Well, good morning, good to see
you out, and let me first say happy Mother's Day to all you
mothers. We love our mothers, and my own
mom will watch this by video, so mom, I say to you this morning,
happy Mother's Day, even though I can't be with you, and you'll
know I was thinking of you. This morning, I want to do something
a little different from the expository type sermons that I typically
deliver from a selected passage of scripture. As some of you
know, a little over a month ago, I was invited to speak at another
church's Sunday morning men's breakfast meeting, and specifically
they asked me to come and talk about a book I authored, To My
Friends, Straight Talk About Eternity. Well, I knew enough
about the doctrine of this particular denomination to know that most,
if not all of them, would be unfamiliar with the gospel message
that's set forth in that book, the very gospel that we enjoy
hearing week in and week out here at our church. And so I
didn't want to blindside anyone, so I proceeded to tell them I
really couldn't talk about the book without talking about its
contents, going on to disclose that if I accepted their invitation,
I would likely be challenging the very doctrine and tenets
of their church and its denomination. So assuming they would not want
to hear doctrine contrary to their own, I initially resisted
accepting their invitation on that basis. But even after all
that full disclosure, they continued to insist they were open-minded
and would welcome such a challenge. So while I remained reluctant,
I felt obligated then in light of God's command to be ready
to give an answer to everyone that asks you of the reason of
the hope that is in you. They asked, so I relented and
proceeded to try to put together my thoughts on how, in the short
time that I was allotted, I could best encourage their consideration
of the vital basics of the gospel, which I knew most, if not all
of them, would be totally unfamiliar. So this morning, I want to share
with you what I told this group. And while many of you, I know,
have heard these things before, There are many others outside
of our church who also hears our message through the media
ministry of our church. And for the vast majority of
so-called Christianity, these vital gospel, basic vital gospel
issues are as unfamiliar to many as it was to that group I spoke
to that morning. I could tell then on that day
by the looks on their faces in the audience that most of those
men had never heard anything like this. And it bears repeating
because the same is true of most who profess to be of the Christian
faith in our day. But for those of you here who
have been blessed to hear and to believe God's gospel of grace,
while this will all be very familiar to you, it might be helpful to
you, I thought, and stimulate your own thinking as how you
might introduce the gospel to your family and friends if and
when you're given that opportunity. I think we should all prepare
ahead of time so as to be ready if and when we're given that
opportunity, ready to give an answer of our hope for eternal
life to everyone that asks. Well, here's what I related to
this group. As the book title, To My Friends, Straight Talk
About Eternity, suggests, I've written of things that I've concluded
to be vital. We're talking about eternity.
Things concerning our eternal destiny. In other words, in the
book I've tried to communicate the good news of the gospel of
God's grace, the gospel which for years I thought I believed,
only later to discover that it was altogether different than
I had presumed. And I know that most professing
Christians today, they believe many of the things that I now
believe to have been mistaken about. So to explain how the
book came about, let me share a little background with you.
My brothers and I, we were raised as Southern Baptists by wonderful
parents. And we were pretty much drug
to church every time the church doors were open. And as a result
of that, I was taught a lot of true things. Things which I expect
many of you were likewise taught and on which we agree. And that's
always a good place to start. I was taught a lot of truth from
the Scripture about Jesus Christ and His work of salvation. For
example, I was taught that He was the Redeemer, that He actually
redeemed those He saves through His death, buying them with His
shed blood. I was taught that the remission
or payment of sins was through Jesus Christ, His death. I was
taught that it was through him and his finished work that the
sins of all who are saved are completely forgiven. I was taught
that Christ paid in full the debt due unto all the sins for
which he died on the cross. And I suspect many of you agree
with most of those things. And so I'm grateful for that
upbringing. However, I'm eternally grateful that years later someone
came along and challenged me which eventually led me to conclude
that some of the essential tenets of my former faith were contradictory
to some of those true things I just mentioned. Contradictions
that, at the time, I was totally oblivious to. They just went
right over my head. Now, as an aside to you all this
morning, you'll note I titled today's review of this talk,
Contradictions Exposed, in keeping with that, the approach that
I decided to take before this group. So I went on to say, so
since I can't know for sure exactly what each of you believe, I'll
talk about my own former beliefs and how they were full of contradictions,
because I can speak firsthand to that. I was taught and I believed,
as do many professing Christians, that Jesus Christ, he lived and
died for everyone who ever lived without exception. And I suspect
most of you believe that as well. But here's one of the first questions,
real simple question, that started me to seek. Someone simply asked,
if Christ died for everyone, why doesn't everyone go to heaven?
