The following sermon was delivered
on Wednesday morning, October 19, 2005, at Trinity Baptist
Church in Montville, New Jersey, during the annual Pastors' Conference.
The preacher is Pastor Albert N. Mauriton, and this is the
first sermon in a series entitled, Pursuing a Ministry Permeated
with Christ. Now, if I were to reduce to an
irreducible minimum The burden of these two sessions assigned
to me this morning, I would choose to use an abbreviated portion
of Ephesians 3 and verse 8 and extract from that text these
words, Preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Or the words
of Colossians 1.28a, Whom we proclaim. However, you already know from
the material handed out to you when you registered that my subject
matter is couched in a much more lengthy way with the words, the
challenge of pursuing a ministry of the Word permeated with the
fragrance of the person and work of Christ. Now, what I mean by
these words is simply this. that in all of our preaching
and teaching of the Word of God, we should consciously attempt
to make sure that whatever the passage, whatever the subject,
whatever the focus of exposition may be, whatever the range of
legitimate application may be, that something of the Lord Jesus
in the perfection of His work the glory of His person or the
nature of His manifold ministry to His people would be implicitly
and explicitly present in that preaching. And in order to give
us a greater feel for what I mean by that explanation, I want you
to imagine with me that someone appears in your assembly who
is a truly regenerate person, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, united
to Christ in a bond of living, true, saving faith. But they
know nothing about you. They know nothing about your
ministry. By some means or another, they've just been plunked down
in your midst. And so they come among you as
a perfect stranger, know nothing of you, nothing of your past
ministry, of your reputation, etc. And they sit under your
ministry for four successive Lord's Days. You're preaching
both morning and evening. It may be that you are presently
giving an exposition, verse by verse, of the Sermon on the Mount,
or Ephesians chapter 1, or perhaps you're bringing a topical series,
excuse me, on the fear of God, or on the Christian family, or
perchance you're expounding the Ten Commandments. Or, being more
courageous, you may be giving expositions of the book of the
Revelation, or you may be doing some biographical preaching.
You're preaching on the life of Abraham, the life of Joseph,
the life of Elijah or Elisha, or it may be that you are expounding
one of the Psalms of David. And at the end of those four
weeks, we take our visiting stranger aside, And we ask him or her,
would you please tell us what are the four or five dominant
characteristics of the ministry under which you have sat for
the past four weeks? with respect to both the content
and the manner of the preaching to which you've been exposed
for the past four Lord's Day, what, my dear sister, what, my
dear brother, would you say were the dominant characteristics? The things that came through,
no matter what the exposition, no matter what the application,
these are the things that are the dominant characteristics
of this ministry to which you have just been freshly exposed. Well, I think all of us would
desire that if the person were speaking honestly and accurately,
that they would say something like this. Well, first of all,
it is obvious that that man really believes that what is in the
Bible is absolute truth. To use the language of Nancy
Peercy, it's true truth. It's not just his truth or somebody
else's truth, it is absolute truth from God. Surely you would
want someone to gain the impression that when you stood up and opened
this book and began to expound it, no matter what the focus
of the exposition or application may have been, that you spoke
as a man who truly deeply believe that what is in the Bible is
truth. Secondly, I hope you would like
to believe that the person would say it's obvious that that man
works hard to make simple, plain, and obvious what is in the Bible. So that as they sat there and
they saw you expounding the word, they didn't sit there and say,
oh, that's amazing. How in the world, idiot? But they sit there and say, well,
you dummy, that's right there. Why didn't you see it before? There wasn't this confused maze
of meandering down a hundred different trails. You said where
you were going, you took them by the hand along that track,
and when you got to where you said you hoped to take them,
they were conscious, they were taken there. That man works hard
to make simple and plain and clear what is in the Bible. Thirdly,
I would hope that you think they could say honestly that that
man is sincere. He speaks as one who believes
what he preaches and teaches out of his Bible. He not only believes that objective
truth is in the Bible, but he obviously is dominated with that
truth. It is obvious that it's part
and parcel of who he is. He is utterly sincere. And then
I would hope, my brethren, I would hope they could say with equal
conviction, and with no hesitation, that man obviously believes that
