Well, it is a privilege to be
here with you tonight and to worship the Lord and to hear
the Word of God preached as we already have this evening by
David Miller. And it is a joy knowing that
many of you have come from some distance to be a part of this
conference. And I'm very humbled by that,
to have some small way of being able to minister to you. I commend
you for your priorities and for seeking out a conference like
this. I'm very grateful for Praise
Mill Baptist Church to host this, and what a beginning this is. And I think Pastor Josh is onto
something here. And may God give it great success,
not only in our lives, but far beyond our meeting here. To those who will listen by live
stream and by the tapes and really to lay a foundation for future
years, future conferences held here, may God do that which He
alone will receive glory and praise. I invite you to take
your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Galatians, Galatians
chapter 1. The topic that has been assigned
to me is why preach the intolerant message of the exclusive gospel. There are many texts to which
I could draw our attention tonight. We could do a survey of the entire
Bible. We could focus upon various key
texts, but my heart is drawn to this text in Galatians chapter
1, beginning in verse 6. The Apostle Paul, as he writes
to the churches of Galatia, writes, I am amazed that you are so quickly
deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for a
different gospel, which is really not another. Only there are some
who are disturbing you and want to disturb the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from
heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached
to you, he is to be accursed. As we have said before, so I
say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel Contrary
to what you received, he is to be accursed. For am I now seeking
the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please
men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Again, the topic that has been
assigned to me, why preach the intolerant message of the exclusive
gospel demands a clear and emphatic answer in defense of the faith
once and for all delivered to the saints. To be wrong here
is to be wrong everywhere else that truly matters. To be wrong
here is to be wrong about the saving mission and sin-bearing
work of Christ. To be wrong here is to be wrong
about the very nature of the death and resurrection of our
Lord and Savior. To be wrong here is to be entirely
wrong about the way of salvation that leads to God. To be wrong
here is to pave the broad path that leads to eternal destruction
and damnation. We must be unwavering in our
assertion. that the gospel is the only way
of salvation. The entire Bible is staunchly
and strictly assertive about this cardinal truth, from Genesis
to Revelation. The entire Bible speaks with
one voice, and that without stuttering or stammering. that salvation
is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and there
is not one drop of saving grace outside of those three solas.
Not one. The very essence of the gospel
itself demands its exclusivity. Once you define the purity of
the gospel, you automatically establish its exclusivity. The Bible lays down a zero-tolerance
policy for any equivocation outside of this singular message that
salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. To put it most succinctly, the
scripture is adamant that the gospel is the only way of salvation. Every other path is a path that
leads to hell. If the gospel is not the only
way to heaven, it is no way to heaven. If the gospel is not
the way of salvation, it is not a way of salvation. And we're
not just dogmatic about this, we are bulldogmatic about this. There are many passages to which
we may turn to establish this cardinal truth. Tonight we shall
be in Galatians chapter 1. With these opening verses we
quickly discover that the book of Galatians is Paul's most passionate,
his most explosive letter. This book is a powder keg of
spiritual dynamite ready to detonate. Paul misses no words here. He
breathes holy fire. In this letter, Paul is so consumed
with fiery zeal regarding the exclusivity of the gospel of
Jesus Christ that he abandons his normal practice of beginning
by dictating the letter to a secretary. Instead, Paul grabs the pen in
hand himself. And he writes this letter with
his own hand in letters so large that you could read them from
the other side of the region. He says in Galatians 6 verse
11, see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own
hand. It is clear that Paul is highly
emotionally charged and for very good reason. And so what has
Paul so riled up and what should have us so worked up? Well, the issue here is the gospel
has come under siege. The gospel of grace has been
corrupted in Galatia. It has been compromised. It has
been perverted. It has been corrupted until it
is no gospel at all. The gospel of grace had come
under attack by false teachers known as the Judaizers who had
come into the church and mixed grace and law, works and faith. And these defilers of the truth
claimed that salvation could be earned by keeping the law
and that sanctification can be achieved by the flesh. And these
perverters of the gospel sought to change salvation from no longer
being a gift for the guilty, making it a reward for the righteous. So the Apostle Paul must fight.
the good fight for the very heart and soul of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. And you and I are living in days
in which the gospel has come under assault again and again
and again. And you and I must stand firm
in grace and we too must stand strong that the gospel is the
only way of salvation. I want us to look at this text.
