Would you open your Bibles to
the book of Romans chapter 1? This is actually the fourth sermon
that I plan to preach this morning. I don't mean that I've preached
three already. I mean that throughout the week
there were three other texts of scriptures and messages which
I thought I would be bringing. And it was not until very late last
night that this particular subject struck my mind. I have told people before that,
with me anyway, it is not so much a problem or
not so much a concern, maybe that's the right way to put it,
Not so much a concern that I get a message. Rather, it is that
a message gets me. And I'll tell you up front, preparing
a sermon's not that hard. It's not difficult after all
these years for me to stand up here and occupy 30 to 45 minutes
with talking. I can do that. I don't want to
just do that. I'm just saying it can be done.
So that's not what I have to think about or be concerned about.
Rather, it is my desire that the Lord captivate my heart and mind with
something he has recorded in his book. The Bible says out
of the heart, the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
And it is always my hope that the Lord will fill my heart with
an abundance of something worth listening to, and that I speak
from that. The subject I want to speak on
this morning is the glorious gospel. And I gave it that title
not because the word glorious ever appears in the text of Scripture
before us, but simply that's the only way to describe the
gospel that's laid out in the opening verses of this book. Now, we are a small congregation. We've been a small congregation
from the beginning, and if you actually count the bodies present,
we're actually smaller now than we were then. And I suppose I wish that there
were more who wanted to worship this way, but I will say this,
and I think it's what many of you, if not all of you, also
believe. I don't understand why anybody
would worship any other way according to any other gospel than this
one. I cannot imagine what the religions of this world
have to offer that could in any way compare with the gospel of
God's Son. Now, I'm not stupid. It may surprise
you, but I'm not. I do understand the fleshly appeal
of what goes on in other churches. I don't mean all other churches,
I'm just talking about some other churches, the dominant churches, the big
ones in particular. I realize that they put on a
religious show Some of them, their platforms
seem very much just like the stages upon which standard worldly
entertainment is carried out, complete with the lights and
some of them even got fog coming in and all this. And it's an
extravaganza, as they say. I understand that appeals to
the flesh. But brethren, if I want to appeal
to the flesh, the world's got plenty of that for me. I don't
need to go to church to get that. Right? I need something for my
soul when I come to church. I need something spiritual to
feed upon. I come to the worship services
of this congregation not in the hope of finding some kind of
religious entertainment that'll drown out the troubling of my
conscience or the concern of my heart about things to come. I don't want that. What I want
is that message of God's free and sovereign grace that encourages
me on the inner man that I might face anything that's going on
on the outside. And it's not as though I feel
like I'm giving up anything. Paul said, I have given up everything
and counted nothing more than garbage that I may win Christ
and be found in Him. And so Paul says, all that I
might have had, had I remained in the religion I was going in
and he had it all. and in the religious world. He was highly esteemed. He had
reached the highest levels that one could reach in that religion
of the Jews. And he had that wonderful temple
there that he could go to and see those fantastic displays
of human artistry and whatnot associated with their worship.
It was quite an extravaganza. He had it all. And he said, I
have lost it all. But he did not say, I've lost
it all, and I guess I had to give it up in order to be a Christian.
He says, I have lost it all and I count it but dung, but garbage,
but stuff to be taken outside the city and dumped compared
to the excellency of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. And this
gospel that you and I believe and by which we worship is so
wonderful and so glorious Does it not startle you sometimes
that not everybody wants to believe it? Do you not sometimes, you know,
you tell one of your friends or some family members what you
believe, and they just kind of look at you, you know, as though
you've said nothing? And inside you're going, don't
you get it? Here's the truth, they don't. And when I say they don't, I
feel I need to repeat this every time. I'm not saying we're better
than them, and that's why we do. Grace has made us get it,
understand it, and perceive it. And what a wonderful gospel then
has been given to us. Paul says down here in verse
16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God
for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew,
then for the Gentile. I can't remember if I told you
about this, but when I was on my trip and visiting Mary and
her family, we were at an event. It was a city, Smyrna, Tennessee,
and they were doing their 4th of July celebration. At that
time, it was the 1st of July, I believe, but it was a Friday
night, but they were having their fireworks and all then. And lots
and lots of thousands of people there, I guess, in this big city
park milling around. And I saw this guy go by, big
fella, and big t-shirt, lots of room to write stuff on it.