Jesus Christ, in His unique person, and particularly in His sacrifice
upon the cross, is indispensable to the entire fabric of the Bible. That man obviously believes that
Jesus Christ in the uniqueness of His person, and we might say
more generically in His saving work, but more specifically in
His sacrifice upon the cross, is indispensable to the fabric
of what the Bible teaches, that if you were to take out of those
sermons that I heard the allusions, the references, those things
that touched upon some aspect of the person and work of Christ,
the sermon would be utterly incomplete. Now, this is what I mean by saying
that our ministry in preaching Christ, in preaching the unsearchable
riches of Christ, ought to be as marked by this fourth characteristic
as it is by the previous three. And my desire in these two lectures-slash-sermons
is to challenge you consciously and continuously to pursue just
such a ministry, so that any fair, unprejudiced listener who
were asked That question could answer and say, at least in substance,
though not of course those precise words, those four things about
your ministry and about mine. And hopefully if they hung around
long enough and got to know us, it would be evident, number five,
that that man embodies in his life, in his demeanor, in the
way he relates to me and to others, he embodies the truth. that he
preaches. But this is a rather new stranger,
doesn't have enough time to get to know us, but certainly if
the thing were extended over a period of time, that fifth
characteristic ought to be one that each of us jealously desire. So in these lectures, I want
to seek under God and with the help of the Holy Spirit to challenge
you consciously and continuously to pursue just such a ministry. If it can be said of you that
you already are pursuing such a ministry, in the language of
the Apostle Paul, then these lectures are an exhortation to
abound yet more and more. Now, in taking up the subject,
I propose to do so under, yes, three headings. The biblical
warrant for pursuing a ministry permeated with the fragrance
of the person and work of Christ. Secondly, some confirming voices
from the past urging us to pursue such a ministry. And then thirdly,
the identification of, and some correctives to, hindrances to
the pursuit of such a ministry. I'm hoping to get through heads
one and two in the first hour, but this is the first time I've
given this material. It's been just prepared in the
last week, and I'm not quite sure how far the horse will ride. And if I only get heading number
one, then we'll squeeze heading number two into the second hour.
First of all, then, the biblical warrant for the pursuit of a
ministry of the word which is permeated with the fragrance
of the person and work of Christ. I urge you to seek to track with
me as I set before you four lines of biblical evidence that it
is indeed the will of God that each one of us called to the
ministry of the Word within the framework of the New Covenant
exercised just such a ministry. Number one, because the person
and work of Christ are the very rationale for an inscripturated
revelation being given to us as a fallen race. Why ought our
ministries to be permeated with the fragrance of the person and
work of Christ? I answer, because the person
and work of Christ are the very rationale for an inscripturated
revelation being given to us as a fallen race and I'm indebted
to my brother Ted Donnelly as he came over early before the
conference and we were head knocking over these matters and he sowed
a thought in my mind that has blossomed and I believe it is
true and let me try to open up what I mean by that heading.
Why do we have a spirit inspired book which tells us how we got
here? beginning with its doctrine of
creation in the beginning God created. Why do we have a book
that tells us who and what we are in our essential identity
as image of God? Why do we have a book that tells
us how we fell in our first father, Adam? How do we have a book that
tells us that man's sinfulness became so aggravated that God
blots out the entire human race save eight individuals and begins
again with another family? Why do we have a book that tells
us about God reaching down into the midst of idolatrous Ur of
the Chaldees and laying hold in sovereign grace and power
of a man named Abraham? through that man eventually establishing
a family, that family becoming a nation, and through that nation,
why do we have all of this? Well, obviously, the answer is
that according to Scripture, God had a plan with its top roots
embedded in eternity. a plan to create, a plan to permit
the fall, a plan to save a vast multitude out of that fallen
race by means of one who is identified in this book as the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. And so it should not surprise
us to find texts that tell us that everything that is encompassed
within that whole corpus of creation and God's redemptive activity
through the ages has its purpose in Christ Himself. Colossians
1, verses 16-18. Colossians 1, verses 16-18. For in Him were all things created
in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.