I want you to note four things with me from this text. I want
you to note first Paul's amazement. Beginning in verse 6, Paul begins
by expressing his astonishment over the Galatians. He is shocked
by the Galatians. In verse 6, he begins, I am amazed. This word for amazed is a very
strong word. It means to be astounded, to
be bewildered, to be dumbfounded, to be shocked, to be perplexed. Paul would say in the vernacular,
you blow my mind, those of you there in Galatia. He says, I
am amazed. I am stunned that you are so
quickly deserting him. He is writing this to believers
now. that you are so quickly deserting him. This word for
deserting is a military term for a soldier abandoning his
position or post. It means literally to go AWOL,
when you should be on guard, when you should be on watch,
when you should be alert, when you should be holding your ground,
when you should be looking for the enemy. Instead, you are asleep
and you are capitulating to the spirit of the age. They were
deserting their loyalty, please note, to God Himself. Look at
this. I am amazed that you are so quickly
deserting Him. To desert the gospel is to desert
God Himself. It's not just simply a system
of theology, but God Himself, who is the author of this theology.
He says, you're turning your backs on God Almighty. You are
a spiritual turncoat. You are defectors of the worst
kind as you have drifted away from the dock. A sound doctrine. You are so quickly deserting
Him. The word quickly. Paul was just
there. He had just told them to be on
the alert so that this would not happen. And Paul is saying,
I have no more left town after warning you that you have now
so quickly deserted Him. I want to say this again. To desert the gospel by grace
alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, is to desert God
Himself. As John Piper has said, God is
the gospel. God and the gospel are one. There
is a solidarity between God and His gospel. Why is this? Because the greatest revelation
of the glory of God has come shining forth to us through the
gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is the glory
of God that is at stake. That was Calvin's whole approach
when he was run out of Geneva. And they called upon Him to defend
them against Rome after He had been run out by this very city.
And He enters into... controversy with Sandileto and
his very pinpoint argument for justification by faith is, you
at Rome corrupt the gospel and the glory of God. You desecrate
the glory of God. He saw himself as a defender
of the glory of God. You have taken on the blasphemy
of the glory of God. That is why Calvin was so worked
up in the Reformation. That is why the Apostle Paul
is so worked up here, because you are desecrating the glory
of God. Every attribute of God is shining
forth brighter than 10,000 suns in the sky, beaming and pouring
through the cross. and through the gospel of Jesus
Christ. The greatest display of the holiness of God is in
the gospel of Jesus Christ, that God is separated from sinners,
and the only means by which unholy sinners may come to holy God
is through the mediation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The wrath
of God comes shining forth through the gospel that God poured out
His wrath upon His own Son upon Calvary's cross. And only the
damned in hell can even begin to imagine what Jesus suffered
under the righteous wrath of God upon that cross. We see the
grace of God shining forth as salvation is offered freely to
sinners on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the
cross. Every attribute of God, the truth
of God, the immutability of God, the eternality of God, the righteousness
of God, the love of God, the mercy of God, the truth of God,
on and on and on, every aspect of the greatness and the grandeur
and the glory of God is put on fullest display in the gospel
of Jesus Christ. To equivocate on the gospel is
to bring God under attack. Notice what he goes on to say
in verse 6. I am amazed shocked, stunned
that you, believers in Galatia, are so quickly caving in and
capitulating and deserting Him, God, who called you by the grace
of Christ. God only calls sinners to himself
through the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no call to salvation
outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The entirety of God's
saving work and saving enterprise is contained within the purity
of the gospel of Christ. And there is no grace outside
of the gospel, and there is no call of God to himself outside
of the gospel. Here, the gospel is defined as
the grace of Christ, the free, unmerited, undeserved, work of
Christ upon Calvary's cross, bearing the sins of His people,
suffering under the wrath of God, becoming a curse for us
upon Calvary's cross, and there shedding His blood and pouring
out His blood unto death to secure the eternal redemption and salvation
of all those whom the Father had entrusted to Him. He says,
you're deserting God who called you by the gospel of Christ for
a different gospel. Could there be a different saving
gospel? Could there be a different redeeming
gospel? Could it be that God has one
plan of salvation in the New Testament and he had a different
one in the Old Testament? Could it be that God has one
plan for Gentiles, but God has a different gospel for Jews? Could it be that God has one
gospel for those who hear the gospel and receive Christ, but
a different way for those who never hear? Paul says, I'm astonished,
I'm amazed that you have deserted him for a different gospel. This word different, do you see
it there in your Bible? Heteros. It denotes another of
a totally different kind. In other words, there really
are only two gospels, the true gospel and the false gospel.
