A reading from the Word of God
is found in Paul's letter to the Church at Galatia, Chapter
1. Galatians, Chapter 1. I shall read verses 6 through
10. I marvel that ye are so soon removed
from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another
gospel, which is not another, that there be some that trouble
you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. If any man preach any other gospel
unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be
accursed. As we said before, so say I now
again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that
ye have received, let him be accursed. Or do I seek to please men? For
if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ."
Let us unite in prayer. O Lord, we are sobered by these
words, which remind us that Thy Gospels is a holy trust committed
to us, with which we dare not tamper, which we dare not seek
to alter, but given to the embrace, love, and then proclaim in power. And we pray that Thy Holy Spirit
may so instruct us as we study the Scriptures together, that
that gospel, once for all delivered to the saints, shall be loved
as never before, shall be understood with new clarity. And then, O
Lord, that we shall leave this place to proclaim this everlasting
gospel with fervency and zeal and power that hitherto we have
never known. To this end, we beseech thy help.
in the proclamation and attention to thy holy works, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen. The subject with which I am to
deal, as has been announced, is couched in the form of a question. The question is this, is today's
gospel the biblical gospel? We should be considering that
question in the three evening sessions. I believe I have the
three evening sessions. Do I not? Thank you. I didn't
check that schedule for a while, and sometimes they change the
schedule from the initial reception. And perhaps some of you might
wonder, why should we spend our time considering such an elementary
subject as this subject? Should we not rather assume that
we all understand the gospel and get on with the job of learning
better how better to communicate it, how to arm ourselves with
the tools of communication? Well, in the light of Paul's
words, you see that nothing can be more vital than a consideration
of this question, what is the gospel? For the apostle declares
in this passage, And, with all the apparent marks
of a divine messenger, and bring a gospel that was just a few
degrees left of center of the gospel which Paul preached, he
says, the curse of God should be upon them. Now, is it not
strange that the man who said in his letters to the churches
vilified, Christ is preached, and therein
I rejoice. A man who would rejoice if Christ
was rightly preached, even with wrong motives, should now turn
around and say, the curse of God be upon any man who would
tamper with the message of Christ." Now, the reason Paul spoke this
way is because he knew, as our generation needs to know, as the gospel, and what you receive
as the gospel will determine whether or not you experience
the blessings promised in the gospel. And, to receive a false
gospel in all sincerity does not mean that one's damnation
will be less severe than if one knowingly embraces error. And
so, there can be no consideration more vital for the average layman,
the teenager, the young person concerned about the issues of
eternity than this question that is before us. Is today's gospel
the biblical gospel? And certainly, for those of us
who are called upon to communicate the gospel, nothing is more vital
than to again and again ask ourselves, are we communicating that gospel
which is the biblical and the apostolic gospel? So much for
the importance that perhaps I ought to spend just a couple of minutes
exegeting the question. What I say is, today's gospel,
the biblical gospel, what do I mean by today's gospel? Well,
I do not mean the so-called gospel of liberalism. I was at a school
of higher learning a few weeks ago and entered into debate and
discussion with the chaplain of that school, who is an avowed
liberal, and his concept of the gospel is, if you go down into
what is called in our area—I live just eight miles from Newark,
and about 18 miles from the heart of New York City. You go down
into the ghettos and involve yourself with the needs of men
in their physical context, and that is communicating the gospel.
Liberals don't think of the gospel as a message to be communicated.
Well, we're not talking about that. As far as I'm concerned,
that's not even worth considering under the title of gospel. But,
when I use the term is today's gospel, the biblical gospel,
I'm speaking of the gospel that is generally preached in our
evangelical culture, the gospel that is generally proclaimed
over our evangelical radio ministry, the gospel that is generally
set forth in our gospel tract. Now, when I say today's gospel,
of course I am making a generalization. Generalization will not be true
in every specific instance. When you say, and when I say,
our contemporary society is an immoral and lawless society,
you are not saying that every individual is immoral and lawless.
