I always select songs that are
scripturally accurate. And I'm grateful for that. Beautifully presented. Such a
blessing. Thank you so much. Well, if you
would, go to the book of Romans, and we'll go to chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. Our subject
is not ashamed of the gospel. Not ashamed of the gospel. Well, before we look into this
portion of scripture for our consideration this evening, Let's
seek God's face once again. Lord, with a sense of the gravity
of this hour, we beseech you to show us mercy for Christ's
sake. Give to us the warm reception of Your Word. Whenever, Father, we read and
preach from this book, we do seek Your face and ask for divine
instruction. It is written that a man can
receive nothing except it be given him from heaven, from above. And, Lord, that's as true this
evening as it was some 2,000 years when those words were spoken. And so, Father, we ask that your
blessed Spirit would now take the things of our God, the message
of the gospel, and bless us and instruct us with it. We seek this evening again to
honor you, O God, We thank you for the faith that
you have given to us to believe the Word of God, to believe the
gospel of your grace, the faith that you have gifted
to us to embrace the Lord Jesus as only Savior, only Redeemer,
and as the only righteousness that puts us in good standing
with You. And Lord, all we need, we know
that we find in Christ Jesus our Lord. We look to Him, and we believe
Him, and we ask for more faith to believe Him more fully. Lord, forgive us for the weakness
of faith. Forgive us for being doubters. Forgive us for murmuring, Lord,
against your good and wise providence. We bow to you as the master,
as the governor of the nations. we submit to you willingly and
as best we can lovingly, acknowledging your sovereign rule over all
things, and not merely all things throughout the world, though
that is certainly true, but your sovereignly ruling over all things
in each of our lives. We bow to you and help us to rejoice in your will, not to
merely submit, though we certainly want to do that, but to say this
is This is good for me because this is what God has ordained.
And it's all good for the people of God. Lord, we love you because
you first loved us. And we rejoice in this gospel
of free grace. We're so thankful for the full
forgiveness of all of our sins through the bloody death of the
Son of God. now enable us again to open this
sacred book and to receive that which is laid down before us
this evening. And when we leave, may we say,
it has been good to be in the house of the Lord. Bless these, your dear people,
your children, and feed, O Lord, the flock. Minister to each of
us. We're thankful that you have
us under the sound of the truth. We thank you that you did not
leave us to grievous wolves to devour us. But you have gathered
us as your sheep together to listen to the great, the good,
the chief shepherd of our souls, the Lord Jesus, and to be fed
with the green pastures of your word. Magnify yourself and Lord
bless us we ask for Jesus' sake. Amen. Romans chapter 1. It is a mistake to think that
every book of the Bible was written in the order in which it was
positioned by men who gathered the various books together and
then put them together. That was not the case. This is
not the first epistle that was written by the Apostle Paul. He wrote others before he wrote
this. Of course, we have Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, and then we have the book of Acts. which was written
by a physician, of course, by a Gentile named Luke, who also
wrote the book, The Gospel, that bears his name. And then we begin
to get into the epistles. And as we begin to get into the
epistles, and the majority of which were written by the Apostle
Paul, we first of all come to the book of Romans. This was
not the first letter that he wrote. He wrote 1 and 2 Thessalonians,
1 and 2 Corinthians, the book of Titus, the book of 1 Timothy
before he wrote Romans. But this book is positioned as
it is I'm persuaded, of course, correctly, according to the providence
of God, because it is a book of such magnitude. It is a book
of such importance. This, the book of Romans, this
epistle, this letter, and you remember these are letters that
were written. This one was written by the apostle
Paul when he was in Corinth. This letter was written by him
to the saints of God, to a people who were persecuted, and to a
people who had believed the gospel of God's grace, people who had
been gathered together by the spirit of God himself, and a
church was established. And he writes to them. He writes
to them by divine inspiration. These are not merely his thoughts
or his words. Inspiration is a very mysterious
thing because it wasn't merely dictation. Somehow or another,
in a manner that is beyond our comprehension, the Spirit of
God used the gifts and the writing abilities of the particular man
that he was inspiring to write a book. And then he gave him
that message so that every word that came forth from his pen
or his quill on parchment was actually, literally, accurately
the Word of God that God put in a man, and then that man,
using the gifts that God had given him, he put those words
exactly as God gave them to him, and yet in writing that, his
own personality and his own gifts have a way of coming out. And
that's the mystery of inspiration. Now be careful when you hear
somebody speak about inspiration because a lot of, especially
today, a lot of people will speak about inspiration and they'll
say, you know, this book does indeed contain the Word of God. No, it doesn't contain the Word
of God. This is the Word of God. This
is all of the Word of God. This is what God, the book of
Romans, is exactly what God the Spirit spoke to the apostle Paul
when he was in Corinth and he put it on paper. And as he put
it on paper, we can perceive from the usage of the words that
he regularly made use of, we can see that this man was indeed
the apostle Paul because the writing is so similar to the
rest of his epistles. And I would say that about, well,
you go to the book of Psalms, David being a poet. You can see
how God used that man. and the gifts and the abilities
that God had given him, and then using that man as he wrote the
book of Psalms, here's this beautiful poetry that comes out, and David
wrote it, but he wrote it exactly as God gave it to him. And so
here's the apostle Paul. He writes this letter to the
church at Rome. And I believe this is the most
vital of the letters that he wrote. And I think that's why
the Spirit of God had it to be first in the canon of scripture
in the letters that are recorded in the New Testament, because
it is of such vital importance. This is the masterpiece of the
New Testament. There's no question about that.