the saving gospel and the non-saving gospel. And he says to them,
you have equivocated with the true saving gospel in order to
now be seduced by these false teachers for a different gospel. And this different gospel, Paul
says, and will tell us, is no gospel at all. It is a counterfeit
gospel. It is a sham salvation. It is a fake message. It is a
rip-off religion. It is a mangled message. There
is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is
the end of death. Notice at the beginning of verse
7, as Paul continues with this astonishment, He's dumbfounded that you have
given up diamonds for dirt, that you have given up the truth for
a lie. He says, which is really not
another. Paul is saying it's not a saving
gospel. It is not a true gospel. And
by saying this, Paul is absolutely emphatically asserting that there
is only one way of salvation, that there is only one saving
gospel. He is asserting the exclusivity
of salvation in Jesus Christ alone. Jesus said in John 14,
verse 6, I am the way. and the truth and the life. Positive
assertion. Now, negative denial. No man
comes unto the Father but through me. Peter, before the Sanhedrin
said, and there is salvation in no one else. For there is
no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. The apostle Paul would write,
there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, the testimony
born at the proper time. Now, to desert this gospel is
to be removed from standing in the truth. What is the true gospel? Look
a couple of verses earlier, just parenthetically for a moment. At the end of verse 3, the Lord
Jesus Christ, verse 4, who, personal pronoun, who, gave Himself for
our sins. There is substitutionary penal
atonement as Jesus vicariously died in the place of sinners
and in so doing gave Himself unto death upon Calvary's cross
For on the behalf of our sins results so that He might rescue
us, deliver us, save us from this present age. This world
is going to hell. This world is under judgment.
This world is on a collision course with judgment on the last
day. And Jesus Christ, by His death upon the cross, has rescued
sinners. from great danger. Even as Paul was astonished and
amazed in the first century at how easily Galatians were beguiled
and seduced, even so we should be bewildered in this hour and
in this day. When we see evangelicals sign
the ECT document, and pretend that there is no difference between
the gospel of the Scripture and the gospel of Rome. We should
be astonished and amazed at those who would sign other documents,
who would cave in in order to put their arms around false teachers
and false brethren as if there is no difference between what
we believe and what they believe. I should be astonished as we
have turned on television and so-called Christian leaders have
gone on the Larry King show, for example, in the past. Here
is your moment. Here is your hour. Here is your
opportunity to preach the gospel to the nations. In one program, King said, We've
had ministers on our program who said, you either believe
in Christ or you don't. If you believe in Christ, you
are going to heaven. And if you do not believe in
Christ, you're not going to heaven. I can tell you what minister
said that. John MacArthur. Joel Osteen's answer. Yeah, I don't know. I'm reading the manuscript right
here. I don't know. There's probably
a balance. I believe you have to know Christ,
but I think if you know Christ, if you're a believer in God,
you're going to have some good works. I think it's a cop-out
to say, I'm a Christian, but I don't ever do anything. That
wasn't the question you were asked. You were asked the question,
do you have to believe in Jesus Christ in order to go to heaven?