I hope you are accepting yourself, at least, when you say this generation
is an immoral and lawless generation. I trust you are at least the
one exception to that generality. But, by and large, it's accurate
to say our generation, our society, is lawless. Our society is this,
is characterized by the words immoral and lawless. So, when
I use the term today's gospel, I am not bringing a sweeping
incitement to the upon every individual Christian, or every
individual preacher, or pastor, or gospel tract, or radio broadcast,
or evangelical poster. Now, when I say biblical gospel,
what do I mean by that? Well, I mean the gospel as preached
by our Lord Jesus Christ. as proclaimed by the Apostles
and recorded for us in Holy Scripture, particularly in the book of the
Acts of the Apostles, and then in any explanation of the Gospel
given by the Apostles and the inspired penman in that section
of Holy Scripture called the Epistles. I'm speaking of that
Gospel which the Church has loved and embraced and preached in
the of her history, the gospel preached by the Reformers, by
the Whitefields and the Thursians and the Brainerds and the Edwards,
the gospel preached by these whose ministry was owned with
power and with the might of God the Holy Ghost. Now, another
question as we move into the subject, and this is all vital.
I'm not using this for filler. I've got about ten hours of material
that I've got to squeeze into a maximum of three hours, and
it's most frustrating, and yet I feel these guidelines are necessary.
I want to ask this question, by what standard will we attempt
to answer the question? The question is, is today's gospel
de-biblical gospel? Now, if we're going to answer
that, we must have some standard of evaluation, and that standard
will be Holy Scripture. When we read in Isaiah 820, to
the law and to the textbook, if they speak not according to
this word, it is because there is no light in them. Suppose
when you came into the auditorium tonight, you found Pastor Lyon
and myself in a very heated argument. His face was red, my face was
red. Of course, that would never be,
but just supposedly. And you grew close, and you found
that the substance of our argument was that I was claiming I was
seven feet six inches tall. And he was still saying, you
are not seventy-six inches tall. And every time he'd raise his
voice and wave his hand, I'd raise mine a little louder and
wave my hand. And so we're going at it, hot and heavy. I am seventy-six
inches tall, you are not seventy-six inches tall. So, I am, you are
not, I am, you are not, until all of a sudden, one of you comes
in with a little eight-year, nine-year-old who has an unusual
measure of insight, and this little person comes and lifts
his hands and says, Mr. Lyons, Mr. Martin, I have a suggestion. And we say, well, what is that?
What do you want? I think I can help you with your problem. Oh,
you can? Yes. He said, I just happen to know that my dad's
got a yardstick out in his car, and I think I can solve the problem.
So he runs out and gets his yardstick. And he comes over and puts it
against the wall, and takes out his pencil, and he puts the yardstick
there three feet, and draws a little mark, then puts the yardstick
at that mark, and puts another little mark, and he says, Now,
Mr. Martin, you're tall enough to do this, now let's just see.
That would be good. Eighteen more inches. At the
top of that, you draw another little mark, and now he says,
Now, that's seven feet, six inches. Now, Mr. Martin, you turn around
and back yourself up against the wall. And, if I were to do
that, lo and behold, I would have to concede defeat. I would
have to acknowledge that the pastor, your pastor, was right,
and I was wrong. Now, what ended the controversy?
Well, when we brought our opinion to an objective, inflexible standard,
that was the end of all controversy. Now, suppose I was missed because
I was shown up to be wrong. And I said, all right, that thing
says I'm not 76 inches tall, but I'm still going to convince
you I am. So, I go down to Metro Toronto, and I get a gang of
10,000 people, and by some tremendous influence over them, a mass hypnosis,
I convince all those people I'm 76 inches tall. And then I bring
them out in busloads, and they surround the church, and then
they chant But that little fellow gets brought in the yardstick,
he's not impressed. He says, Mr. Martin, I hear all
that hollering, but will you get over against that wall, please? And
when I get over against the wall, sure enough, all their shouting
doesn't stretch me one inch. There I am, eighteen inches short.
I say, all right, I'm not going to concede defeat yet. You won't
listen to the great impressive crowds. I'll get some people
with influence. You just think that because these are the rank
and file and the writ class, so I go down to the university
and I get some PhDs, and I go down and get the mayor, and I
get some people with influence, and with pulse, and with stature,
and I convince them that I'm 176612. And so the dignitaries
walk in, all looking very dignified, upset condemnation. Mr. Lyons,
we are here to inform you, this gentleman is 176612, and you
better believe it, because you know who we are? I'm the mayor.
I'm the head of such-and-such department, and he takes five
minutes to tell us all the degrees he's got, and so-and-so tells
us what he's done. And, in the midst of all this,
that stubborn little fellow raises his hand and says, "'Excuse me,
gentlemen, I don't want to be hinted in, but will you watch
Mr. Martin walk over to the wall?'