And if you would learn the gospel, If you would learn about our
depravity, if you would learn about justification, if you would
learn how the God of the Bible does indeed save sinners, read
the book of Romans. One old writer said he endeavored
to read the book of Romans every two weeks, every two weeks. And I would say to each of us,
you cannot read this book too often. And as you read the book
of Romans, remembering it is such a vital book that speaks
of the gospel, that speaks of this great salvation. Remember,
this book answers in fullness the question asked in Job. That is, how can man be just
with God? You want to know? Read the book
of Romans. You'll get the answer. This is
the book that Luther spent so much time reading and writing
about, and other great men of the faith as well. It's in the
book of Romans that the gospel of God is set forth. Here we
find the introduction to the book is about the gospel in the
first 18 verses, and then the writer goes into our sinfulness,
our depravity. Our guilt, there's none good,
no, not one. There's none righteous, no, not
one. There's none who seek after God. We've all gone astray, is
what he says. And then that brings us up to
a detailed instruction on justification. We're justified by the grace
of God. The law has pronounced us guilty,
and the law provides no good news for us, but there is redemption
in the Lord Jesus. That's what the scripture says,
and that's what's brought out in the book of Romans so beautifully. Now, we don't know who founded
the church at Rome. There is no biblical evidence
of that. We don't know when the church
was established. If that were important, the Holy
Spirit would have told us. And so without any introduction,
and even before he gets to what we would call the salutation,
This man goes right into his favorite subject. He goes into
the gospel, and I dealt with this in some detail last Lord's
Day evening, but I'll read these first four verses again. Paul,
a servant of Jesus Christ, This man who was, he was called, that
is selected and appointed to be an apostle. He separated under
the gospel of God, which God had promised to form by his prophets
in the Holy Scriptures. And this gospel, what is it concerned? What is it about? It's not about
you. It's not about me. It's the gospel concerning his
son. Who's his son? Jesus Christ,
our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the
flesh. Here's his real humanity. The gospel you see, it is all
about a man. A man, that man who is perfect,
that man who came from heaven, that man who lived the life of
obedience, that man who suffered, bled and died. It's about this
man, the seed of David, which brings in his royalty. It brings
in his lineage. It takes us back to the Old Testament. And we see this is the seed of
Abraham. This is the seed of David as
is stated in Matthew chapter one and verse one. But in addition
to his humanity in verse four, He's declared to be the son of
God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the
resurrection from the dead. This is the one who died. This
man, this God man who came from heaven, he lived and he died. Why did he die? That God might
be just and justify the ungodly. And he's been raised from the
dead. And so right from the get-go, Paul introduces his subject,
his favorite subject. And it's the favorite subject,
really, it's the only subject of every preacher of the gospel. We have been unfaithful to our
calling. if we ever fail in a message
to set forth our Lord Jesus and his substitutionary work of redemption. We have failed in our calling
if we don't do that. We must always preach the gospel. I know when I was in Bible college, this is typically the way we
were instructed. You preach an evangelical type
of message, a gospel message in the morning hour on Sunday. And then in the evening hour
and in the midweek hour, midweek service, then you gear your message
to believers to teach godly living and very, what is typically called
practical things. but you save the gospel for the
morning message when typically unbelievers are there when they
visit. Now, let me tell you something.
