egypt. I'm going to slay all the firstborn
in Egypt and in the houses of Israel. And they all were slain
that night. You know what that's a picture
of? Everybody who sins has to die under the justice of God
in order for God to be just. And we shall. Everybody has sinned
in Adam. And every single person in this
earth will die under the justice of God. Because God's just. The wages of sin is death. God
must pay those wages earned by the sinner. He must do it. The
difference is, for the children of Israel, God provided a lamb.
And the lamb died instead of the firstborn. And that's a picture
of Christ, our Passover, sacrificed for us. Christ laid down His
life and Christ bore the justice that His people deserved so His
people can go free. And we were not, we were slain.
According to the law of God, before the judgment seat of God,
every one of God's elect were killed when Christ was crucified. And therefore, the law is satisfied.
The law has been honored. And God is just now to show us
mercy. And He justified us in Christ.
You go over to the brazen serpent. The children of Israel sinned against God.
murmured against him, sinned against him. What we did in the
garden, sinned against God. And so God sent forth serpents
among them and the serpents were biting them and they were dying.
And so God provided the cure. He said, you take a piece of
brass and you make that piece of brass into the very thing
that's killing the children of Israel. And so Moses made it
into a serpent. The very thing that was killing
him. And he lifted it up on a pole. Christ said in John 3, as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of God be lifted up. That justice had to be satisfied.
God made His Son. He made Christ the substitute
of His people. He made Him the very thing that
was killing us. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, For
he hath made him who knew no sin, sin for us. Just like that
brass was made into a serpent, the thing killing the people.
Christ was made sin. And He bore the wrath of God
and made His people the righteousness of God in Him. That whosoever
believeth in Him, when He made that brass, He said, just look
to it. Just look to it and you'll be cured. Don't do anything,
just look to it. And that's what Christ said.
That's why God sent me forth, Christ said to Nicodemus in John
3. The Son of Man must be lifted
up that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish but shall
have everlasting life. You see, the salvation is not
in our doing. God's been declaring this from
the beginning. When Adam broke that one law
in the garden, that ended us doing anything. We were in that
first head and we died. And so the last Adam came, the
only other man to ever walk the face of this earth that was upright
and without sin. And he represented his people,
just like Adam represented his people. And so what Christ did,
his people did. And he redeemed us from all iniquity.
You go on and on through the old covenant scriptures and you
have Melchizedek, having neither beginning of days nor ending
of days. Christ our High Priest, without
beginning, without end. Eternal, everlasting High Priest. You have the tabernacle and the
furniture in the tabernacle. Hebrews, the book of Hebrews
is all about how everything in the old covenant law pictured
Christ to come. It all pictured Christ to come.
I told you recently that picture that I've just, I'm going to
have to preach on this I guess at some point, but that shekel
of the sanctuary had to be taken up, they had to come and pay
everybody 20 years and above, they had to pay the shekel of
the sanctuary, pure shekel of the sanctuary. It had to be the
pure minted pure exact weight of the shekel of the sanctuary.
Christ's blood, it was the exact payment. It was exactly what
was needed to redeem His people. God said, you bring the shekel
of the sanctuary and you redeem all those 20 years old and upwards.