And it said, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for
it is the power of God unto salvation. Now, if all it had said was,
I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, I would have assumed
he was just trying to brag to everybody that he was a super
religious person. But he put the whole thing on
there, which made me think, well, maybe this guy understands why
we're not ashamed of it. When we say we're not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ, it's not because we're not ashamed
of us. We got a lot about us to be ashamed of. No, we're not
ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God. And there's
no reason to be ashamed about that. I may be ashamed of me. I should be ashamed of me. I've
done many shameful things. But I have absolutely no reason
to be ashamed of my Savior or of the gospel that came by Him. Why? It's the power of God unto
salvation. You will find that in most of
the other churches in this world, that it is not the power of God
that is at issue in their gospel. It is not the work of God that's
at issue. They set forth a gospel where
God did some things, but whether or not what he did is going to
do you any good depends on what you do. Well friends, that's
not the power of God unto salvation. That's the power of you unto
salvation. The gospel, I say the gospel,
Paul said it's not really another gospel, it's a non-gospel, because
it's not good news, but the gospel that most people are preaching
today is a gospel in which you need an operation, and so you
are provided with an operating room, some anesthesia, and some
surgical tools, and said, there you go, take care of it. Fix yourself, here's the tools,
fix yourself. Well, I don't know about you,
but I certainly don't want surgery awake. And if I give myself anesthesia,
I don't think I'm gonna be able to do surgery. And really, before
all of that, I'm just plain not qualified. But the gospel that we believe
is a testimony, it is a message that says that this business
of salvation is carried out by the power of God from beginning
to end, even in those things that it appears we do in order
to bring it to pass, it's actually God working in us to do it. Say, oh yeah, God did all this,
but you gotta believe. If that's what the gospel is,
just like that, then we're all still lost. Because a man, as
he's naturally born in the world, a man or a woman, they're naturally
born in this world, does not have the capacity to believe
the gospel. The natural man, says Paul, does
not receive the things of the Spirit of God, they're foolishness
to them, neither can he understand them, for they are spiritually
understood. So if all it was is that God
came and did some very powerful works and then said, now I leave
it to you to accept it or reject it, if that's how it is, then
we're all lost because we'll all reject it. Yes, it's the
power of God and the salvation to them that believe, but we
also learn that when a man believes, that's the power of God in him,
causing him to believe. Faith is the gift of God. Now
let's go back to the first part of this chapter, and I want to
look at some of the glorious things of this gospel that sets
it far above any form of religion, any other form of religion that
men have ever practiced. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus,
called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel. Now let's
just stop right there for a minute. Because already we have a reason
to call the gospel glorious, and that's because of exactly
what the word gospel means. Now we don't recognize this because
the word has been corrupted over the centuries of the English
language, but our word gospel was originally good spell. G-O-D actually is two words,
and maybe they crammed them together at one time, but it started out
as two words. Goad, pronounced with a long O, but it was the
old way of saying good. That was just old English for
good. Goad. And then spell. Now we think
of a spell, you know, we talk about a witch's spell or something,
but the word spell just means a story or a message. So even
our English word means good message. And that is a perfect translation
of the Greek word there, euangelion. You meaning good and the rest
of it meaning message. And that's glorious. Why is it
glorious? Well, think about it. What kind
of news did you expect from God? I mean, when you think of what
God is and all of his absolute holiness and strict and unyielding
righteousness and justice, and then you think about yourself
and all your sin, what kind of news did you think you were going
to get from God? I'll tell you what kind you thought
you were going to get. It's easy to know what men think
they're going to hear from God. Just find out what they think
about death. Because the scriptures say what
all of us already know in our hearts, it is appointed unto
man once to die and after that the judgment. And we are terrified of death
because it is our belief that when we reach judgment the news
will not be good. It'll be bad news. That's what
our conscience tells us. In fact, virtually all of religion
is based on that idea, and all of religion, virtually all of
it, is being carried out with great effort for this purpose,
to do something so that when a person reaches death and the
judgment, that the news will either not be so bad or maybe
even a little bit good. That's what they're trying to
do. Turn the bad news into good news. Here's the glory of the
gospel. It comes to us and it's already good news. The moment
it arrives, it's good news. It's not probationary good news.