Well, the Bible's clear. Most people will not go to heaven,
but shall perish. The book title itself is taken
from the words of Christ, saying, straight is the gate, and narrow
is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find
it. Now, I know that even the suggestion
that Christ did not die for everyone brings to mind scriptures like
John 3.16 and others since that I too once interpreted those
scriptures to mean God loves every individual in the world
and sent Christ to die for them all. And I address those scriptures
and others like them in the book rather extensively. So, because
I had to reconcile those things, just as you should, So given
our limited time, I'm going to defer you to the book to deal
with those. And instead, here's a question
I want you to ponder. If the debt for the sins of everyone
was fully paid by Christ's death for them, how can God justly
hold any of them responsible so as to punish them eternally
if Christ has already bore the punishment due unto all their
sins? Well, my initial response to
that would have been the one I most commonly hear. I'd say,
oh, but you must believe. In my book, I quote an old 17th
century theologian, John Owen, who responded to that, oh, you
must believe by saying, oh, well, then I guess Christ didn't die
for all the sins because he must not have died for the sin of
unbelief. Now, I'm all over that. We're
getting kind of to where the rubber meets the road now. The
Bible's clear. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. But what specifically are we
to believe? And in whom? See, for years I
thought I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Only later to discover
that for many of those years my faith wasn't actually in or
on Christ, although I sincerely believed it was. I thought it
was and I would have argued that it was. But I now know that at
that time my faith was in my faith. And let me illustrate
that this way. Imagine I've got a board to draw
on here. And I draw a circle up here at
the top, okay? And in that circle, we'll say
are represented all those who shall go to heaven, the saved,
who shall live forever in the glory of heaven. And then down
below that, I draw another circle, a larger circle. And in that
circle, we'll have represented all those who shall perish eternally,
those who shall go to hell. Now, I want to suggest to you
that whatever makes the difference that will get you in this group,
get you into heaven, and keep you out of this group, keep you
out of hell, that that's where you're truly placing your trust. That's your savior. So, out here
outside of these two circles, we have something or someone
that makes a difference. We'll call that the Difference
Maker Circle, okay? And we call Jesus Christ the
Savior, so I thought I had Jesus Christ here in this circle with
a line directly up here to this group showing that He did something
for them. He saved them, unlike these. But wait a minute. I thought
Jesus Christ died for all. So I would have to have drawn
a line from his circle here, what I call the Savior, down
here, but they're not saved. So I actually, in my mind, had
to take Jesus Christ out of that real difference-maker block,
you see. Something else, by default, has
to be making the difference. if Jesus Christ died for all,
if he did no more for these who are saved than he did for these
who are lost. And for me, that difference maker
was my faith. Now, I kept Christ real close
to that block. I would talk a lot about him
as a savior, all those things I mentioned earlier, as a redeemer,
as one who remitted sins, all these things, and yet, in thinking
that he did it for all, He wasn't the real difference maker, you
see. I would, by my way of thinking at the time, he made it all possible.
I even taught how he paid it all. And yet the real difference
maker, you see, was not in Jesus Christ, but in my presumed free
will decision. I call that at the time, I call
that salvation by grace, because that's what, that's the name
it went under, the doctrine that I was taught. But I now know
that that was truly salvation by works, although I thought
I believed it was grace. See, grace is salvation based
upon no merit whatsoever being found in the one being saved. So consider those contradictions
now. I would say by his death on the cross he redeemed or bought
those who are saved, but I thought he died for this group down here
who would perish just as well. He redeemed them. By his shed
blood, presumably for all of them, he redeemed them. That
doesn't add up. He forgave their sins, I was
taught, by the remission, the payment of his precious blood. But these down here, whom I presumed
he died for, they perished anyway for forgiven sins. So I began to challenge my own
past beliefs. I could not reconcile that if
Christ did no more for these in this upper circle, those who
go to heaven, than he did for these in this lower circle, I
had to ask myself, what was it that I was really relying on
to make the real difference? And like most, again, I would
have said, oh, you must believe. That was really the real difference
maker at the time. And if I think about it now,
in hindsight, I know at the time I had to consider myself, see,
a little better. I got in this upper circle, and
I stayed out of this lower circle. because of something I did, because
I did my part. I was perhaps not as obstinate,
maybe a little more open-minded. I was better because I did my
part. I believed and they wouldn't. In hindsight, I look back at
that and I marvel that two of my favorite Bible verses were
two of my favorite Bible verses even at that time. Ephesians
2, 8, and 9 that read, for by grace are you saved through faith,
but that not of yourself. It's the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. Not of works. Faith is not something