And so that's what it was. It was to make, the scripture
says it was to make atonement. It was to make atonement for
them. And so they brought that shekel, then God says, now you
melt that shekel of the sanctuary down. And they melted all those,
that silver shekel, they melted it all down and then they took
that and made these triangular shaped molds. And they put that
melted silver in there and they made these sockets. They all
fit together. Every one of them, they had holes
in them so that the boards of the tabernacle went into those
sockets and it held the whole tabernacle in place. When that
wind blew in that wilderness, it couldn't blow it down because
that foundation was holding the whole thing up. And when the
priest went in there, everything the priest did in the service
to God, he did on that foundation of redemption already accomplished. And that's Christ, our foundation. The Lord said, I've laid in Zion
for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a sure stone, and that
stone is our Lord Jesus Christ. That foundation is Christ. Paul
said, no other foundation can a man lay than that which is
laid, and that foundation is the Lord Jesus Christ. So you
see, all through the Old Testament, we see here, that's what the
Gospel is. It's the verse 2, Romans 1-2,
it's that which God had promised the four by His prophets in the
Holy Scriptures. That's what it is. And then,
He says there, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. That's what the whole Gospel
is. It's concerning Christ. We preach
the same message today as they preached then. So that's what
the gospel is. It's Christ, Christ, Christ,
Christ. Christ is the righteousness and
Christ is the holiness of His people. It's all Christ. Now
secondly, what does God accomplish through the gospel? I won't stay
on this too long because this is what our message was from
these verses last week. Remember we saw how God makes
a servant. That's what He does through this
gospel. Paul says there, I'm a servant of Jesus Christ. called
to be an apostle separated unto the gospel of God. That's what
God does through the gospel. He makes a servant, a willing
bond servant to Christ through the gospel. He sends the gospel
forth and Christ enters in and Christ causes you to hear for
the first time. He causes you to hear. And Paul
said in Corinthians, he said, and the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, they are mighty through God to the pulling down
of strongholds. They bring every high thing that
exalts itself against the knowledge of God, they bring every high
thing into captivity. to the obedience of Christ. You
know what the high thing is that exalts itself against the knowledge
of God? Me and you. Me and you, whom
God saved. And through this gospel, He brings
us down and brings us into captivity to the obedience of Christ. You
know what being brought into captivity to the obedience of
Christ is? It's to be brought to rest entirely
in Christ's obedience. To trust His obedience. to rest
in His obedience. See, we're not trying to fulfill
the law. We fulfill the law through faith
in Christ. Go to Romans chapter 3. Romans
chapter 3. This is what the whole third
chapter of Romans is declaring. And then at the end, Paul says,
after he's made this whole point, how that it's through faith in
Christ that the law is fulfilled. He says then, so verse 31, Do
we then make void the law through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish
the law. What shall we say then that Abraham
our father is pertaining to the flesh hath found? For if Abraham
were justified by works, he hath worth the glory, but not before
God. For what saith the scripture, Abraham believed God, and it
was imputed unto him for righteousness. Do you realize that when Abraham
did that, he did it 430 years before the law was given? He
fulfilled the law of God. He didn't make void the law.
He fulfilled the law 430 years before it was given. Now how
did Abraham, how was he brought to the obedience of Christ before
the law was ever given? Paul said in Galatians chapter
2, The gospel was preached unto Abraham. The gospel was preached
unto Abraham. And through that gospel, God
brought him to rest in Christ. God said, In thy seed shall all
the nations of the earth be blessed. Let's go see this. Galatians
chapter 3. Galatians chapter 3. Look at verse 16. Now to Abraham
and his seed were the promises made. The promises made is the
gospel that was preached to Abraham. And when he when he preached,
look back up at Galatians 3.8. The scripture for seeing that
God would justify the heathen through faith preached before
the gospel unto Abraham saying in thee shall all nations be
blessed. Look at Galatians 3.16. Now to
Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He said not and
to seeds as of many but as of one unto thy seed, which is Christ. So what God said to him was,
in thy seed, in Christ, who's coming through your family tree,
through your lineage, in Christ shall all the nations of the
earth be blessed. All the nations of the earth
are blessed in the sense that Christ had a people scattered
throughout all the nations of the earth over all the periods
of time. And they're blessed because Christ
came forth and worked out a righteousness for them. Look at this now, Galatians
3.16, and that seed is Christ, verse 17, this I say, that the
covenant, he's talking about the law, the covenant which was,
I'm sorry, that's the everlasting covenant that was confirmed before
