Go with me, if you would, to
2 Timothy chapter one. I know it has been mentioned
a lot this week, and my intention is not to keep bringing it up
for the sake of bringing it up. But for anyone who doesn't know,
I had the great privilege of preaching to Malawi, Africa last
Thursday morning over the internet. And it has truly, you know, obviously it's made
a big impact on me. And I thank God for it. A man
named Brother Willie Mapote is the pastor of Chatteloma Sovereign
Grace Church in Malawi, Africa. And he asked me if I would preach
to his congregation, and he translated into their native tongue. And
it was such a high honor for me. I came over here Thursday
morning. It was Thursday afternoon to
them. That's when they have their service. I was just so blessed
by the experience and I know that you were not there to experience
it with me. We did it over the phone, over
the cell phone. We have an app. It's a video
chat and it's different from watching a service over sermon
audio where you are sitting there watching someone else have a
service. I've watched many services that
way. And I thank the Lord for that.
But this was different. This was one-on-one. We were there together. My dad
called me on the phone early Thursday morning and I was headed
over here to the church. He said, what are you doing?
I said, I'm headed to Malawi. And I felt like I went to Malawi
Thursday. And honestly, in that moment,
when we were in that service, I could see behind Brother Willie,
the way they had the camera set, I saw the inside of their building.
I felt like I was in Malawi and he was in America. And I know that you weren't with
me. I wished all of you could have
been there. I wished everybody could have just gathered around
my phone. And it went through my mind of saying, if anybody
would like to come, but I just didn't know how to make all that
happen. But even though you weren't physically
there with me, I want you to be a part of that experience.
This is a wonderful thing, a wonderful experience, and I want you to
have a connection to it and be a part of it. So I am going to
bring to you right now the message that I brought to them last Thursday
morning. And I want you to know what was preached
to them from this congregation. I mentioned this to you Wednesday
night, but you know, I'm not speaking on behalf of me. We
are all speaking on behalf of God, but I'm speaking on behalf
of us. This is us. And we had the opportunity
to preach the gospel to some brethren. And I want you to know
what they heard. And I want you to know what they
rejoiced in and said amen to. And they did say amen. I heard
as I was preaching throughout the message, I heard on a few
occasions at the right time, amen. Brother Willie told me there
were smiles throughout the room. And it just blessed me. And I
pray the Lord will meet with us this morning, like I believe
he met with us Thursday morning. But as I go through this, I want
you to know, I want you to, in your mind, hear this through
the ears of our brethren over there. But I also want you to
know this is to us, what Paul said to Timothy and to them at Ephesus and wherever Timothy
was. And what Paul says and God says to them, our brethren over
on the other side of the world, he says to us, this is to us.
So let's hear it in that way. Everything that he says here,
he's saying it to us too. 2 Timothy 1 verse 1 says, Paul,
an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, according to
the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus. He said, by
the will of God. Everything is by the will of
God, isn't it? Don't you love knowing that? Everything is by the will of
God. Verse two says, to Timothy, my
dearly beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father
and Christ Jesus our Lord. He said, grace, mercy, and peace. That's my desire for you. That's
my desire for you. The free gift of Christ, salvation
in Christ, peace and rest through Christ, With Christ, that's my
desire for you. That's my desire for them. That's
my desire for us. Verse three, he said, I thank
God. I thank God whom I serve from my
forefathers with pure conscience. that without ceasing I have remembrance
of thee in my prayers night and day. He said, I thank God for
you. And he said, I thank God for
the fact that he's caused me to know of you and pray for you. He said, I'm praying for you.
I'm praying for you. He said, I thank God for that.
Verse four, greatly desiring to see thee. being mindful of
thy tears that I may be filled with joy when I call to remembrance
the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy
grandmother Lois and thy mother Eunice, and I am persuaded that
in thee also. He said, I desire to see you.