All things have been created through Him and unto Him. And He is before all things,
and in Him all things consist or hold together and adhere,
all things created unto Him. In the beginning God created
unto Him, and everything else is unto Him. And so surely if
the entire revelation is in our hands because there was a divine
purpose of an unto Him in all things, and a purpose that in
all things He should have the preeminence. For in the language
of Ephesians 1 in verse 10, that unto a dispensation of the fullness
of the times to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the
heavens, the things upon the earth, in him I say, etc., then
surely, surely, when we pick up this Bible and begin to expound
it at any point and with reference to any concern, should it not
have something at least of the fragrance of Him who is its very
rationale for being in our hands, and having a book to expound.
Surely we've done something tragically wrong if we are handling this
book in any of its parts, and nothing of the fragrance of Him
who is the very rationale for the book being before us is not
smelled by our hearers. Surely if his person and work
in conjunction with God's eternal plan and purpose of redemption
are the rationale for an inscripturated revelation, then when handling
any one of its parts, there ought to be some savor and fragrance
of his person. and its work. Since we have a
Bible, because God is committed to give to His Son a redeemed
bride destined to dwell with Him in the new heavens and the
new earth, the fragrance of the bridegroom ought to be at least
detected in all of our preaching. And then I set before you a second
strand of the biblical warrant for the pursuit of a ministry
of the word permeated with the fragrance of the person and work
of Christ. And it is this, because the person
and work of Christ are the central subject of the scriptures. Because the person and work of
Christ are the central subject of the scriptures. And some of
you have already anticipated that I'm going to say Let us
turn to Luke, chapter 24. You remember the setting? These two dejected disciples
on the road to Emmaus. They've been in Jerusalem when
all of the events clustering around the trial and death of
our Lord Jesus occurred, and a stranger draws near, begins
to walk with them, begins to talk to them. and begins to inquire
of them as to why they are sad, and we pick up the reading at
verse 21. When asked why, what's the reason
for what they're talking about, etc., we had hoped that it was
he who should redeem Israel. Beside all of this, it's now
the third day since these things came to pass. Moreover, certain
women of our company amazed us, having been early at the tomb,
and when they found not his body, they came, saying that they had
also seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. And certain
of them that were with us went to the tomb and found it, even
so as the woman had said, but him they did not see. And he
said unto them, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe
in all that the prophets had spoken. Was it not necessary
for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His
glory? And beginning from Moses and
from all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures
the things concerning Himself. Our Lord, first of all, reproves
these two for their lack of faith in all that the Scriptures had
said, especially Scriptures that had plainly spoken of the very
events that they said have persuaded them that he's probably not all
we had hoped he would be. He said, no, you are foolish
and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets had
spoken. Was it not necessary, if he were
to be the true Messiah and fulfill the prophetic utterances, to
suffer and enter his glory? And having questioned them, and
now having reproved them, he begins to instruct them. And
the range of his instruction is clear, and beginning from
Moses and all the prophets. He takes the full range of what
we call our Old Testament Scriptures, all of the Scriptures, now not
each and every text, every incident, every command, every promise,
every narrative, every genealogy, and show how in every single
word of the Old Testament He is explicitly present. That's
nonsense. Excuse me for being so blunt,
but it is. But the range of his instruction was the entire corpus
of the Old Testament. And from every single section
of the Old Testament, and from many specific incidents of both