And, sure enough..." Well, you say, "'What are you driving at?'
Well, I hope by now you see. is set against an objective,
inflexible standard, nothing can change the outcome. Multitudes
of people, if claiming otherwise, people of great influence and
standing, it doesn't change the fact. And yet, I have found here,
people, when one seeks to do this with something so vital
as And people begin to measure their present understanding of
the Gospel by the line on the wall, and they see that it comes
short a partial multitude of people who say, A gospel is a
biblical gospel, a gospel is a biblical gospel, a gospel is
a biblical gospel. Dr. So-and-so can't be wrong,
Mr. So-and-so can't be wrong, and this man is afraid he wouldn't.
I love it. Listen, there's one issue these
three nights, the fire on the wall. To the law, to the testimony,
if they speak not according to this word, no light in them. There's not an ounce, or I should
say, not a wattage of light in me. if I speak not according
to this word. And there's not a wattage of
light in anybody when it comes to the gospel unless he speaks
according to this word. Now, so much for the introduction,
and I hope you won't forget the lion on the wall. And, by God's
grace, it will all come to that line. Now, to the extent that
the gospel preached today in our evangelical circles, acknowledges
that this book comes from God. Oh yes, not dropped out with
black covers from heaven carried down by an angel, but it may
as well have been, as far as its authority and accuracy. God
spoke through many different penmen. Yes, yes, I understand
all of that, but it's the book of God. All Scripture is God-breathed,
and to the extent that today's gospel acknowledges that, it
is the biblical gospel. To the extent that it acknowledges
that salvation is to be found in the works of man, but through
the meritorious death and resurrection of Christ, today's gospel is
the Biblical gospel. But, Martin Luther said, and
I believe his words are prophetic to our own generation, Every portion of the truth of
God accepts precisely that little point which the world and the
devil are, at that moment, attacking. I am not confessing Christ, however
boldly I may be confessing Christ. Where the battle rages, there
the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all
the battlefield besides this. is merely flight and disdain
if he flinches at that point. And so, I want us to focus our
attention upon areas of the gospel where the battle rages, and in
those areas to ask ourselves, is today's gospel the biblical
gospel if it is not sounding a clear note in these areas? today's gospel, the biblical
gospel, when it does not build on a sound doctrine of God. There is a great difference between—and
the first statement will be for the theologians, and then the
next one for the laymen. Or, I should say, there are some
of you laymen who are theologians, forgive me. That terrible sacerdotalism
is in the heart of all of us, I'm afraid. There is a great
difference between a Christocentric theism, that is, a Christ-centered
doctrine of God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost,
as we worshiped Him in that opening hymn. There's all the difference
in the world between a Christ-centered doctrine of God and a Jesus-only
cultism that talks glibly and freely about Jesus, Jesus' friend,
companion, that knows nothing of Jesus, revealing a God of
majesty and might and power, a God of glory, who causes us
to fall before Him in trembling reverence and awe." Now, we want
to go to the evangelism of the apostles to try to answer this
question. Are we embracing, are we communicating
to our children as parents, to our Sunday school To our parishioners
as pastors, in our literature that we hand out, in the gospel
efforts that we support with our money, are we communicating
the biblical gospel if we fail to build upon a sound doctrine
of God? Well, the only way to answer
this is to compare the gospel of Scripture with the gospel
of today. Now, how did the Apostles Paul evangelize? Certainly, if
anyone can be taken as a model of what it means to preach the
gospel, it would be the Apostle Paul. Will you turn, please,
to the seventeenth chapter of Acts, where we have a statement
of Paul's general practice in evangelizing. Remember, now,
he was a pioneer missionary, going out to evangelize with
a view to making disciples and then gathering them together
into local churches. Now, when they had passed through
Amphipolis and Apollonia and came to Thessalonica, where was
the synagogue of the Jews? And Paul, as his manner was,
went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them
out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging Christ must needs
have suffered and risen again from the dead, and that this
Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ." Now, here we have,
in a summary statement, Paul's general pattern of evangelism.