He said, I am mindful of you. You're in my mind and you're
in my heart. And he said, I want to encourage
you. Verse six, wherefore I put thee
in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in
thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given
us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound
mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed
of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be
thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the
power of God. He said, I want to encourage
you to not be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord. The one
thing that I have heard over and over again from Brother Willie
is, There is so much false religion in Africa. And you know what
the number one thing I've told him is? There is so much false
religion in America. We're in the same boat, brother.
We're in the same boat. He said, Paul told Timothy, I
want to encourage you to not be ashamed of the testimony of
the Lord. Don't be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord. The
testimony of truth. The truth that is so hard to
find. The truth that is so rare in
a world, a whole world of false religion. The apostle called this truth
the gospel of God. The gospel of God, not the gospel
of man. but the gospel of God, God's
gospel, God's declaration, God's doctrine, God's word, God's way. He said, don't be ashamed of
it. The one that God has declared. And the apostle told us what
it is in verse nine. Verses nine and 10 are the focus
for our text this morning. This right here is the gospel
declaration of God. And I say this to all of us.
Right now, I say this to every one of us. If we want to know
what the gospel is according to God, here it is. This is the gospel according
to God, verse nine. It says, who? That's salvation right there. Salvation is a person. Salvation
is a person. If we want to declare salvation
in one word, it's this right here. Who? Speaking of God, speaking
of Christ. Now watch verse nine. Who hath
saved us? We need to really very slowly,
very deliberately understand what is written right here. You
notice I'm going slow. When I read this to the brethren
last Thursday, I paused after every line. When I originally
wrote this out, I rewrote this for us because the first time
I wrote it, it was a 15-minute message. Because whatever I said,
he had to say, and it's double. And in my brain, when I was writing
it, I knew I would have an interpreter. So I would write a line, and
then I'd leave myself a little space here to remind me, don't
say too much, let him talk. And then I'd say something else.
We don't need a translator this morning, but I'm still gonna
pause after every line. I'm gonna go slow, just like
I did Thursday. And I'm gonna pause after every
line so we can really enter into what's being said right here.
I pray that God will engrave this on our souls. And I'm talking
about us, right here, right now. I pray God will engrave this
on our souls. Watch this, verse nine says,
who hath saved us? Who hath, that means, that word
hath means has. Who has saved us? Everybody's trying to figure
out how to get saved and how to be saved. And what must I
do to be saved? Here's the gospel according to God who has saved
us. He goes on to say, and called
us with an holy calling. That means God did it. Now watch
this next one. not according to our works, but according to His own purpose
and grace, which was given us in Christ
Jesus before the world began. That
makes me laugh in my heart. I've known men over the years
who, as they sit and listen to preaching, they just laugh through
the whole message. I get it. That makes me just smile and
laugh. Verse 10 says, but is now made manifest by the appearing
of our Savior. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ He goes on to say, by the appearing
of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death. I love the sound of that. I love
the sound of that. Do we realize that's what he
did for his people? Do we realize that? He removed
eternal death. What did Christ do? What did
he accomplish? He removed death. It goes on to say, and hath brought
life and immortality to light through the gospel,
through this means of preaching his word. Now, I want us to just
look at that declaration for a minute. That's all I want us
to do, that glorious declaration of God, okay? The lie of false
religion is, what must man do? It doesn't matter what false
religion it is. That's the great lie of all of
false religion. What must man do? The truth of
the gospel is, what Christ has done. It's not what man must do, it's
what Christ has done. The lie of false religion says
that man must do something in order to be saved. But do we see that everything
that we just read is in the past tense? Do we recognize that?
Everything we just read is in the past tense. The truth of
God's word declares that the work is done. The work is done. Verse 9 says, who hath saved
us? The work is already done. Christ
has already saved his people. That's an amazing announcement.
That's a glorious revelation, such a glorious revelation. I
asked the brethren Thursday, and I was going through some
of this, and I was blessed watching our brother interpret what I
was saying. You know, sometimes we get so
excited, we raise our voice, or we, you know, who knows what.