It's not contingent good news. It's not, the gospel is not,
this will be good news if you do. It comes right out of the
gate, good news. But it's more than this. He says,
I'm set apart for the good news of God. Now, there are, I suppose,
some religions out there, which if you just listen to them, superficially,
they are good news. And after all, there's some who
claim to be Christian, and they're what would be called universalists,
and their message is, is that in the end, everybody will be
saved. Well, that's good news, isn't
it? If it were true, that would be
very good news, no question about it. The trouble is, while it's
good news, it's also false news. It is not the good news of God.
It didn't come from God. If God said that, it'd be wonderful,
but God never said that. God never said that everybody's
gonna be saved. He said some are, and that's
good news, but he never said all are. There are some who set
forth something that's sort of good news. It's good news in
this sense that they found salvation on some things that may be a
nuisance, but they're nonetheless easy to do. They say that salvation
is you just come to the church regularly, and you participate
in the sacraments of the church, and you come and confess your
sins once in a while, get cleansed of them, you know, so that you
don't have a bunch dragging around. And, you know, when you get to
the end of your life, make sure there's a priest nearby so that
he can give you that final absolution of sin, so that when you leave
this world, there's not very much sin on you, and you won't
have to spend much time being purged of your sins before you
can go into glory. And in fact, if you were actually
good enough here and did enough, you might go straight into glory.
Well, I suppose that's good in the sense that it does not send
you to an eternal hell with no chance of ever getting out. But
here's the problem, while that may be sort of good news, it's
not God's good news. God never said anything like
that. God never said that by participating in the Lord's table,
you are going to earn a little bit of grace by which you can
enter heaven. It never said that the sacrament
of marriage is going to get you a little farther into heaven.
It never said that extreme unction is going to get you into heaven.
It never says that confessing to some human priest is going
to somehow or another clear you of your sins. You see, we don't
need just good news. We need good news from the One
from whom we expect bad news. We need to hear good news from
the one who has every reason to send us terrifying news. If
I can get good news from him, it's good news indeed. It's the good news of God. That
means it's the good news, as I say, of the judge, the one
from whom we might expect bad news. It also means this, it's
good news that's real and true. Good news you can count on. Now,
the words of men, how trustworthy are they? Not very, are they? Paul wrote,
let God be true and every man a liar. And he did not say that
in the sense of, okay, let's just suppose. No, it's not a
supposition, it's so. God's true, every one of us are
liars. Now, we may lie a lot, we may
lie a little in terms of our relationships with each other.
All of us lie some, and none of us are absolutely trustworthy. Every one of us, there's a point
somewhere where we are willing to falsify our word to save our
skin or to save something else. And I suppose right now at this
time in our country's history as we are in election year, we
are treated to nonstop 24-hour news cycle of political lies. You know, what politicians say,
now think of it, the things they say they're going to do, don't
they sound wonderful? And if they could do it, many
of the things, I don't like everything they say, but some of the promises
they make, I really wish they could do it. We're gonna put
an end to hunger. I'm all for that. We're gonna let freedom ring.