prophecy, of history, of poetry, of devotion, he focuses upon
this grand subject himself. And beginning from Moses and
all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures
the things concerning himself. They were in the Scriptures,
but these two did not see them, and the great hindrance was on
belief. Since he is the central subject
of those Scriptures, he did not have to engage in fanciful, imaginative,
and bizarre interpretive principles to demonstrate that he was there. No, he is there. Their unbelief
has blinded them from seeing where He is and where He was
in those Scriptures. And so our Lord opens up the
Scriptures. He does not import something
into the Scriptures other than His own authoritative voice who
originally spoke in the Scriptures, the Spirit of Christ which was
in them testified of the sufferings and the glory to come. Peter
tells us it was the very Spirit of Christ who authored the Old
Testament Scriptures through the various instruments whom
God used And so without any fanciful, bizarre, wildly imaginative,
interpretive principles, our Lord demonstrates He's there,
if only you have eyes of faith to see Him. William Henderson states, it's
a lovely challenging thought, that running through the Old
Testament, there are four lines that all converge on Bethlehem
and Calvary. I always use the alternate term
Golgotha. Calvary is too smooth. It's Golgotha
with all the gore and all the ugliness, the hard G. It's Calvary
in terms of it being a display of the love of God and the mercy
and tenderness of God. But that's just a little thing
with me. Four lines And he has an exposition
of what he means by that on page 93 and 94 in his very helpful
book, Survey of the Bible. I commend it to you. demonstrates that his person
and his work are indeed the central subject of the Bible. And this
same truth he highlights later on in this chapter in verses
45 to 47. You're familiar with the verses,
I'm sure. But then there is a second pivotal
text, and it's found in John 5 and verse 39, demonstrating
that Christ himself is indeed the central subject of the Scriptures,
John 5 and verse 39. In one of these situations where
our Lord is in tense interaction with the unbelieving Jews, this
is what he says in John 5 and verse 39. Verse 38, we can back up. And
you do not have his word abiding in you, for whom he sent him
you do not believe. You search the Scriptures because
you think that in them you have eternal life, and these are they
which bear witness of me, and you will not come unto me that
you may have life. Here our Lord soundly rebukes
their blind unbelief. He says, you spend your hours
searching the Scriptures, you pride yourself in your knowledge
of the Scriptures, and the fact that your life is given to mastering
the content of the Scriptures, and yet the very thing to which
the Scriptures bear witness, I am in front of you, I am before
you, but you do not see me for who I am. These are they which
bear witness of me. Donald Carson accurately writes,
and I quote, these words, the words of John 539, are a comprehensive
hermeneutical key. By predictive prophecy, by type,
by revelatory event, and by anticipatory statute, what we call the Old
Testament is understood to point to Christ his ministry, his teaching,
his death, and his resurrection. That's found on page 263 of Carson's
commentary on John in the Pillar Series. Profound, beautiful,
distillation. These words are a comprehensive
hermeneutical key. By predictive prophecy, by type,
by revelatory event and by anticipatory statute. What we call the Old
Testament is understood to point to Christ, His ministry, His
teaching, His death, and His resurrection. And then you find
texts such as these in the book of Acts which underscore this
same truth that Christ himself In His person, in His unique
and saving work, is the central theme of the Scriptures. Acts
3, 18, 19, 24, Acts chapter 3, Peter preaching,
But the things which God foreshadowed by the mouth of all the prophets
that His Christ should suffer, He thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore,
and turn again. Verse 24, Yea, and all the prophets,
from Samuel and all them that followed after, as many as have
spoken, they also told of these days. Now, yes, they did so by
predictive prophecy, but they did so in more subtle ways, in
the most scathing rebukes of the prophets, when one of them
is telling apostate Israel, giving over to Machiavellian feast,
I'll take the dung of your feast and spread it upon your faces."