of God in Christ, the law, which God gave 430 years after, cannot
disannul that it should make the promise of no effect. In other words, God made this
promise through the preaching of the gospel that in Christ,
Noah was blessed and all God's elect would be blessed, saved,
made righteous. And then 430 years later, God
gave the law at Mount Sinai. And He says, And that law that
God gave 430 years later, it couldn't disannul that everlasting
covenant of grace that God had already made with Abraham 430
years before that. It couldn't make that promise
of no effect. That law was given to declare
us guilty and shut our mouths so that we might be justified
by Christ through faith in Christ. who fulfilled the law. So this
is what the gospel does. It brings this good news to us
and declares Christ to be, that by Christ's obedience His people
are made righteous and God is just and justifier and through
that message the Holy Spirit comes forth and Christ filleth
all in all His people. He brings us to a saving knowledge
of Him. He gives us the knowledge of
Christ. And when He does that, brethren, we're brought to faith
in Christ. And the whole law is honored, the whole law is
fulfilled by Christ. And we lay hold of that through
faith. We receive it freely given through faith. That's being brought
to the obedience of faith, to the obedience of the faith, to
Christ's obedience, to rest in Him. That's what He does through
the gospel. So first off, the Gospel is concerning
His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, declared all through the Old
Testament Scriptures, same thing the New Testament Scriptures
declare. And secondly, what He accomplishes through that Gospel
is, He brings us to rest in Christ and trust Him alone. Now thirdly,
for those who are brought to believe on Christ, to believe
this Gospel, what's our purpose for being here? Why are we still
here? He says there, back in our text,
Romans 1, at the end of verse 5, he says,
we received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among
all nations for His name. Remember when our Lord Jesus
Christ said to His disciples, go into all the world, go into
all the nations and preach this gospel. Go into all the nations
and preach this gospel. And Lord, I'm with you always.
It's Christ that's going to make it effectual through the Holy
Spirit. And so that's what He saved His people for and left
us in this world, established His church is to send us forth
preaching this gospel. Go with me to 2 Corinthians chapter
4. You see, you and I who were saved through the preaching of
the word, we experienced, we know by first hand experience,
we know that this gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
We experienced it. We know God quickened us and
made us new and brought us to faith through this gospel. We've
experienced the power of it. And so, He brought us to rest
in Christ through it. So you know what we know? We
know, we know this is the power of God unto salvation. This is
the message through which God is going to reveal Himself in
the hearts of His people. And so, when you've been saved
through the Gospel, it makes you only use the Gospel. 2 Corinthians 4, same man writing
this wrote Romans, Paul. He says here, Romans 4, I mean
2 Corinthians 4, he says, Therefore, verse 1, seeing we have this
ministry, as we have received mercy. He's saying there, the
same way as we have received mercy. The same manner in which
we receive mercy, the same means by which we have received mercy,
we faint not. But have renounced the hidden
things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the
Word of God deceitfully. What is that? What do men do
when they do that? Men will tell you in private,
Oh, I believe what you say. I believe the doctrine of grace.
I believe we're totally depraved by nature. I believe that God
unconditionally elected us unto salvation. I believe that unconditionally
elected his people that he sent forth Christ who accomplished
the atonement limited to those who elect alone. I believe that
the Holy Spirit comes forth and irresistibly quickens us and
brings us to faith in Christ. He'll say, I believe what you're
saying that the gospel says that it's by God's preserving power
that we persevere in faith until the end and we don't draw back.
You say, I believe that. But he won't get up and preach
it. Why? He's handling the Word of God
deceitfully. Paul said he's trying to take
the offense out of the Gospel. See, that message is offensive
because it tells sinners there's nothing a sinner can do to save
himself. It shuts him up as guilty and
makes him to see he's in need of God showing him mercy. It's
not like he was told. It's not that God's wanting to
do something for you if you'll just pretty please let Him do
it. It declares to Him, God's really God. And you're at His
mercy. He's not at your mercy. And that
message is offensive. That message tells a sinner he
can't work out a righteousness to please God. Only Christ is
the righteousness of God. And if we're going to be accepted
of God and made the righteousness of God, we're going to have to
bow to Christ. And He even has to give you the life and the
faith to make you bow to Him. That offends the sinner. And
so a preacher would get up, men who have not experienced the
power of the gospel are ashamed of it. and they prove they are
ashamed of it because they try to take the offense out of the
gospel. They try to preach a message
that doesn't offend anybody and somehow still preach Christ.