We must always preach the gospel because it is not only beneficial
to the lost, as being the only message that they need to hear,
the message that they must hear of God's grace and God's mercy
and God's forgiveness and God's righteousness provided through
the substitutionary sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. It's not only
necessary that lost people hear that message, those who are saved
need to hear that message. This is sheep food. This is the message that encourages
us. This is the message that admonishes
us. I would never admonish you to
faithfulness without first of all telling you about the faithfulness
of God. And I would say to you, I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your
bodies a living sacrifice unto God. The reason we seek to live
for His glory and to honor Him in all that we do is because
of His mercy to us through the Lord Jesus. That's as practical
as you can get. If I were to preach on giving,
the subject of giving. Well, I'm not gonna get up here
and rail against you. You need to tithe. I'll preach
the law of tithing and lay a guilt trip on you. No, that's not going
to do it. Oh, you may then give out of
guilt, but that which is not of love is sinful. But rather we would go to the
scriptures as in the book of 2 Corinthians. And we'll preach
on giving this way. You know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who though he was rich, yet for your sakes became
poor, that you through his poverty might be rich. You see, we preach
giving in association with the substitutionary work of Christ
Jesus. What about the faithfulness of
husbands to wives and wives to husbands? Well, you surely can't
preach the gospel there. We must. We must. Wives, submit yourself to your
own husband as unto the Lord, as unto the Lord. and husbands loved your wives
as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Everything
we preach must be in association with the glorious gospel of the
grace of God. I asked a man in a certain church
one time, a few years ago, I said, would you give me It was back
when it was cassette tapes. I said, would you give me a cassette
tape of your preacher preaching the gospel of God's grace? He said, well, it'd take me a
little while. Let me look and see if I've got to go down the
list. If a man is really a faithful
preacher of the gospel, If you went to Ron and said, I want
you to get me a CD or a DVD of Jim preaching the gospel, I honestly
believe Ron could go in and say, okay, I'll just take this one. If you've got to hunt and choose
before you can find a message that is suitable, to give to
somebody who doesn't know the Lord Jesus, then the man who
preached the message has absolutely failed on that count. Many years ago, when I pastored
in Michigan, I was asked to preach at a Wesleyan church. And you
say, how in the world did you get invited to preach at a Wesleyan
church? Well, it came about this way. preacher had been there ten years
and he took a one month sabbatical. And so the board decided that
they would get one of several denominations, one man from several
denominations to preach just to get an idea Different kind of preachers
around, I suppose. Well, one of the men who was
on the board had often visited our congregation there in Almonte. And so he said, I want Jim Byrd
to come and preach. Well, where does he preach? First
Baptist Church of Almonte. Okay, so they put me down and
said, you'll speak two times on Lord's Day morning, and one
time in the evening. It was a very large congregation.
It was at Christmas time. In fact, you came up and preached
for me, as I recall. And I went, and the way they
did it, it was a very large congregation, and they had 400 or 500 people
for the first service in the morning. And then the rest of
the congregation, they were in Sun School classes and then then
they flip-flopped and the ones who were in Sun School classes
then they Came for the next preaching service and Then the ones that
I had already preached to went to Sun School and so I preached
twice there are a lot of things I can tell you about that experience
and They were selling Christmas trees and all manner of foolishness
when I was there. But anyway, I went ahead and
preached. As you probably know, I was told
after the second service, you don't need to come back tonight.
So that invitation was revoked. I didn't get an opportunity to
come back. After the second service was over and Nancy was with me
and we were leaving, I had a lady come up to me and she said, I
just want to thank you. And I said, you're welcome. What
are you thanking me for? She said, I have been waiting
for years to hear a man stand behind that pulpit and preach
the gospel. She said, finally, I have heard
the gospel and I'm going to get a copy of that cassette tape
and give it to my boy so that he can listen to it. She said,
maybe God will do something for him. This is our responsibility to
preach the gospel. I do not want to stand before
my God being guilty of failing in any message to set forth the
Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the message. This is
the message. This is all of the Word of God. This is not a theme of the Word
of God. This is not the main thing of
the Word of God. This is all the Word of God is
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is all to God. That's all of the Old Testament
is about. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus,
the Gospel in promise, the Gospel in prophecy, the Gospel in picture,
And then you get to the New Testament, and then we find the gospel is
a person. It's the person of the Lord Jesus,
and it's His work of redemption that honored God, that satisfied
God. This is the gospel, the gospel
of His death, the gospel of how Christ died for our sins, according
to the Scripture. How did He die? He died as our
substitute. He died as the sacrifice for
God. He died as the sin offering.