What in the world does that have to do with Christ? Well, it points
forward to a day when God will, through Christ, in the outworking
of a new covenant, have a people upon whose faces He will not
spread dung. but upon whose faces he will
put the very glow of his likeness, as he regenerates them, and as
he puts his Spirit within them, and as they, beholding God's
glory in the face of Christ, are more and more transformed
into his likeness and into his image. And when we read those
sickening portions, chapter after chapter of the utter apostasy
of the nation of Israel, it is meant to create within all of
our hearts a yearning for the day when God has a people who
will bring Him delight and bring Him pleasure. And surely in preaching
those things, Christ is there, not as explicitly as in a specific
predictive prophecy such as Isaiah 9, 6 and Isaiah 52, 13 through
chapter 53 and a host of other passages. But He is there, and
all is meant to testify in one way or another of Him. And certainly
if this is true of what we call the Old Testament scriptures,
how much more of the New? The Gospels that show us in John
his pre-incarnate existence, which tell us of his virginal
conception, his birth, his ministry, his life, his teaching, his death,
his resurrection. The book of Acts is, according
to Acts 1.1, is the record of the ongoing ministry of Christ
from the right hand of the Father. Luke writes, Theophilus, the
former treatise I wrote, telling you the things Jesus began to
do. Now I'm going to tell you the
things he has continued to do, and the epistles, his salvation
in its marvelous explication, in its application to the New
Covenant community in every dimension of its life, its failures, its
sins, its errors. But Christ is there, stuck into
the midst of the most naughty concerns, as we shall see in
a subsequent heading. And then, of course, the book
of the Revelation, with all of its strangeness, one thing is
clear. Again and again, the Lord Jesus
is revealing through His angel to John to send to the seven
churches that He is the triumphant Lamb who will overcome all of
His and His people's enemies. Yes, Christ Himself, in His glorious
person, in His unique and sufficient saving work, is the central theme
of the Old and the New Testament Scriptures. And at this point,
I want to read a marvelous paragraph or two from Gardner Spring's
book, The Glory of Christ. If you can find that at all,
get it. Read a few pages a day in conjunction with your devotions,
and it will warm and inflame your heart toward your Savior. Listen to Gardner Spring. under
the subject, or under the title of this chapter, the principal
subject of Revelation. Not the book of the Revelation,
but of inscripturated Revelation. He writes, this then is the thought
we place at the head of our observations on the glory of Christ. God is
no more omnipresent than the presence of Christ fills the
sacred volume. Isn't that beautiful? If you
have any appreciation for words and the reality they convey,
that's got to at least raise up one little goose bump on your
very reserved Anglo-American flesh. God is not more omnipresent
than the presence of Christ fills the sacred volume. He himself
is its author. Prophets were sent by him. Apostles
were his amanuenses. His light shines on every page. It envelops us wherever we take
the Bible into our hands. We live in this illumined atmosphere. It is not as though Christ were
in heaven and we are on earth, or as though we were looking
at the sun at a distance, or as though we were on the side
of the globe on which the sun does not shine. The mind is not
less distant from the body than Christ from the Bible. How distant is your mind from
your body? No, you see, it's right there,
inextricably tied up with all of its bodily functions and the
mystery of mind and body and all of these things. Christ,
Christ is not less distant, the mind is not less distant from
the body than Christ from the Bible. He is the mind, the very
soul of the book itself. He enriches it. He adorns it.
He has great and glorious designs to accomplish by it. And not
only are they there, here unfolded, but they comprise all the designs
of the divine mind in relation to the restoration of fallen
man. It is the instrument of good only as it speaks of Him. He spoke in the prophets, uttered
the law, and now speaks in the gospel. He is the cause, and
these ample and varied revelations are the effect. There are some
striking instances of His glory on which we propose to dwell
in the following pages, but His glory shines throughout these
divine communications, even though its rays sometimes fall obliquely. Isn't that beautiful? Sometimes
the rays fall obliquely, sometimes more directly. You can't miss
feeling the warmth of them on the page that you're reading
and expounding, sometimes more obliquely. His light fills the
scriptures with truth. His grace and mercy give birth
to all the hopes and all His promises form the clue to all
the prospects it reveals. His fullness makes it so full
of God. Men may not see that the Bible
is so full of Christ, yet He is there. They may not believe
that it is so full of Christ, yet He is there. They may deny
that it is full of Christ, yet He is there. All their efforts
to exclude Him are of no avail. It was to reveal Christ that