I'm all for that. We're gonna see justice. I'm
all for that. They cannot do it and I do not
even think they intend to do it. They say it because they
know it sounds like good news and that'll make you vote for
them. God's not like that. First of all, he doesn't need
your vote. You realize God has absolutely nothing to gain from
you. You cannot make God better off than he already is. He is
not running for the office of king of the universe. He already
is that. He made the universe. It's his. He does whatever he
wants to with it. He did not create the heavens and the earth
and make man and all the other creatures because he just suddenly
got lonely. You say, why did God create the
heavens and the earth? I haven't any idea. He just did
so because he wanted to. That's all I know. God doesn't
need anything from us. Our praises do not make him more
glorious. It's not as though God suffers
from low self-esteem and so he created a whole race of beings
to glorify him so he could build himself up and feel good about
himself. God already felt good about himself. He didn't need
anything from us. So when he makes a promise to
us, he's not doing it in the hopes that we shall give him
some return that makes him better off than he already is. In other
words, he has no motivation to lie to us. Why do we lie? We lie because we think we can
gain by our lie. God has nothing to gain. Aside
from the very fact that it's impossible for him to lie. It's
not in his character to do so. And not only that, when you realize
that what we call reality is defined by God's word, whatever
he says, that's what is. Now, if I told you the sun rises
in the West, well, that'd be a lie. But if God says the sun
rises in the west, that would not be a lie, because the moment
he said it, that's the way things would be. Because he's the one that defines
reality. So he can't lie. It's philosophically impossible
for God to lie. But on top of all of that, he
has absolutely no reason to. Consequently, this good news
that comes from him is news that we can rely on. If he said, whosoever
shall call upon my name shall be saved, you can bank on that. That's the way it is. If he said, and he did, this
is according to John in the book of first John, this is God's
testimony. That He has given to us eternal
life and that this life is in His Son. He that has the Son
has life. He that does not have the Son
does not have life. Now God said that. You know what
that means? That means it's absolutely true.
We can bank our everlasting souls on that truth. It's a glorious gospel because
it's good news. It's a glorious gospel because
it's good news from God and therefore trustworthy. Secondly, it's good
news because it is a word that has been around ever since humanity
has been around. It says here, the gospel he promised
beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. Now,
I realized that the scriptures did not even begin to come into
existence until 2,500 years, at least 2,500 years of human
history had come and gone. We don't know whether the genealogies
given in the Bible include every generation. But if you take it
that the genealogies in the early parts of Genesis and onward, that they include
all the generations you add them up. Moses lived about 2,500 years
after creation. And Moses wrote the first books
of the Bible. But before Moses ever wrote,
the Word of God existed. It wasn't written down, but it
was declared. Enoch declared the Word of God. Evidently, Adam did. How do I
know that Adam declared the Word of God? Because Abel knew what
kind of sacrifice to bring in his symbolic worship of God. Adam evidently told Abel, his
son, about sin and about God's promise and about the fact that
the only way Abel could be made right with God is for a substitute
to die in his place. So Abel brought a symbolic sacrifice
of an animal, which looked forward to the Lord Jesus Christ. So
way back at the beginning of human history, this word was
declared. It's not new. Seen on threads
where various people from various religions, you know, they get
in arguments with each other, whose is the oldest? And, you
know, everybody says, oh, Christianity's new and it's just 2,000 years
old. I beg your pardon. Christ made the world. I think
that starts right there at the beginning. But the whole Christian
religion, so far as a promise of a savior who would be the
substitutionary sacrifice of his people, right there in the
Garden of Eden. And while it was never identified
as Christian, so to speak, until about 2,000 years ago, it's the
same message. We have no new gospel, it's very
old. And then it says this gospel,
this good news of God, is the good news regarding His Son. The most glorious thing about
our salvation is our Savior. One of the texts of scriptures
I thought I might preach on was the Song of Solomon chapter 5,
in which the woman of that book suddenly finds that her beloved,
her husband, can't be found. He had come to her chamber, but
she had been slow in answering the door, and he had left. And suddenly she felt within
herself the pain of being separated from the one she loved, and so
she went out in the dark of the night to look for him. And in the process of looking
for them, for him, she ran into some other young women and they
said, well, why is your beloved any better than others that you
would look for him like this? And she said, let me tell you.