This is the message that God uses. This is the message that
God blesses. This is the only message that
honors God in all of His attributes. All of His attributes. You see, we can and we must preach
the law of God. But the law of God does not set
forth all of the attributes of God. Holiness? Justice? Righteousness? Yes. Grace? Mercy? Love? No. There's only one message
that honors every single attribute of the holy God who is gracious
to poor sinners, and that is this gospel. Every aspect of
God is honored. and all of the attributes of
God work together in unison and in perfect conformity for the
salvation of God's elect. This is why we must preach the
gospel. It honors God. We must preach
the gospel because this is the message the Spirit of God uses
to save the lost and to feed the sheep. What must you hear? Yeah, I was,
of course, thinking about having a little surgery this week, and
obviously it's not major surgery, but it's surgery nonetheless.
You never know when you're gonna preach your last message, and
you never know when you're going to listen to your last message.
One of the old preachers It's famous for saying, I preach as
though never to preach again. I preach as a dying man to dying
men. And therefore I must give the
fullness of myself to every single message. Because I never know
when I will be preaching my last message. And I want to make absolutely
certain that the message that I preach every single time I'm
behind this pulpit or any other pulpit is honoring to the Lord
Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for God. And you should listen to every
message. as though this would be the last
message you would ever hear on this earth. What if you knew that this evening,
obviously you can't know this, but what if you knew that this
evening at midnight you're gonna face God? on face
God at midnight. What would you want me to talk
about? What would you want me to preach about? You're on the
verge of eternity. You're right on the precipice
of stepping out into an unseen but eternal world. What should I talk about? How
good y'all to be? or preach on tithing? Doing this, doing that, stop
doing this, stop doing that? Or would you want me to tell
you about the savior of sinners? About the grace of God? About
how you being full of sin, just like an egg is full of meat,
you're full of sin. that you who drink iniquity like
water, whose imaginations are vile all of the time, wouldn't
you want me to tell you about him who is the savior of the
sinful? Of him who is our righteousness? Of him who is our fitness to
meet God? Say, Jim, what is your qualification
to go to heaven? What is your fitness? What is
your worthiness to enter into the presence of God? My worthiness
and my fitness and my holiness and my righteousness is at the
right hand of God, Christ Jesus, the Lord. And he's all I need. He's all I need. And he's the
only one I want you to tell me about. Now, I'm not saying that
these other subjects aren't brought in, of course they are, but never
disassociated from the gospel. And this is where we go wrong.
This is why people, they're wrong and say, well, there's gospel
preaching and then there's practical preaching. There is nothing more
practical in this world that we need to hear than the grace
of God for sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ and his work
of redemption. That's as practical as it gets. That's where the rubber hits
the road. This is the message of the whole
Bible. Story. Many years ago, I pastored a
very small group in East Texas. And I worked for an insurance
company in addition to preaching. And I had an occasion one day,
it was Friday, and it was kind of late in the day. I needed
to see a current policyholder, a lady who lived in another in
another town, a town called, you'll like this, Gun Barrel
City, Texas. Is that a good name for a town
in Texas or what? Gun Barrel City, Texas. And I like that. And she was,
as I found out, she was a secretary in a Methodist church. And so
I go to the office and ring the buzzer. She came to the door
and I told her who I was because I had phoned her to tell her
I was going to stop by. So I go in and began to talk
with her. We exchanged greetings and I
told her who I was. Of course, she had an insurance
policy with the company that I represented. I told her that
I was also a Baptist preacher. where I preached, and she said,
oh, that's good. She said, now, I work in a Methodist
church, but I want you to know, I'm really a Baptist. You feel better? You feel better
for telling me that? She got, it's like she got that
off her chest, you know. And so we chatted just a little
bit, and we were gonna get down to business, and the telephone
rang. And she picked it up, and Then she was talking like this,
and I'm trying not to pay any attention to the conversation.
Oh, no. Oh, that's terrible. I'm so sorry.