this revelation was given. It is impossible to get at a
distance from Christ so long as we have any true intimacy
with the Scriptures. If we go up to heaven, He is
there, or if we make our bed in hell, He is there. I cannot
find that Christ is ever lost sight of in the Bible. The man
who would understand the gospel and preach it intelligibly must
carry Christ along with him into the pulpit. He must habitually
carry Christ in his mind and heart. Christ must be near him,
or his preaching will have very little meaning. That system of
theological opinions which has the most of Christ is the true
system. That which has the least is the
most erroneous. That which has none is heresy,
infidelity, and atheism." And then he goes on to really inveigh
against the evils of liberalism and Romanism with great passion. So I say, brethren, we ought
to earnestly strive to have a ministry that has the fragrance of Christ
in it, not only because the very fact we have an inscripturated
revelation is because of God's purposes in Christ with their
taproots in eternity, but because the scriptures themselves tell
us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the central subject of this
blessed book. Once persuaded that He is the
central subject of the Scriptures, then surely we will ask of any
and all portions we are expounding or applying, where is my Savior
in this portion? What shuts me up to Him in handling
precepts and commands? what displays him to me in type
and in shadow, what points to his work once for all on behalf
of sinners as our great prophet, priest, and king, what displays
his grace in historical narrative. And did we not have a profound
example of that here Sunday night? Most of us had to admit, I don't
know how I could preach Christ from Genesis 38. But we heard it done in a way
that was not artificial, in a way that did not cause us to do backflips
and say, whoa, boy, Pastor Tom, we can really get something out
of the Bible. But we sat there and said, oh,
God, forgive my dullness that I didn't see amazing grace in
this chapter before. So, brethren, I am not pleading. I'm sure many of you are aware
of the debate of redemptive historical preaching, etc. I don't want
you to be thinking, oh, Pastor Martin's gone whole hog, gone
over to the other camp. No, no, no, no. But what I'm
saying is, what I'm saying is, that if He is the central subject,
then no matter what the subject, no matter what the portion, no
matter what the theme, whether the emphasis is meant to be consolatory
or whether it's meant to be hortatory, we must ask these questions.
What in this duty, what in this exposure of sin is meant to drive
me to Christ and make Him more precious? What is there in this
demanding duty that is meant to cause me to cry out, I'm Lord,
I'm not sufficient for that. I can't love my wife as you love
the church. It's like the Lord says, yeah,
I know you can't. That's why I told you to do it. So you'll
be shut up to me, for without me you can do nothing. And that
that's got to become a kind of spiritual slash mental gymnastics
that we perform at our desks in the level of our preparation.
Where is Christ in all of this? But I must hasten on. We should
pursue a ministry permeated with the fragrance of Christ, not
only because the person and work of Christ are the rationale for
the existence of an inscripturated revelation. The person and work
of Christ are the central subject of Scripture. But thirdly, he
is the central subject of apostolic evangelistic preaching. He is
the central subject of apostolic, evangelistic preaching. What
did the apostles consider to be the gospel, the good news
of God's saving mercy? Well, consider such passages
as these, and brethren, I'm going to quote them, and sometimes
just cite a text in the interest of time. Certainly, we think
immediately of Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 2. Coming to
Corinth, knowing the tremendous pressure that would be upon him
to conform to the intellectual and religious climate at Corinth,
he writes in verse 1, And I, brethren, when I came to you,
did not come with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming
to you the testimony of God, for I determined Before I ever
came over your city limits, there was a settled, deep resolution
of soul, and it was this, I determined to know nothing among you save
Jesus Christ and Him as crucified. I was committed to the fact that
the person of Jesus Christ and his work, particularly his work
as a substitutionary, sin-bearing Savior, would be utterly, absolutely
central to my message. So that when he writes in chapter
15, against the backdrop of people questioning even the fact and
the possibility of bodily resurrection, he said, oh, my brethren, you
know the gospel we preach to you. Christ died for our sins. He was buried. He was raised. He was seen. This was the sum
and the substance of my message. He can say in his second letter,
for we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and
ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. When we open up that prototypical
apostolic Evangelistic sermon in Acts chapter 2, and Peter,
once he clears away the silly notion that the speaking in tongues
is because these people are a bunch of drunks at 9 o'clock in the
morning, and he says, no, that's not the answer. This is that.