You just get excited telling these things, and I could tell
he was getting excited translating it. And, you know, I would say,
the work is done! And he'd say in his own language,
the work is done! And I asked him, I said, does that make,
I said, brethren, does that make you as happy as it makes me?
Does that make you happy like it makes me happy? I heard him
in the background, amen. The work is already done. How
glorious is it to know that when the Lord Jesus Christ cried,
it is finished, it was finished. The gospel is so restful, it's
so peaceful. Verse 9 tells us that not only
did Christ save His people, but it tells us that He sovereignly
saved His people. Verse 9 tells us that. He sovereignly
saved His people. It says that our salvation was
not according to our works, but according to His own purpose
and grace. God's salvation is a sovereign
salvation. according to his own purpose
and grace. God does not save according to
man's purpose. He does not save according to
man's will or man's decision. He saves according to his own
purpose and grace. It's his will. He is gracious
to whom he is pleased to be gracious. He shows mercy to whom He is
pleased to show mercy. What that means is He saves whoever
He chooses to save. Salvation is of the Lord. It's
of the Lord. Christ sovereignly saved His
people according to His own will and purpose. Verse 9 also tells us that Christ
eternally saved His people. Christ sovereignly saved His
people And Christ eternally saved his people. The end of verse
nine, if we look at it right here, it says that our salvation
was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began. All of God's people were chosen
in the Lord Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world. Before the foundation, now let
me just say that again and then ask you a question. All of God's
people were chosen. They were selected. One man had heard the truth,
heard something of the truth and was telling another man that
he was going to go hear more about it. He said, I want to
go hear more about the selected ones, the elected ones. They were selected, okay? Now,
think about this. Is it not amazing to think about
the fact that God thought on each one of His people? And if
we are among those people, God, in His mind, thought on each
one of us before this world was ever created? Individually, God the Father
elected Individually, every single soul that He purposed to save. And individually, He gave every
single one of those souls to the Lord Jesus Christ to purchase
and redeem and pay the debt of their sin before God in full. And that's exactly what the Lord
Jesus Christ did. He appeared to us in the flesh And how amazing that is. He came
to us. He left his high and holy throne
of glory and he came down here to us. And as a man, God manifests in
the flesh. As a man, he lived a perfect,
spotless, holy life on this earth. He lived a life before God that
no sinner could ever live. And then after he earned a perfect
life before God, God caused him to trade places with his people. People who live nothing but a
sinful life before God. He traded His holy life for our
sinful life. If we want to understand what
Jesus Christ did for us, He didn't come to make salvation possible.
He didn't come to show us a better way. He didn't come to point
and say, that's the way you ought to go. If we want to know what
Christ did for us, He came and earned a perfect, holy, spotless
life and gave it to us, traded with us. That's what he did. On the day of judgment, it says
the books are going to be open. That's every work that every
man or woman has ever done. The books are going to be open.
And the only reason that God's people are going to be spared
is because Jesus Christ came to each one of them and he said,
give me your book. You take mine. And we're holding
Jesus Christ's book. And he put iron. When you look
at the book, it says Gabe Stoniker. And it's all because when God
the Father looked at his book that he was holding on the cross
of Calvary, it said Jesus Christ on it. He put his own name on
my book. And as soon as the books are
open and you hold up, this is what I did. For 33 and a half
years, this is what I did. You'll say, well done. God the Father took all the sin
of His people and laid it on His Son. All the sin of His people,
laid it all on His Son, pressed it into His Son. Christ bore
our sins in His body on the tree. With that sin in Him, God the
Father poured out all of His judgment, all of His wrath, all
of His fury on His own Son. And Christ died under the judgment
that was owed to us. He died paying the price, enduring
the condemnation that was owed to us. He died for His people. It's appointed unto man once
to die. And He died for His people. And
because He endured the death that was owed to His people,
the moment that He did that, the moment He took that death
from them, He abolished death for them. He took death away. He ended death. What did Jesus
Christ do? He ended death. Eternal death. He removed eternal death from
His people. And when He arose from the grave
of that death, He brought with Him life and immortality. Don't you love the word immortality?