I'll do what I can. Sure, you can count on me. But
I don't have any lessons. And then the conversation ended,
and I said, everything okay? She said, well, that was the
I was the main teacher of our Sunday school class and she's
got to miss her mother is sick and she's got to go and visit
her mother and take care of her on the Lord's Day. And she asked
me if I teach Sunday school and I said, I don't even have my
quarterly Do y'all remember when you used to have a quarterly,
that's what we called it, a quarterly. That was a pre-printed Sunday
school book or booklet that you kind of went through every Sunday.
Well, I remember that from years and years ago. We don't do that
now, of course. But anyway, she said, I don't
even have a quarterly. She said, I don't know what I'm going to
do. I said, would you like me to help you? And she said, yeah. I said, get a pen and paper out. There are a lot of you who will
recognize what I'm about to say. And I said, here's what, I said
three things, three points. I said, the first one is, all
of the Old Testament says, you know what it says, somebody's
coming. That's what I thought, somebody's
coming. She said, oh, that's good. So she gets out her ink
pen and she's writing that down. Somebody's coming. I said, that's
all of the Old Testament. She said, well, what about Israel?
I said, no, the Old Testament's not about Israel. God used Israel,
but all the Old Testament is answering this or identifying
this, somebody is coming. It's dealing with this subject.
He's coming. And I said, from Genesis chapter
three and verse 15, all the way through the end of the book of
Malachi, all the writers of the Old Testament, they were saying,
in essence, somebody's coming. And they identified him in picture,
prophecy, promise. He's the seed of the woman. He's
Abel's lamb. He's Noah's ark. He's the Passover
lamb. He's the manna from heaven. He's
the water from the rock. And on and on, I said, and you
know, you can develop that. She said, oh, that's good, that's
good. And so she's writing those down. And I said, that's all
of the Old Testament. And I said, you get all the way
to the book of Malachi, and here's what Malachi says, the last of
the Old Testament, He made this statement, he shall come. I said, that's what they were
all saying. Because I said, our Lord Jesus, he spoke and he said,
he said, all the prophets wrote of me. He said, yeah, he did
say that. I said, yes, ma'am, he did. I
said, second thing, the four gospel, four gospel narratives,
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They say, somebody has come. He's here. He's here. Born of a virgin. Born in Bethlehem. The Savior is named Christ the
Lord. He's got salvation. I said, you
remember in Luke chapter 2, Simeon, he looked into the face of this
little infant and he said, my eyes have seen Thy salvation."
I said, God's salvation, He came down here. Salvation is not a
what, it's a who. It's a who. I wish I could shout
it from every mountaintop that this salvation of sinners is
not a what, it's a who. It's who He is, the God-man,
the Savior. I'm not ashamed of this gospel. This is the gospel of God. It's
set forth so clearly in Matthew chapter 1. And the angel said,
Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people
from their sins. That's what He came to do. He
didn't come to try to do it, to make an effort to do it, to
open the way up so that if you agree with what He did or you
add your faith to what He did, He'll save you. He came to save. And he did that. Somebody's come. He lived. He died. He died to do something
about sin. He died to do something about
the justice of God. And men today, of course, don't
know anything about the justice of God. They have no idea of
that. He died to redeem. And he who died was buried. And he arose again, having finished
the work that God gave him to do." And she's writing. She's
writing. She's getting her Sunday school
lesson together, and I'm enjoying it so much. And then I said, then, third,
from the book of Acts to the last of of the books of the New
Testament, the book of the revelation of Jesus Christ. It says, he
who came and died and arose again, he's gone back to heaven, the
advocate for sinners, the great high priest. And he governs all
things to fulfill his purpose of redemption. And he who's in
heaven reigning and governing is coming back someday. Oh, glorious
day. She said, oh, I like that. She
said, I got a Sunday school lesson. That's it. That's the message
of the Bible. And this is the message that
this man was so anxious to preach to the people in Rome. And he
says this, and I'm just gonna drop down because I wanna go
to verse 13. So this gospel, he says to these
Romans, as he writes, he does give his salutation, beginning
in verse seven, to all that be in Rome, I'll go ahead and read
that, beloved of God, called to be saints, Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First,
I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your
faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my
witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son
that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers,
making request if by any means now at length I might have a
prosperous journey by the will of God to to come unto you, for
I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual
gift. To the end, you may be established. That is verse 12, that I may
be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of
you and me. Now, I would not have you to
be ignorant, brethren, how that oftentimes I purposed to come
to you, but was led hitherto. I was hindered. It wasn't the
will of God. I wanted you to come. Of course,
this was, he was a very busy man. He, He didn't rust out, he wore out. My dad was a preacher and somebody
got after him one time and said, you know, it seemed like you're
burning the midnight oil and you're laboring all the time.