And she begins to describe him. And of course, it being a symbolic
book, she describes her beloved every detail, his hair, his eyes,
his mouth, his teeth, his arms, his legs. Beautiful, powerful, majestic. And she ends with this. He is
altogether lovely. We all have various levels of
beauty, don't we? But there is no one in the world
who is perfectly beautiful. Everybody has physical flaws
of some kind or another. But what she's saying to those
women, she's saying there's absolutely nothing wrong with him. There
isn't a part of him that is not perfection. And if you come to
know the Lord Jesus Christ, this is what you will understand about
him. There's nothing wrong with him. Every part of his being
is absolutely perfect. His love is infinite and eternal. His mercy, tender beyond description. His power, irresistible. His authority, absolute. It's the gospel regarding His
Son, the good news regarding Jesus Christ. And that makes
it good news right away because it's not the good news regarding
you and me. I would say this would be a pretty
good general rule to follow. Any message about you, not good
news. Any message that is founded upon
your abilities is not good news. Any message that draws its strength
or power from you is not good news. I love a gospel that has
nothing to do with me except that I'm the beneficiary of it. I love a gospel that does not
say to me, God has done all he can, the rest is up to you. God is reaching down, now you
reach up and grab his hand so he can pull
you up. I know myself in my natural self,
like Paul says, dwells no good thing, nothing good, not even
partly good. And I know by my own experience,
I have no power. I have been born of God, as has
every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I have spiritual life.
And yet in this condition, I find it extremely hard to believe.
Don't you? Don't you find? Now, maybe it's
not true of all of you, but from the talking I do with other believers,
all of them confess this, it's a struggle. Now, if with spiritual
life, I find it hard to believe, what hope would there be for
one who is spiritually dead? Oh, I love it, this gospel, it's
about Jesus. It's about him who never did
anything evil, who never thought evil, never desired evil, never
purposed evil, but did always those things which pleased the
Father. Tell you with us, it's an entirely
different story. Regarding his son, when I first
read that, that phrase went through my mind. I thought about my own
sons. Now, I had a good father. I am
a son. I hope I was a reasonable father
and I have two sons. In particular, during that time
when my father lived in my home, because of the stroke he had,
I began to learn what he thought of me. Now, any of you men, you know
what it's like. You grow up and your daddy's
this huge thing, you know, this heroic figure for most of us.
And you know, we almost never get over that. Dad's always something
more than we are. And it's really difficult for
us to understand just how much love our father had for us. But my dad would talk to me about
what he thought of me. And I think, you know, that's
my imperfect father. talking about his imperfect son. And then I think of my boys and
what I think of them. I'm proud of them. I like them. I love them. Think of what the heavenly father
thinks of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The father said, this
is my beloved son. in whom I'm well pleased. That's
a perfect father, well pleased with his perfect son. And I see in that unimaginable
bond of love between the father and the son, I see in that the
strength of this gospel. called the gospel concerning
God's son. God would not put the name of
his son on anything that wasn't wonderful. And certainly God
would not spend the life of his son to buy anything less than
a glorious gospel. Think of that. He, the eternal God, designed
a gospel. That's a glorious thing right
there. And He attached it to His glorious Son. It just keeps getting more and
more glorious. And the good news regarding His Son, as to who
His Son is, God in human flesh, and what He's done. And here
I always think maybe I'm getting too repetitious for you, but
it's not too repetitious for me. It's what I need to hear.
What did he do? He did what I was supposed to
do but couldn't. And he endured what I would have
had to endure but couldn't. He lived the righteous life that
I can't live for a tenth of a second. He lived the life that I wish
I could live. He lived the life I should live,
but he lived the life that I've never lived. I mentioned to you
a little bit ago, he never thought sin, he never desired sin, he
never purposed sin. Do you realize he didn't even
have to try not to sin? He said to the devil, that the
devil seeks him, he said, but he has nothing in me. When the devil came to him, there
was nothing to appeal to. The devil comes to me. Why? He's
got lots of stuff he can appeal to. He can appeal to my covetousness. He can appeal to my anger and
rage. He can appeal to my lust. He
can appeal to my pride. Do you understand that in yourself?