Well, once he has cleared away the objection as to what's going
on, He then opens his mouth and he begins to preach Jesus to
them. He begins to preach Christ. Acts 8 and verse 35, we find
the same thing with Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch opening
up that passage in Isaiah. He preached Christ unto him. Acts 13, Acts 17, 1-3, Paul's
pattern going into the synagogue and their reasoning out of the
Scriptures. I commend to you chapter 8 in
our brother Pastor Donnelly's book, Peter, Eyewitness of His
Majesty, has a wonderful distillation of this apostolic emphasis on
preaching Christ when preaching evangelistically, and then he
flowers it out and opens it up with respect to Peter's ministry. It's chapter 8, Christ-centered
preaching. In our evangelistic preaching,
we too must seek to bring men to feel their accountability
to God, yes. We must seek to bring them to
feel the reality of their sinfulness, yes. But remember, Paul says
that that which in a peculiar way is God's instrument of power
to salvation is the good news. And the good news pertains to
the person and to the work of Christ. So the same apostle can
say in 1 Corinthians, who wrote to the Romans, the gospel is
the power of God unto salvation, narrows it down even more in
118, for the word of the cross is to them that are perishing
foolishness, but unto us who are being saved, it is the power
of God. What is the gospel without the
word of the cross being central to that proclamation of the gospel? And you find that throughout
the Pauline Corpus, 2 Corinthians. We are ambassadors for Christ
as though God were beseeching you through us, entreating you
through us. We beseech you in Christ's stead. Be reconciled to God. On what
basis? For him who knew no sin was made
to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. And brethren, we've got to come
back to the place where we really believe that though there is
a legitimate place for the use of the law, a legitimate place
for establishing people in fundamental theistic perspectives, Acts 17
in Paul's reasoning, the Areopagus, I'm fully aware of that. Do we
really believe that when we plant the cross before people, it is
uniquely the fullest display, not only of all of God's attributes,
but of man's sinfulness? There is a more striking display
of the intimidating holiness, inflexible justice, and consuming
wrath of God at Golgotha than was ever displayed on thunder-stricken,
lightning-struck Sinai. Wisdom in God's creative work,
yes, but Paul says we preach Christ in whom there is the embodiment
of the wisdom of God. For by His activity are you in
Christ Jesus who is made unto us wisdom from God. Yes, intricate
wisdom in the creative work, but oh, how it pales before the
wisdom that ever conceived that the second person of the Godhead
would take to himself in Mary's womb by the operation of the
Spirit a true human soul, a true human body, whose mind can think
for anything but the shortest time that Deity It's joint to
a zygote. Deity and a zygote! Deity and an umbilical cord! Wisdom of God. Wisdom of God. Shredded flesh. Contused face. Blood-soaked body. An outcast. immolated, hanging
on a tree, forsaken by men and by his own admission, forsaken
by his God. But in that is the hope of a
vast multitude whom no man can number out of every kindred,
tribe, and tongue and nation. Christ crucified the wisdom of
God. In that utter weakness is the
greatest display of God's power. And brethren, we need to have
confidence that sticking the cross in the midst of the muck
of this increasingly apostate, God-rejecting, Christ-hating
generation, that's the instrument of divine power. It was with the apostles, but
then he is also the central subject of apostolic evangelistic preaching,
yes, we've established that, but then he is the ever-present
subject of the apostolic didactic and corrective instruction to
the New Covenant community. And I hope I'll be permitted
to go to ten minutes still. I want to complete this point
and then I will have laid before you my four lines of reasoning
to support my exhortation that we consciously, continually seek
to have a ministry in the Word, fragrant with the person and
work of our blessed Lord. He is the ever-present subject
of the apostolic didactic and corrective instruction to the
New Covenant community. When they are giving concentrated,
doctrinally didactic portions, Christ is constantly present
as the soul and center of that instruction. When the Apostle
is going to set forth the glorious truth of the election, Ephesians
1, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in
Christ, according as He chose us, bare choice, no, in Him. And all the way through, that
which holds everything together in that marvelous Trinitarian
expression of praise to God for His salvation is in Christ, in
Christ, in Christ. so that that community at Ephesus
cannot think of any of its objective, glorious blessings of saving
mercy apart from seeing Christ at the center. Union with Christ
is the nexus that brings it all together. And when there are
concentrated practical or ethically didactic portions, Christ is
equally present as the soul and substance of that instruction.
So much so that by the time Paul gets done giving instructions
to husbands and wives, he says, Oh, what am I talking about?
Husbands or wives or Christ in the church? Oh yes, I speak concerning.