He said, I'd rather burn out than rust out, or wear out than
rust out. And this is the apostle, he was
quite busy. He said, I wanted to come to
you, but I was led hitherto that I might have some fruit among
you also, even as among other Gentiles. I would love to have
some spiritual fruit. I would love to preach the gospel
and God saves sinners under my ministry there. And I would love
to be a blessing to you to enable you to grow in the grace and
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says, I am
a debtor. I am debtor. I'm debtor both
to the Greeks and to the barbarians, that is to the wise and to the
unwise, to the learned and to the unlearned. He said, I'm a
debtor. I'm a debtor. And as I looked at that, I thought,
you know, I'm a debtor. I'm a debtor. I owe a debt of
thanksgiving to God. And with this, one of the reasons
I love preaching the gospel is because I'm a debtor. I'm in
debt to God. I owe everything to Him. Now,
by that, I don't mean that I'm paying my debt for sin. No, no. My indebtedness has been
fully paid for by my substitute. But the debt that I owe to God
is a debt of faithfulness in preaching His gospel. a debt
of a consecration, a debt of dedication, a debt of thanksgiving,
and a debt of worship. I'm a debtor to God. I owe everything
to Him. I owe everything to the Father. He chose me. He put me among
the people of God. He joined me to His Son in everlasting
union before He made the world. He gave me to the surety of the
covenant of grace. He chose me. I didn't choose
Him. He chose me. He called me. He loved me. I'm in debt to God. I'm in debt to God the Father.
I owe everything to Him and His grace. And I'm in debt to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Because He's the one who came
and lived for me. And He died for me. And He was raised for me. And He represents me before the
throne of God. I owe everything to Christ. I
have nothing without Him. But in Him, I have all things.
Well, the Scripture says that this very man says you're complete
in Him. You think of that. Everything
you need, everything a holy God demands of you, you have in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that wonderful? Everything.
And we're in everlasting union with him. We're joined to him.
And what God had joined together, let not man put asunder. I had occasion to speak about
the subject of preachers being divorced a few weeks ago, and
I was dealing with this. And I said, you know, the scriptures
are very strict pertaining to the issue of divorce and especially
of a preacher. 1 Timothy chapter three, must
be the husband of one wife. I'm very much opposed to preachers
or deacons or elders being divorced and then being ordained as a
pastor or preacher or elder or deacon. And here's the reason. Here's the reason. Who is the bridegroom? Our Lord Jesus Christ. You see,
in a marriage relationship, and I've had several weddings in
the last several weeks, and I tell the bridegroom, I say, you're
a picture of the Lord Jesus. He's the bridegroom of the church.
Well, that means the church is the bride. Well, let me ask you this. Has
he ever divorced his bride? Has he ever divorced his bride? And the answer is no. And therefore,
if you ordain a man to be a pastor, a preacher, an elder, or a deacon,
you've ruined the picture of the Lord Jesus and his relationship
to the church. You see, our Savior has loved
us with an everlasting love, and He will never ever cut us
off. Though we do some things and
say some things that may be absolutely terrible, and we will, because
we're capable of doing anything that any other son or daughter
has ever done. but He will never cut us off. He will never divorce us. And
the reason is because in Him, we're made the righteousness
of God. That's utterly astounding. Utterly astounding. I'm a debtor to Christ who is the the husband of the
church, and he hadn't cut me off, and he never will. Notwithstanding my disobedience
over which I weep, and notwithstanding the weakness of my faith, over
which I seek Him to give me more faith to believe Him more fully.
He'll never cut me off. No. He doesn't do that to His
bride. Never will. Never will. I'm in debt to Him. I'm in debt to the Spirit of
God who called me, who quickened me, who gave me new life in Christ
Jesus, the Spirit of God who guides me, who directs me. All who are born of the Spirit
are led of the Spirit, right? We're led of the Spirit. I'm in debt to a preacher who
God in his marvelous providence caused to cross my path, I'm
in debt to Him for preaching the truth to me. And I'm in debt to this congregation
for so providing for Him that He could go other places and
preach the gospel to people like me. And I'm in debt to you. I owe
you. I owe you honesty. I owe you to be absolutely dead
serious and truthful about the things of God. I know every once
in a while I'll throw a little humor in. When it comes to the
things of God, this is serious business. And you want to hear
the truth, don't you? Of course you do. You want to
hear the truth. You want to know God. You want
to know who he is. You want to know Christ Jesus.