you do to get yourself into this group, to get yourself into heaven,
and to keep yourself out of hell. No, it's the gift of God purchased
by the blood of Christ. But I suppose he shed his blood
so as to purchase faith for these who perish as well. If faith
is the cause of your salvation, then that would be salvation
by works whether you recognize it or not. And whether you openly
brag about it or not, just think with me, in your mind, by that
way of thinking, you would have a basis to boast. Figuring, again,
you belong in this top circle. You're included among the saints
because of what you did. You were a little better. You
were willing to believe. No, faith is the gift of God. So my hope and my confidence,
my faith wasn't actually on Christ at that time, but as I say in
my own supposed free will decision, my faith was in faith. Now here's
another point of agreement I suspect we have, and that is this, that
those who are saved, they do believe on Jesus Christ. But I want you to consider this
real carefully. Are those who are saved, saved
because they believe, or do they believe because they are saved? I used to believe the former,
and I'm now convinced of the latter. And there's a world of
difference between those two thoughts. It's true we must believe
on Christ, but that in accordance with his person and work as it's
revealed in God's gospel found in God's scripture. Which brings
me to another point that I suspect we all agree upon. you're probably
familiar with the Great Commission given to the disciples. As recorded
in Mark 16, Christ told them to go out into the entire world,
preach the gospel to every creature, and he that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be
damned. So it's clear from there, we
know that the saved are those who believe the gospel. and that
those who, in this lower circle, who ultimately perish are those
who don't. But I want you to add to that
this thought. Think now how often in the epistles,
professing Christians are warned again and again about falling
for or believing in a false gospel, another gospel as the scripture
puts it. So how is God's true gospel,
that is the one that's believed now by all who are saved in this
upper circle, how is it distinguished from all the other counterfeits
of which we're warned? Well, Paul answers that in Romans
1, 16 and 17. When he wrote that he was not
ashamed of the gospel, saying it was the power of God unto
salvation to all who believe it. And in verse 17, he tells
us of this distinguishing mark when he says that the gospel
is that power of God unto salvation for or because therein is the
righteousness of God revealed. Now for more, a few more years
than that, I didn't know anything about this righteousness. I had
no idea what that was about. Now think of the implication.
That means that that righteousness had not been revealed to me in
the gospel I had heard and believed up until that time. But listen,
it's got to be important. It's important if it is what
makes the gospel the power of God unto salvation, the very
means he uses to bring his people to a knowledge of him. It's got
to be important if it's what's ultimately revealed, according
to Paul, to all the folks who believe the true gospel, these
folks in this upper circle who end up in heaven. That makes
this important. I don't recall everything about
those days, but if pressed, I probably would have assumed that Paul
there was referring to God's attribute of righteousness as
that which is revealed in his gospel. As in, God is righteous,
and God is righteous. He's holy. He's just. God does
do right. But in this context, that's not
the righteousness that Paul declares to be revealed in the gospel.
No, that righteousness is as Paul wrote in Romans 10, 4, when
he said, Christ is the end, that is, the finishing or the fulfillment
of the law for righteousness. In short, the Bible teaches that
this righteousness revealed in the gospel is the merit of what
Christ accomplished in his life and death in perfect satisfaction
to the Father's justice. Christ satisfied the law's demands. That is the entire revealed will
of God. He satisfied first both in precept
that is, by his perfect, sinless obedience. And he also satisfied
the law's penal demands by paying the debt due to God's justice
for lawbreakers, due for all the sins of all those that he
saves. And when I began to seriously
look into this, into righteousness revealed in the gospel, I started
reading and I started hearing more about and imputed righteousness. Now that's something else I'd
never heard about. If you go back a hundred years
or more and read theologians from the past, you'll find many
of them stress this far more than you hear in our day. In
our day, you hear very little about the doctrine of imputation. And look, if this is as foreign
to you, as it was to me at that time. I know it may seem like
I'm getting into some deep theological subject that's not worth looking
into, but stay with me. In a moment, I'm going to share
an illustration that makes it so clear even a child can understand. But before I do that, I want
to give you a reason to not dismiss this righteousness, imputed righteousness. Do not dismiss this out of hand
because I'm going to show you just how important it is. In
Acts chapter 17, Paul concludes his message on Mars Hill by declaring
to us the standard by which God is going to ultimately judge
us all. And guess what it is? He said
God would judge the world in righteousness. And he further
makes it clear that it's the very perfect righteousness of
Christ by which we will be judged, the proof being that Christ rose
victorious from the grave. The righteousness he established,
see, demanded he live just as sin demands death. The wages
of sin is death. Now that means that all who will
live, that we're going to be judged by that perfect righteousness.