When he would go into a Roman city, he would first of all go
to the synagogue. This was the place where the
Jews in that area, and any proselytes from the Gentiles, would come,
not primarily for worship. Worship was conducted back at
the temple, and three times a year the males would go up to the
temple, but the main purpose of the synagogue was for the
reading and exposition, explanation, of Holy Scripture. You remember,
Christ, at the initiation of His ministry, went into the synagogue
in His hometown, and then He was given authority to go ahead
and read and expound the Scriptures, which He did from the book of
the prophecy of Isaiah. and immediately make his way
to the synagogue, he then could open up the Scriptures with these
people and move right to what we might call the meaty core
of the Gospels, namely, notice, the sufferings of Christ, the
resurrection of Christ, and identifying Jesus of Nazareth as the long-promised
Messiah. Going into the synagogue, Paul
could assume this tremendous foundation of Jewish faith A
Jewish, Biblical doctrine of God. He could assume that these
people were clear on the doctrine of creation. In the beginning,
God created. He stood above his world as its
creator. He stood over that world as its
governor and preserver. He could assume that these people
had a basic understanding of the sovereignty of God. They
knew something of the history of Israel, and how God moved
kings and nations to deliver and preserve and establish His
people in the land of Canaan. They knew something of the concept
of the holiness of God, and that God could only be approached
on the basis of the blood of an innocent sacrifice. The whole
sacrificial system of Judaism was very familiar to them. Most
of these people would be found going up to Jerusalem three times
a year. They were steeped, at least in
an external way. It does not mean they understood
these things from the heart, but there was at least the intellectual
comprehension of these basic tenets of Jewish theism. But, now, if Paul were to come
into a situation where he couldn't assume this, how did he preach?
When he came to some raw pagans, whether they were intellectual
or whether we would call sort of non-intellectual, how did
he oppose them? Did he immediately open up his
Bible and spring it into twentieth-century vernacular, and start telling
them about the cross and about salvation? No, he didn't do this.
You know where he began? Well, let's see where he began,
for in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, we have two instances
where he's dealing with people in whom he could not uproot his
foundation of Jewish theism. And how does he start with them?
Turn back to Acts 14, and we shall see. Acts, chapter 14,
beginning with verse number 8, "'And there shall be a certain
man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his
mother's womb who had never walked. And then we have, in the next
few verses, the account of how he was miraculously healed through
these special gifts given to Paul and his companions, and,
as a result of this, these people wanted to make a god out of Paul
and Barnabas. Since they were polytheists,
believing in many gods, Why, here they thought, maybe a couple
of them have dropped down in our midst, and we should simply
ought to acknowledge them. We have dignitaries among us."
So, they wanted to call Paul one of the gods and Barnabas
one of the others. Verse 14, which, when the apostles
Barnabas and Paul heard of, they rent their clothes and ran in
among the people, crying out and saying, "'Sirs, why do ye
these things? We also are men of like passions
with you. Now, what are they going to preach
to them? Well, some would say what they
ought to do is say this, we are men of like passions with you
and preach unto you that God loves you and has a wonderful
plan for your life. Others would say, why, it's obvious
what you ought to preach. They're sinners, they need the
gospel, so you ought to tell them Jesus died on the cross
for them. Boy, anybody knows that. If you've
gone to Sunday school for a year, you know that, don't you? Is
that what Paul did? What did he preach? Notice, "'We
preach unto you that you should turn from these fanaties unto
the living God, which made heaven and earth and the sea and all
things that are therein, who in time past suffered all nations
to walk in their own way. Nevertheless, he left not himself
without witness, in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven
and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."
What did he preach to these people as his foundational message? He preached a basic, sound doctrine
of God. He started with the doctrine
of God as Creator. the sea, the earth, and everything
that is in them. Then, in verse 16, he preaches
Him as the God of great benevolence. He's permitted the nations to
go on in their course of sinfulness and rebellion, but He has stood
as governor of the nations. There is not only the doctrine
of the benevolence of God over His creation, but His control
of all creatures and His creation. Where does He start? He starts
by giving some of the most basic facts about God. Why? Why did He start with Jesus?
Why did He start with the cross? Oh, listen to me, folks. For
the simple reason that Jesus and the cross are meaningless. Until we understand a little
something about who God is, and in the light of who He is, I see what I am in the light
of what is a sinner, then I'm ready for the sinner's religion.