You chuckle at it. He cannot talk about husbands
loving wives without seeing Christ's infinite, overflowing, patient,
tender, nourishing love for His church. He cannot give directions
to wives to be submissive to their husbands without thinking
of the church's joyful, principled submission to the husband who
has won her by his sacrificial, selfless love. He can't deal with the knotty
problem of immorality at current without saying, you're bought
with a price. Don't you know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit which you have of God? You're
not your own. You're bought with a price. Therefore
glorify God in your body. He gives specific directions
to all the age categories of people, or tells Titus, this
is what you tell the old men, Titus 2, tell the older women,
young men, up, up, up, up, up, and he then launches into that
marvelous statement of Titus 2, 11 to 14. Why all this instruction? Because
of what Christ has done. It has its roots embedded in
the work of Christ. It's not empty moralism. Live
a different life from your pagans around you. Live this life because
this is the very end for which Christ died. He gave Himself
for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify
to Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of good works. When Peter's talking to poor
slaves with abusive masters, he takes them right to Christ.
He says, look, look, look. Be patient with them. Don't strike
back. Why? Hereunto were you called
because Christ also suffered for us, leading us an example
that we should follow his steps, who when he was reviled, reviled
not again. When he suffered, he threatened
not, but committed his cause to him who judges righteously.
He fills that practical, ethical directive with Christ. Then the concentrated corrective
portions are also filled with Christ. I slipped over into that
in the first Corinthians 6 quotation, but he does that all the way
through when he's dealing with abuses of Christian liberty.
He says, are you going to do this for a little taste on your
lips? For a few moments, are you going to destroy the brother
for whom Christ died? And he plants the cross right
smack in the middle of this selfish abuse of Christian liberty, and
all the way through the corrective portions of their writings. Christ is central. He's the life. He's the soul. Take him out.
And it is but mere moralism. So in the light of these things,
Is it no wonder that Paul summarizes the entire scope of his ministry
in the words from which I quoted when I stood before you. And
I want us to just look at these two texts as I close this hour.
Ephesians 3, 8. Ephesians 3, 8. Unto me, who am less than the
least of all saints, was this grace given. To preach, and then
we can take that phrase, as it were, put it in brackets or parentheses,
unto the Gentiles. To preach unto the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ. This is my calling. To preach
the unsearchable riches of Christ. And in Colossians, very interestingly,
chapter 1, He says in verse 27, to whom God was pleased to make
known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles, which is Christ in you or among you, the hope of
glory. Now notice, whom we proclaim, not just evangelistically, admonishing
every man, teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present
every man perfect or mature in Christ. How do we bring our people
to maturity in Christ? by proclaiming Him. Proclaiming
Him? Proclaiming Him. So, my dear
brothers, I lay before you these four categories of evidence,
which to me are four compelling reasons consciously to pursue
a ministry of the Word permeated with the fragrance of the person
and the work of Christ. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You that
in free, sovereign love You have come to a race of rebel sinners
whom You could have blotted out in the person of our first parents,
and we would never have had any existence. You could have blotted
out at any point in human history, yet because You purposed before
the foundation of the world to have a people to give to your
son as his bride. You, in your mysterious wisdom,
planned all that has unfolded in human history, and we thank
you for a book that tells us of that plan. We thank you for
a book that constantly points us to the one in whom all the
hope of the nations resides. We thank you for the record of
his coming. Thank you for the explication of what He did and
how it applies to us, how it enables us to draw near to you
in the confidence that our sins are pardoned, that we have been
given a positive status of righteousness in your sight because of Jesus.
We've been adopted as your children. You've made us your sons. You
have assured us that what we now know of the beginnings of
your work in us will be consummated gloriously when we are made holy
body and soul into the image of your beloved Son. O God, help
us, help us, we pray, that our own hearts and minds will be
so suffused and enamored with our Lord Jesus that more and
more we will be keen to see Him where He is in the Word and to
preach Him to our people. hear our prayer, continue to
bless our fellowship in this time of this interlude, and bring
us back together again with your blessing upon us, we pray in
Jesus' name, amen.