King wouldn't let it go. Larry King said to Joel Osteen,
what if you're Jewish? Now, Larry King is Jewish. Or
if you're a Muslim, you don't have to accept Christ at all,
do you? Osteen, you know, I'm very careful. about saying who would or who
wouldn't go to heaven. I don't know. King, if you believe you have
to believe in Christ, they're all wrong, aren't they? Ulstein,
I don't know. I spent a lot of time in India
with my father. I don't know about all their
religion, but I know they love God. No, they don't. They're
God haters. I know they love God. I don't
know. I've seen their sincerity. I don't know. Our jaws should be on the ground. Although he's revealing himself
to be what he truly is, one who denies the very gospel of Jesus
Christ and the exclusivity of his shed blood for the atonement
of sin. That's Paul's amazement. And I trust that none of us here
tonight have passed the point of continually being shocked
and amazed at who punts on first down when this question is put
forth. Second, I want you to note Paul's
adversaries. As we continue to read verse
7, not only Paul's amazement, but Paul's adversaries. He goes
on to talk about, only there are some who are disturbing you. These some refer to the false
teachers, and it only takes some to create a big mess. The Judaizers
are trying to bring their Jewish legalism into the church and
distort the gospel, and whenever the gospel is distorted, there
is no place to stand. You are greatly disturbed. This
word disturbed means to trouble, to agitate, to shake up. And
the idea is that this false gospel is shaking up their allegiance
to the one true gospel. And so doing, they are troubling
the church. He says, there are some who are
disturbing you. and want to distort. Do you see
that? Want to distort. And this word,
distort, means to change something into its very opposite. It is
a total reversal. And he is saying they have totally
reversed the gospel of grace into a gospel of works, who want
to distort the gospel, the one and only gospel of Christ. And
in so doing, they pervert it and tamper it and dilute it. They were saying you have to
keep the law and do your part in order to be righteous. You
are justified by faith and works. You are sanctified by fleshly
efforts. They were saying you have to
be circumcised to be saved. You have to keep the Ten Commandments
in order to be saved. You have to observe the holy
days. You have to practice the ceremonial law. You must become
like Jewish proselytes and submit to the Mosaic law in order to
earn your way to God. There are many such adversaries
of the gospel today. They acknowledge a place for
the cross, but they deny the purity and the sufficiency and
the finality and the exclusivity of the gospel. They claim that
salvation is by faith and good works, by faith and water baptism,
and by faith and church membership, or by faith and speaking in tongues,
or faith and Hail Marys, or faith and the Mass, faith and last
rites, faith and the treasury of merit, faith and buying indulgences. And then there are other adversaries
of the gospel of a different kind. They are the cultists.
They deny the Trinity. They deny the absolute deity
of Christ. They deny the lordship of Christ.
They deny the virgin birth, the sinless life, the substitutionary
death, the bodily resurrection, the second coming. They deny
the eternality of hell itself. They deny forensic imputation
of the perfect righteousness of Christ to those who believe. These adversaries of the gospel
claim that there are many ways of salvation, many ways to God. They preach tolerance of all
religions as long as one is sincere and loving to all. But they say,
peace, peace, where there is no peace. They are blind leaders
of the blind. They are clouds without water,
trees without fruit, wandering stars for whom black darkness
has been reserved forever. They are ear-ticklers who strain
at a gnat and swallow a camel. They clean the outside of the
cup, but inside they are full of robbery. They are whitewashed
tombs who are dead men's bones on the inside. So, what will Paul say to this?
What is the mind of God that needs to be pronounced on such
a corruption of the gospel? Look at verses 9 and 10. I want you to see third, Paul's
anathemas. These false teachers, the Judaizers,
who sought to undermine the saving mission of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul has some very strong words for them in verse 8. Let these
words sink deeply into our minds tonight and into our souls. Paul
begins in verse 8 by putting forth an extreme hypothetical
situation in order to make his point. So in verse 8, he says,
but even if we, now this is hypothetical, Paul will never abandon the gospel,
but he says, even if we, referring to himself or to Barnabas or
to Timothy or to Luke, even if we, or an angel from heaven,
perhaps Michael or Gabriel or one of the chief angels, one
of the living angels, one of the guardian angels, one of the
seraphim, one of the cherubim, any one of the elect angels,
should preach to you a gospel. Contrary to what we have preached
to you, Paul says, and his emotions now are seething, he says, he
is to be accursed. He is to be damned. He is to
be condemned by God forever. Now, this word accursed is the
word anathema, which means to be devoted to destruction. He
is to be consigned to the flames of hell below. He is to be damned. To put it bluntly, he is to go
to hell before he can take anyone else with him. Martin Luther put it this way
in his commentary on the Galatians, here Paul is breathing fire. His zeal is so fervent that he
almost begins to curse the angels themselves. Close quote. Now, there's no room for neutrality,
no room for passivity here. This is a time for the man of
God to step forward to pronounce the mind of God. James Montgomery