That's a big word. That means eternal life. Can't die. Nothing in Christ
dies. Eternal life. Eternal life in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal life with the Lord Jesus
Christ. I want to live with the Lord
Jesus Christ. We want to live with the Lord
Jesus Christ. As it turns out, our brethren
on the other side of the world, they want to live with the Lord
Jesus Christ. And we all want to live together. There's going
to be a new earth, a new heaven, and a new earth. We're not going
to be separated because there's no more sea. No separation. All of God's people will get
to live forever with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he
accomplished for his people. That is the salvation that Christ
finished and secured for all of God's people. Redemption in
him, redemption with him. So I've taken a little liberty
here. I'm gonna hurry up. I lengthened
this because I thought it needed to be lengthened, but I need
to hurry now. I'll be quick. Our salvation in the Lord Jesus
Christ was number one, a sovereign salvation. Number two, it was
an eternal salvation. Number three, it was a loving
salvation. Why did the Lord Jesus Christ
do this for us? Do we ever honestly stop and
think about that? If God is self-sufficient, in
need of nothing, self-existing, why would he do this for us?
Rebellious sinners like us. Why would He do this for us?
Here's the reason. It's because He loved us. Amazing love. How can it be? Even while we were yet sinners,
He loved us. He said, I've loved you with
an everlasting love. He loved us and gave himself
for us. He loved us and washed us in
his own blood. He commended his love toward
us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We are just sinners saved by
God's amazing grace. That's all you can say about
it. So verse nine says, who hath
saved us? Sovereignly saved us, eternally
saved us, lovingly saved us, and completely saved us. There
is nothing left for us to do. Christ saved us in full, we are
complete in him. Who hath saved us and called
us. And I'm not gonna close this
without giving us this right here. If we know that God has
an elect people, how do we know we're one of them? If we know
that God has chosen a people, how do we know we're among the
chosen? If he only calls his elect people, how can we know
if he's going to call us? If we have ears to hear this,
I'm going to tell you, some people, when they hear this, they reject
it. And they physically say, I don't
want to hear that. I'm not hearing that. I don't
like that. I don't want that. I will not
have that man reign over me. If we have been given ears to
hear this, eyes to see this, and a heart to believe this, if God has revealed this truth
to us, this is what it means. He has already called us. He's
already called us. With His call of salvation, He'll
give ears to hear, eyes to see, heart to believe, life. That's what He'll give, life.
He'll give us a desire to bow to the truth of His Word. If
we believe this and believe on this and cast our all on the
finished work of Christ, then it means He has sovereignly called
us and lovingly called us. And what has He called us to?
Union with Christ. Union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
He has called us to peace with God through the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. He has called us to adoption
into the family of God. He has called us to justification,
sanctification, glorification. And what all that means is sinlessness. No sin justified. No sin sanctified,
no sin glorified. Sinlessness with him. That's
what God's people have been called to. The gospel means, and this
is how I ended with him, this is how I'll end it with you.
The gospel means good news. That's what it means. It means
good news. And this is my prayer for everybody, all of us. I pray
that our God will make his word to be good news to our hearts. That's my prayer. Pray that for
them, pray that for us. For Christ's sake, for His glory's
sake, Lord, would you bless the gospel to our hearts? Would you
bless the gospel? What a great privilege it is
to preach this declaration of the gospel of God to anybody
on this earth. You know, I've told you quite
a few times now, it was a real privilege for me. I'm gonna tell
you, this is a real privilege for me. I want to let that be
understood too. What a great privilege this is.
Lord, please bless this to our hearts. For Christ's sake, amen.