Isn't that what Christianity is, a sinner's religion? Well, it's not a religion for
me, for I know myself to be a sinner, and I don't know myself to be
a sinner in the biblical sense until I see sin in the light
of the Creator-creature relationship. Now, turn to Acts chapter 17,
where we have a similar Example here, Paul is not with what we
might call ignorant people. He's with the philosophical beatniks
of his day. I'm often perplexed when I read
this passage. Apparently, they didn't have
welfare statism back then, but how this crowd had nothing to
do but stand around and talk is beyond me. How they got their
bread in their sheep, I don't know, and skip to the title.
But notice what it says about this crowd in Acts 17.21, "'For
all the Athenians and strangers that were there spent their time
in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.'" That was their occupation, standing
around and talking. "'Hear some new thing!' So Paul
came along, and they thought, is setting forth some strange
thoughts and causing some strange thoughts, and so we'll hear him
out. So, Paul stands, verse twenty-two, and Paul stood in the midst of
Myrtle, and taking men of Athens, I perceived that in all things
ye are too superstitious, for as I passed by and beheld your
devotions, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown
God, whom therefore he ignorantly worships, Notice what he says? He said, I'm going to begin by
telling you some facts about God. Now, where does he start?
Right where he started at Mystra, God that made the world. He's saying to these people,
whatever you think of God, you must never think of him as some
vague, impersonal spirit absorbed into his world. He is the eternal,
self-sufficient God who appeared before the world ever existed,
and whatever this world is, it is a created thing. He is the
uncreated, eternal God. God created the world and all
things therein. Not only that, Paul says, he
is in control of the world he made, seeing that he is Lord
of heaven and earth. He didn't make his world. to
sweat off his brow and go off for a vacation, to leave it to
its own resources. No, no. He made a world, and
everything in it, and he stands as sovereign over it. Whatever
you think of God, you Athenians, never think that you're going
to sit down at the table and have a little dialogue with Him.
Whatever you think of God, remember He's creator, you're the creature. He's sovereign, you're the subject.
You'd better start thinking straight about it, you Athenians. Then
he goes on to say, he dwelleth not in temples made with hands.
Whatever you think of God, never think of him as a God who can
be confined with walls, with brick and mortar. He is the immense,
incomprehensible God. He is pure Spirit. Whatever you
think of God, don't limit him by whatever you've seen as a
representation of God, the idol. He hath made of one blood all
nations. I'm sorry, verse 25, neither
does he worship with men's hands as though he needed anything,
seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things. You
Athenians, all life is dependent upon him, the author and sustainer
of life. Then he goes on to deal with
the basic factors of the doctrine of God. With the doctrine that this God
who made the world and made us and sustains us in Him whom we
live and move and have our being, we're going to meet Him someday,
page to page, for He's appointed a day in which He will judge
the world by that man whom He hath ordained and given assurance
unto all men that He raised Him from the dead. Now, why did he do this? Yet, can you grapple in your thinking
with, why didn't he move right in to tell them about Jesus? I venture to say, if some of
the gospelers of our day had stood by Paul, they would have
rebuked him by the time he got the second verse out and said, He knew that the good news would
never be good news until these people understood some of these
basic facts about God. Now, if that is so, and I believe
we've handled honestly these passages of Scripture, then it
is no surprise to find that Paul put as one of the essential ingredients
of his gospel something that is almost lacking in the Gospel
in our day. We'll touch on that another night,
but simply in this connection, turn to Acts 20, and notice what
Paul says was one of the main, dominant, clearly spelled-out
notes of his Gospel. Acts chapter 20, verse 20, And
I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have
showed you and have taught you publicly, and from house to house.
both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward
God, that is, God the Father, and faith He said, my preaching could be
summarized under two tremendous headings. One had to do with
repentance toward God, one with faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what does it mean, repentance
toward God? It means a change of mind with
respect to God, His person, His government, His will, Well, how can you tell men to
change their mind with reference to God until, first of all, you've
told them something about this God that He made us? We are His
creatures. He made us to know Him. We have
wickedly turned away from Him. This God demands that we obey
Him, and He's expressed His will in His law. We've broken it.
We've offended Him. We've incurred His wrath. But blessed be God that God sent
His Son, and His Son died, and His Son was buried. He took Him
to Himself and swallowed up the wrath of God against human sin. He rose from the dead. He went
back to the right hand of the Father. That holy God whom we've
offended in love sent His Son. Repent, turn from that wicked
disposition to ignore the claims of God, to defy the rule of God,
to live in difference, to fellowship and communion with God, and through
His Son, Jesus Christ, by casting yourself upon Him and pleading
mercy from Him, enter into living fellowship with this God. Repentance
toward God, faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Then it's
not surprising to read, like we do in 1 Thessalonians, how
people got converted under the ministry of this kind of preaching.