Boyce, a great champion of the faith and of the gospel, wrote
years ago, how can it be otherwise? If the gospel Paul preaches is
true, then both the glory of Jesus Christ and the salvation
of men are at stake. If men can be saved by works,
Boyce writes, Christ has died in vain. The cross is emptied
of meaning. If men are taught a false gospel,
they are being led from one thing that can save them and are being
turned to destruction." How true are these words spoken
by Boyce. Those who corrupt the one saving gospel contribute
to the damnation of lost souls who follow their message. It
was Jesus himself who said in Matthew 18 verse 6, whoever causes
one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it
would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around
his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." Close
quote. Paul has not said enough. He
reloads in verse 9. He backs off just to get a running
start to harpoon this heresy yet again. So notice what he says in verse
9. He could have just said it one time in verse 8 and moved
on. Everything that Paul says is
of extreme importance. Paul now restates what he just
said so that there would be no question about what you heard
him say as you read this. Verse 9, as we have said before. In other words, I told you when
I was there. I told you there was only one
way of salvation. I told you Jesus Christ is the
only Savior of sinners. I told you justification by faith
alone is the way that God has saved. I told you that's how
He saved in the Old Testament with Abraham. I told you that's
how He saved you now in the New Testament, that there is only
one gospel. Verse 9, as we have said before,
so I say again now. In other words, if you didn't
get it the first time, You're bound to get it now. If any man,
verse 9, be he an apostle, be he an angel, be he some self-appointed
religious zealot, if any man is preaching, present tense,
indicating this is an ongoing crisis, in the church at Galatia
right now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the
one that you received, and you received it from me because God
gave it directly to me and I gave it to you, if any man is preaching to you a
gospel contrary to the one that you received, he is This is shocking. This is stunning,
what Paul says. But it has to be this way. He
is to be accursed. This word, accursed, speaks to
the seriousness of entertaining any idea that there is a way
of salvation outside of by grace alone, through faith alone, in
Christ alone. Paul says such a false teacher
should go to hell and will go to the hottest part of hell that
is reserved for false teachers who distort the gospel of Jesus
Christ and poison the hearts and the minds of others. I would remind all of us tonight
that what Paul has to say here, he is putting it on the front
porch of this letter. This is not chapter 3, chapter
4, chapter 5. He works his way into this argument
and then pulls out the sledgehammer and makes this audacious statement. Paul no more than signs his name
to the opening salutation and makes a beeline. What is in his
heart comes spewing out like an erupting volcano with white
lava of truth spewing forth. at the very outset of this book,
where Paul would normally say something like, I thank my God
for you, or you are in my every thought, or I pray for you constantly,
or I thank God for your faith and your hope and your love.
There is none of this. Paul is not thankful. He is not thankful for what is
going on in Galatia. He is rightly filled with holy
zeal because the high ground of the gospel has been forfeited
and instead of his normal pastoral platitudes, there is only this
open public rebuke. What further makes this so exasperating
is that Paul had just been there and he had just told them this. Paul's anathemas continue to come down to this present
day. The apostolic message continues
to pronounce the heavy hand of divine judgment upon all who
add to the gospel, to all who subtract from the gospel, to
all who compromise the gospel, To all who twist the gospel,
to all who delude the gospel, Jesus said, beware of false prophets
who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly, they are not sincere. They are ravenous wolves, and they are after you. Finally, I want you to see Paul's
aim in verse 10. We've seen Paul's amazement.
We've seen his adversaries. We've seen his anathemas. I want you to see his aim in
verse 10, and then we're finished. Paul now comes down to the bottom
line. Paul is not finished. He asks a soul-searching question
that should sift every heart in the churches of Galatia. He
asks a question that should sift through every conscience and
every heart here tonight. He says in verse 10, "'For am
I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to
please men?" If Paul were seeking the favor of men, he would certainly
tone down his rhetoric, would he not at this point? But he
is not courting the approval of men. He desires his amens
to come out of heaven. He is certainly not courting
the approval of the Judaizers, nor anyone who is sympathetic
to their corrupt message. Instead, Paul is seriously seeking
the approbation of God and God alone, and he is saying there
is no middle ground. Either we seek men or we seek
God, it can't be both ways. Paul would put it this way. If you please God, it does not
matter whom you displease. But if you displease God, it
does not matter whom you please. Did you get that? That is the
ultimatum. That is the fork in the road.
That is what Paul is pressing to the hearts of the Galatians
and to our hearts here tonight. And men-pleasers are ear-ticklers. Men-pleasers broaden the road
that is head for destruction. But God-pleasing preachers preach
the narragate. They preach the narrow road.