You want to know the truth. I'm in debt. Therefore he says
in verse 15, I'm ready to go preach to you. I'm ready to go
preach to you. Because he says in verse 16,
I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It's the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I'm not ashamed, for it's the
power of God unto salvation. This gospel is. It's the dunamis
of God, literally the dynamite of God. We were watching some time ago
that silly movie, Crocodile Dundee. Mindless. If I'm going to watch something,
I like to watch something mindless. I don't watch movies to be taught
anything. It isn't because I don't need
teaching and instruction, but I'm just not going to learn stuff
from people who hate God. So I just be entertained. He's
out there in a boat. and he has a stick of dynamite.
And he lights it, and he throws it, and boom, and all these fish
come floating to the top. That's power, isn't it? The gospel. Just get a stick of dynamite
out. Just get the gospel out. And
if the spirit of God is pleased to ignite it, just let it go. Watch what happens. See, that's
our job as preachers. Just throw the stick of dynamite.
Just throw the gospel. That's what I've done today.
I'm just, that's what you do. We just throw the gospel. That's
what you do. Throw the gospel out there. It's
a dynamite of God. If the Lord is pleased to ignite
the fuse, you know what it'll do? It'll
raise the dead. Is that right, Al? It will raise
the dead. And it will make out of a God-hater,
a God-lover and a worshiper of the Lord Jesus Christ. It'll
make a believer out of an unbeliever. That's what the gospel do. It's
the power of God and salvation. Just pull the dynamite out. And every time those of you who
preach, And those of you who teach Bible classes, and the
Lord willing, if this virus ends, we'll be able to get back into
our Bible classes, just pull the dynamite out. That's all
you need to do. And we start at different locations
in the scriptures, but just pull out the power of God. It is the power of God into salvation. Let it go. Watch it do its work. Hey, it did its work in you,
didn't it? Sure did. It'll honor God. The gospel is
an amazing message. It'll honor God. It'll save the
lost. It'll feed the sheep. It'll do
everything, Brent. It meets all of our needs. And
it leaves the people with God greatly encouraged, not in themselves,
but in the Son of God who loved us and who gave himself for us. Now, our conscience is at peace. Because my last message to you
before I go into surgery is the gospel of the Lord Jesus. And I have been faithful to my
calling as God has enabled me. The watchman must give forth
an accurate report. Our Lord said there through Ezekiel,
if a watchman sees the sword coming, and he doesn't warn people, the Lord says, their blood, they're
going to get killed, they're going to perish. But their blood,
I'm going to require it at your hands. Well, he said it, didn't
he, Ron? Their blood, I require it at your hands. And there's
going to be many a preacher most of the preachers. They're going
to die, and they're going to go to hell with those to whom
they preached. And I believe those people are
going to gnash their teeth on those preachers and say, oh,
why didn't you tell me the truth? All those times you preached
to me, why didn't you tell me about Christ Jesus? If a man tells the truth about
God, and about ourselves, and about the Lord Jesus and His
blood redemption, if folks don't believe it, you know what Paul
said in Acts 20? I'm pure from the blood of all
men. That's what he said. Oh, God help us to believe. to
rejoice in the Lord Jesus. Let's close in prayer. Lord, bless the word of God. Bless the gospel. The good news,
the glad tidings of the work of redemption, fully satisfied
and accomplished, indeed finished, by our Lord Jesus Christ. This
is so encouraging to us. And it leads us, Lord, as we're
reminded of who the Savior is and all that he's done for us,
it reminds us to live lives of dedication to him, the one who
loved us, the one who gave himself for us. How can we not be obedient
and to serve the Lord willingly in light of such love? Lord,
we know, all of us know that love is the strongest motivator
of all. Not law, but love. May we love the Lord Jesus, love
the gospel of your grace, and seek in all things to magnify
our gracious God and King. Bless these words for the good
of your dear people, your children. And may we leave here rejoicing
in our Savior and in our perfect standing in Him before you. For Jesus' sake, I ask these
things with thanksgiving. Amen.