Feel it in yourself? I remember a TV show back when
I was a teenager and somebody was always saying, the devil
made me do it. Well, if he made me do it, I'll guarantee he didn't
have to try very hard. That's my natural bent. It was never the Lord's natural
bent. He came into this world without sin, and he left it the same way. It's good news that he did for
me what I couldn't do. He established a righteousness. In the book of Daniel, it's described
this way. He has brought in an everlasting
righteousness. And then what did he do? He offered himself without spot
to God. And in doing so, he suffered
a penalty that I could never endure. I don't know what hell is. I
don't think the Bible does not give us literal descriptions
of it. At least not that I can detect. I know this. Hell is whatever the eternal
God could devise as a just punishment for those who hate him and rebel
against him, whatever that is. I know this, I want no part of
it. And I also know this, that however severe the suffering
of hell may be, I would never be able to suffer
sufficiently to put away my sin. And there's an added problem.
Even as I suffered, if I were I to go to hell, even as I was
suffering for sins in the past, my continued hatred of God would
be adding to the tally the whole time I'm there. It's not as though
when a person goes to hell they suddenly say, oh, I treated God
so bad. It says judgment makes people
curse God. Everybody in hell hates God.
And they continually add to the tally of their sin. Thus hell's
never over. But Jesus Christ, in the period
of a few hours, and what a glorious person He must be that He could
do this, in a few hours, He accomplished what I could never do in an eternity
of suffering. He bore my sins in His body on
the tree, and He put them away. He got rid of them, and didn't
add to them during the process. Jesus Christ is the only man
who has ever suffered the punishment of God and not cursed God because
of it. It's a good news that his son
lived the perfect life, that he died in the place of his people,
and that he raised from the dead in testimony that his death was
effective. And it's the good news that God
has highly exalted him and given him a name above every name,
that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue
confess that Jesus is Lord. In the past month or so, I have
stepped way back from my internet involvement. Did so for my own
mental health as much as anything else. I tell you, what a mess
the world is. And nearly everything in the
news is just a display of the selfishness and hatred of man. One of these days, you and I
are going to see every last one of these lying, hating, murdering,
slaughtering blaspheming whatever you want to call it people bow
down and confess that Jesus is Lord now I hope they do so in
this life I would much rather God conquer them by grace and
by justice but this I know one way or the other they're going
to be conquered our Lord is going to be vindicated
in the sight of all. He who is humiliated for our
sake will be glorified by all. That's good news. You know, as I was growing up
and going to church, They always talked about the second coming
in terms of what a fearful day it will be. And we were all made
to be terrified of the prospect so that we'd get busy doing whatever
it was we were supposed to be doing. So that when the Lord
came, we wouldn't be doing something bad. In fact, I remember them,
I've told you before, we weren't supposed to go to movies. And
one of the things they said, you wouldn't want Christ to come
back and find you in the movies, would you? Let me tell you something. Whenever the Lord comes back.
He's gonna find me doing something wrong because that's all I do If he comes back and finds me
right here I Will not be in any better position
Than if he came back and found me in some theater or some bar Paul said that I may win Christ
and be found where? In him. That's where we need
to be. In him is safe. We have this glorious gospel
of his son who lived the life we could not live, died the death
we dare not die, was raised and now sits upon a throne, And right there, as the triumphant
lion of the tribe of Judah, he rules absolutely everything for
his people. Now, what more could you want
than that? People want an audience with the president. He's the
most powerful man in the free world, maybe the most powerful
man in the world. There's another man in this world
to whom all the men in this world put together cannot compare nor
compete, the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, I worry about our country,
I'll confess it. I don't think there's a person
right now that's a nominee for president that I would trust
as dog catcher. But I shouldn't worry, and I
don't worry when I think of this. Whoever gets in there, it'll
be our Lord Jesus Christ that put him there. And whatever he
does there, it's gonna be what Christ determined for him to
do while he's there. And whatever happens, it shall
work for my eternal good, even if it takes me through some very
difficult times in this life. This is the good news. This is
the gospel of God. It's glorious. I'm not interested
in anything else. Are you? Well, may God make us
to truly appreciate this gospel. Heavenly Father, thank you for
your gospel. Thank you for your son who brought
it to pass. Thank you that you have exalted
him at your right hand and made him king over all. Now as we
observe your table, Seal these spoken truths to our hearts in
a visible way. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.