They preach that few there be that find it. They preach the
necessity of repentance. They preach the lordship of Jesus
Christ. And they say things like, if
any man shall come after me, he must hate his own father and
mother and brother and sister, yes, even his own life, or he
cannot be my disciple. If any man shall come after me,
he must deny himself, take up a cross, and follow after me."
That's what God-pleasing preachers and elders and deacons and teachers
and mamas and daddies and believers uphold. If I were still trying
to please men, that's what Paul did before he was converted.
He said, I would not. I could not be a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Bottom line, this is either or,
never both and. This is mutually exclusive, never
mutually inclusive. Either we seek to please men
and we therefore displease God. or we seek to please God, and
in the process, we will always be those who displease men who
want an easy religion that will take them to hell. Paul would
say, I was chosen by God. I was called by God. I was set apart by God. I was
saved by God, redeemed by God, commissioned by God, instructed
by God, appointed by God. Why on earth would I now suddenly
want to please men? In the last day, it will be before
God that we will stand. We will be judged by God and
either rewarded or passed over for those rewards by God. But
it is God whom we must please. We live in an hour not unlike
the first century in which the gospel remains under constant
assault from the cults, from false religions, from the Roman
Catholic Church, from new perspective on Paul, from non-lordship advocates,
from social gospel proponents, from universalists, and from
many others. There are many attacks upon the
gospel in this hour. Our feet must be firmly planted
upon this solid ground that Jesus is the only way of salvation. Therefore, we must take the gospel
to the streets because there is no salvation apart from this
gospel. We must get on planes. We must
get on airplanes. We must cross the seas. We must
scale mountains. We must cross deserts. We must
go to the ends of the earth and take this one saving gospel message
to those who are perishing without Christ, who have no salvation
without Christ. Jesus is the only way of salvation. No one else has been born of
a virgin and lived a sinless and perfect life. No one else
can give me His perfect righteousness. No one else has died in my place,
bearing my sins and carried them far away. No one else has suffered
the wrath of God, deserving me in my place. No one else has
appeased God's righteous anger towards me. No one else has reconciled
me to holy God. No one else has redeemed me out
of the slavery to sin and to Satan. No one else has washed
my sins away. No one else has been raised for
my justification. No one else has seated me in
heavenly places. No one else has presented me
faultless before the throne of God. Not Buddha, not Allah, not
Mary, not the Pope, not some Unitarian being, not Joseph Smith,
not Mary Baker Eddy. There is only one who is the
champion of our salvation. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we are jealous for his
name and we are zealous for the honor and the glory that belongs
to him alone. We will preach his eternal saving
message till the end of the age. And we are persuaded that there
is salvation in no other name. For there is no other name under
heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Have you come
to believe upon Jesus Christ? Have you seen the emptiness of
life without Christ? Do you understand that you're
under the wrath of God without Christ? Do you understand that
there is no hope for your soul without Christ? Do you understand
that it's appointed unto man once to die and after this the
judgment? Do you understand that you'll
stand before God, and the books will be opened, and every eye,
sinful thought, sinful act, sinful words, it will all come dancing
out like skeletons out of a closet. Let me tell you, you need an
advocate. You need one to undertake your case. You need one who will
save you from the wrath to come. If you have never believed upon
Jesus Christ, I call you this moment, this night, to commit
your very life to Jesus Christ, to embrace Him as Lord and Savior. Come and humble yourself before
the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Turn away from your
sin. Turn away from this world. Run to Christ. Flee to Christ. He loves to take in sinners.
He died for sinners. Him who comes unto me I will
in no wise cast out. You will find a reception with
Him who is the friend of sinners. Run to Christ and be saved. Let us pray. Father, set these words that
Paul has penned deep, deep into our souls. Let us earnestly contend for
the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. Let us be white
hot, red hot, Let us be worked up. Let us be passionate. Let us be zealous. Let us stand
with Paul and proclaim the gospel and defend it against all her
enemies. Father, we pray that you would
give us great grace in these dark days to be able to be the
lamp stand that you've called us to be, to set forth the only
message of salvation that there is under heaven, that Jesus Christ
has come into this world to save sinners, of which we all are
foremost and chief. Father, we pray this in his blessed
name. Amen.