So that means that all who will live with him eternally, they
must possess a righteousness equal to that of the perfect
obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I can't deliver that and
you can't either. We're born sinners with Adam's
fallen nature and therefore we all sin. So that made me ask
the obvious question, wait now, how can anyone be saved if God
requires such perfection? In 2 Corinthians 5.21 we're told. We're told it's by God making
Christ's righteousness, His very righteousness, to belong to those
who are saved by His imputing it, His putting it to their account,
making them to be righteous. The merit of Christ's sinless
perfection made to be theirs in the same way that He imputed
or charged the demerit of their sins to Christ so that He could
pay the debt due unto God's justice for those sins. What an exchange! Christ died for sins he had no
part in producing, that those for whom he died would have a
righteousness they had no part in producing. So let me close
with this illustration. And some of you here will recognize
that I unashamedly borrowed this from Pastor Bill Parker. I altered
it a bit in consideration of the audience that morning, but
it went like this. Let's say you were a high-rolling
developer that got caught when the real estate bubble burst
down on the Florida coast. And you found yourself on the
verge of bankruptcy. Say you owed the bank $10 million,
and you had no way to pay it. So it's time to go meet your
banker, to throw yourself at his mercy, though you know it
will do no good. But you hope maybe he'll give
you some time or make some confession. And when you get there, he says,
well, have a seat, Mr. Smith. And first, let's just
pull up your account and look at the details. And he looks
at the account. He looks up at Mr. Smith and
he says, Mr. Smith, you may not realize this,
but a man came in last week and said, put Mr. Smith's debt on my account. And then he proceeded to pay
the entire $10 million. You are debt free. Wow, what
a relief. Now, that makes Mr. Smith a happy
fellow, so he wants to get out of there and go figure out who
this kind person is so he could thank him. And he starts to leave,
and the banker says, no, Mr. Smith, that's not all. And he
goes, uh-oh. He says, now, sit back down. He said, not only
did this man pay your $10 million, but he deposited another $10
million into your savings account. Now, wow. Think of the debt of
gratitude that Mr. Smith would feel toward that
man. Well, that's akin to the great
news of the gospel. Christ said, put their sins on
my account as he willingly took on the sin debt of everyone for
whom he lived and died and then he paid it in full by his own
precious blood. See, God the Father had graciously
imputed or charged their sins to Christ so that He could pay
them. But not only were their debts forgiven by His blood payment,
but they too have a double cure. God also imputed or credited
to their accounts the merit of Christ's perfect obedience, His
righteousness. See, that's how the Bible can
refer to an otherwise guilty, hell-deserving sinner such as
me. As he says of all of his saved church, that they are holy,
unblameable, and unreprovable in his sight. A sinner like me? Some of you know me, and you're
saying, that doesn't describe the Randy I know. And you're
right, not in my own character and conduct. But in the eyes
of God's justice, that's how he truly sees me. I am righteous
before him. It's a perfect righteousness
I have that I had no part in producing. It is the very imputed
righteousness of God in Christ, my substitute and my savior.
And listen, this isn't God just pretending like I'm righteous. Imputation is real. Here's how
real it is. The Lord Jesus Christ shed real
blood. He died a real death. He who knew no sin, who never
sinned, he died for imputed sin. And with that, I thank the group
for their breakfast and for their attention, and I express my hope
that something I said would prompt them to look into the scriptures
and seek further concerning this most important subject. Today,
to believers of like-minded faith, I pray the message will encourage
you perhaps to be thoughtfully ready and able to communicate
in your own way the distinctions of our faith with others if and
when that opportunity arises. And I also pray that if any who
hear this still adhere to the doctrinal positions that I once
held, unwittingly but nonetheless a doctrine of salvation by works,
I pray that God might be pleased to use this to challenge your
thoughts and lead you by faith to see how those beliefs stand
in stark contradiction and in opposition to God's true gospel
of grace where we see that salvation is truly conditioned on the Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and on Him alone. May the Lord use this
to inspire further consideration of His gospel wherein His righteousness
is revealed. As you seek God, pray that God
will expose to you any and all thoughts that stand in contradiction
to God's gospel and His glory. Amen.