That's impossible. You can't do that. If you do
that, if you take the offense out of the gospel, Paul said,
in Galatians, he said, then you don't have a gospel. You've become
the servant of men, not the servant of God. But when you've experienced
it, when you've experienced the power of the gospel, Paul says,
we renounced all those hidden things of dishonesty. We're not
handling the word of God in a crafty manner anymore. What are we doing
now? 2 Corinthians 4.2, but by manifestation of the truth, we
commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.
What does that mean to commend ourselves to every man's conscience?
That's what I've been doing since I stood up here and started preaching
32 minutes ago. I'm declaring to you what the
scriptures say so that a man has to, in his own conscience,
he has to either say, I agree with God and I bow to God and
I'm going to give God all the glory or he has to say, I hate
God and I'm not going to bow to that message. It doesn't leave
him any wiggle room. He's going to either have to
bow to God or reject God. One of the two. Everything I've
been telling you here this morning gives Christ all the glory. It
gives God, the three persons in the Godhead, all the glory.
All the glory. And it doesn't give man any.
So, if any man doesn't believe on Christ, Why don't you? If any man doesn't
believe on Christ, when he hears the message that gives God all
the glory, the only thing you can conclude is he don't want
God to have all the glory. He wants some of it. He wants
to be told he did something. See, that's commending ourselves
to have a man's conscience. This word of God is sharp, it's
quick, it's powerful. It's a discerner of the thoughts
and intents of the heart. We're getting to the heart of
the matter now. Why hasn't a man bowed to Christ when he's heard
the gospel preached? We either want Christ to have
all the glory because God's done this work in our heart and we'll
say, not unto us Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be the
glory. Or, He proves He's dead in sin. In that He doesn't want
God to have all glory. He wants to say He did something. That's why He's left us in this
earth. We'll go back to Romans 1. We've received grace. And we're not all apostles, but
we're all servants of the Lord Jesus. And we're all supporting
the ministry. That's what we're here for and
we're sending that forth among all nations for His name. You remember when he called Paul
on the road to Damascus and he sent out an ice to him and when
he sent out an ice he said, you go tell him, he's a chosen vessel
unto me to bear my name. He is going to go to kings and
princes and all amongst the Gentiles. He is going to bear my name.
Romans 1 says we bear His name as the Son of God. We bear His
name as the Son of David. We bear His name as the God-man. We bear His name declaring He
is Jesus for He shall save His people from our sins. We bear
His name declaring He is the Lord, the Sovereign Savior. We
bear His name declaring He's the Christ, God's anointing,
God's choice. All our message is bearing His
name. We're preaching His name. I pray God will use this gospel
now to quicken one of His people and bring us to faith in Christ.
Let's stand together in prayer. Father, we thank You for Your
Word. We thank You that You've sent the Gospel to us and that
You've made us to be no longer ashamed of it. You've revealed
to us it is the power by which You reveal Your righteousness
in the face of Christ Jesus. Lord, we ask that You do that
now in the hearts of those that do believe and in the hearts
of those that are Yours that don't yet believe. And help us
now, Lord, to see Your glory in His face. and bring us to
that obedience to bow and trust Christ for all things necessary
and rest in Him. Help us, Lord, to go forth and
send this gospel forth into all the world and support the preaching
of it by faithful men all over this world. Lord, make us to
be useful as Your servants in obeying this charge to send it
forth. And we trust, Lord, one of these
days You're going to call the last chosen redeemed child You won't lose one. And when
you do that, Father, we trust in that Christ will return. And
we will go and be with you forever. Lord, make us look only to Christ. Forgive us of our sins. In His
precious name we pray. Amen.