Paul could say, and remember these were his spiritual babies,
those of Thessalonica, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verses 8 and 9, "'For
from you have sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in
Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place Your faith to Godward
is spread abroad so that we need not seek anything, for they themselves
show of us, or report of us, what manner of entering in we
have unto you." Now, notice, how that you turn to God, that's
repentance toward God. You turn to God from your idols
to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for His Son
from heaven whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus. When they got converted, the
thing that dominated their thinking was this. This means that an
entire part faced with reference to the claims, and government,
and will, and person of God. And they turned and turned with
God, and having turned to His Son Jesus, they were long for
that day. when the work of redemption would
be complete, and the Son of God, when the Son of God would come
back from Heaven to take them to Himself. Now, you can't turn
to God as Creator and Governor until you've seen that's what
He is. And so, I submit to you this
question. Is today's gospel the biblical
gospel if it fails to take time to build this proper doctrine
of God? A hundred years ago, you could
have assumed in Canada and in the United States that the average
Canadian, or the average American, was something like the average
Jew in a synagogue. There was enough basic biblical
theism worked into the walking book of the whole thinking of
our society that you could assume, to a greater or lesser degree,
that people knew, and I was made by somebody called
God. Therefore, I'm going to meet
that God someday, and that God sees me, and He knows what I'm
doing." A hundred years ago, when the uniformitarian theory
of Lyell and some other pseudo-scientists was popularized in the writings
of Charles Darwin, and this materialistic, mechanistic philosophy of evolution
was spawned upon the Western world particularly, it has so
worked its way into the warp and warp and fabric of the thinking
of America and Canada that the average person walking down the
street doesn't understand the most simple truth of the doctrine
of creation. We stand back and say, how could
this happen? In the last ten years, the student
revolt, the throwing off of all restraint. What, with the movies
that are being shown in the decent movie houses you had to see in
the underground art theaters up till five years ago? How could
all this come about all at once? It hasn't come about all at once.
There's been an eating away at these foundation principles of
biblical theism. If God is the Creator and I'm
the creature, He has given a law, I must obey that law. I must
regard that law. Even where men have not been
converted men, statesmen and others, there's been a basic
respect for that structure of biblical theism. That's gone
now, absolutely gone. When you and I try to witness
to our neighbors, we're talking religious gobbledygook to say
Christ died for sinners. They have no concept of what
sin is, no concept of the claims of God,
no concept of the transcendent majesty of God. And, pity of
pities, they can come to most of our churches and never once
be gripped with the fact that God is an infinitely holy and
majestic being. who ought to be feared and referenced
and obeyed. And yet, the Apostle Paul says
that's precisely the thing that ought to grip the heart of an
unconverted man when he comes into the Church. Let me ask you
a question. You were a member, dear, of Kenmore Baptist Church.
You pastor the church where you are a teaching, ruling elder. I gave you paper and pencil and
said, The one thing, above all others, that you would long that
every unconverted visitor who stepped within your walls would
be made aware of in your church. What would you pray for? Just
one thing. Oh, you'd like many things, but
one thing above all else you would long that unconverted people
coming into the midst of the gathered assembly, what one thing
would you long they would of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians
14 sets before us that which, in his mind, should be the answer
that every one of us should put. 1 Corinthians chapter 14, beginning with verse 23. 1 Corinthians
14, 23. If, therefore, the whole church
be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and
there come in those that are unlearned or unbelievers, will
they not say that they are mad? But if all prophesy, and there
come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, uninstructed
in the things of God, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all,
and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest. And so,
falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that
God is among you of a truth. That's all he sets the course
of this. The people of God should be the people of the presence
of a God who, when he is discovered, even in that initial way by the
unlearned or unconverted, they discover him as a God. before
whom they ought to be found, not snuggling up, but prostrate
upon their face. He falling upon his face will
cry out, God is among you." What have we done with the contemporary
of today's Gospel? Well, you see, we've tried to
make the Lord Jesus and the Fathers very comfortable with We try
to make our church the friendly little church on the corner where
everybody feels cozy. Come and snuggle up to God there. The mark of the great periods
of the Church when the Holy Ghost is broken forth in power upon
whole communities is the sense of the presence of God, which
never led men to light-giving-ness. I remember conversing with a friend
of mine, who had a friend, who happened to be in Wales during
that time of the great moving of God in what's commonly called
the Welsh Revival at the turn of the century in the 1900s. And as this individual is explaining
to my friend that mighty visitation of the Spirit of God in those
days, my friend being rather outgoing—in fact, I always feel
convicted that I'm pretty sedate and rather withdrawn and inhibited
when I get around, and he's very outgoing—and I can just picture
his eyes lighting up with holy delight and pushing to the edge
of his chair. And then he burst out and said
to this man, he said, Oh my, when the Spirit of God was moving
like that, it must have been glorious to preach. This individual
turned to my friend, and he said, no, my friend, we didn't want
to preach. We wanted to hide. Get the message? We wanted to
hide. God, the God who made us, the
God who knows God who holds thy life, thy breath in his sovereign
hand, and the mouth I put back on, and the yawning mouth of
hell cries for us, and the justice of God remains to cry." There's so little glow of holy
worship in our assemblies, so how can we get people to worship
who've never been driven back by the sense of the awesomeness
of God? Scripture says in the last two
verses of Hebrews 12, I want to read these verses and
make several applications, and then I'll have to close. I had
hoped to get 2.5 things that I want to cover these three nights,
but I trust that perhaps covering one somewhat early, will bring
more profit than covering two in a tertiary manner. Will you
look carefully at the last two verses of Hebrews, chapter 12? Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom
which cannot be moved, let us have praise, whereby we may serve
God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. What's the only kind of service
acceptable to God? Well, this tells us right here.
Service to God, whether it's the service of worship, the service
of attending to His Word as we're doing tonight, the service of
communicating the gospel tract, the service of pleading with
God for souls of men, whatever we render to Him in the way of
service, The only service acceptable to Him is service that remembers
who God is. He's a consuming fire. Though
the Lord Jesus, by the merits of His blood and His present
work at the right hand of the Fathers, enables me to draw near
with wholeness and confidence, I never draw near with pride. One of the greatest indications
of the life of the Church is its hymnody. The hymnody of the
Church is the reflex action of its heart and its mind to its
understanding and experience with God. Let me repeat that. The hymnody of the Church is
the reflex action of its heart and its mind to its understanding
in terms of its understanding and experience of God. And you
listen to the hymnody that's being written in our day, in
our evangelical circles, by people who have, quote, been saved by
today's Gospels. And what is that hymnody? It's
an imitation of the Word, both in its form and its structure
and its shallow content. When you've got these little
titties, I have a wonderful friend at my house. He makes my home
heaven every day, and if some day you should decide that you
let Him in and unify this wonderful gift with my heart." Oh, how
different by contrast the words of that hymn written by a man
named Vinny, who said, "...eternal light, how pure that soul must
be! Which place within thy burning
light shrinks not, but with calm delight can live and look on
thee." The spirit that surrounds thy throne may bear this burning
bliss, but surely that is theirs alone, for they have never, never
known a fallen world like this. But how shall I, whose naked
spirit is dark, whose mind is dim, before the ineffable appear,
and on my naked spirit bear the uncreated being? He sees a problem,
God is holy, I am sinful, how can I come to Him? And then those
last two stanzas, there is a way for man to rise to that sublime
abode, an offering and a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit energy, an advocate
with God. Please, please prepare us for
the sight of holiness above. The tongues of ignorant in night
may dwell with the eternal light, through the eternal All the intimacy
of the Gospel, the sons of ignorance and night dwelling in the eternal
life. What can be more intimate than
that? The vision, mother of intimacy, marked by maudlin, libidinous
sentiment that bequeaths God. But one that sees Him in His
place of transcendence and majesty, and admires at how that charism, is bridged through the sacrifice
of Jesus. Our hymn-readings, the climate
of our services, I ask you to soberly reflect tonight and come
to the line in the wall and ask the question, is today's gospel
the biblical gospel when it does not build on a sound doctrine You can, what you're great at,
I'll tell you what it is, undergird it to lay in the minds of your
children biblical concepts of God. so that they can have biblical
conviction of truth and biblical experience of repentance towards
God. Your task is not to shunt them
off to every little child of angelism class and try to decisionize
them before they're two and a half years old. Your task is to come into the
feet of minds of preachers who obey Isaiah's voice, get up into
a high mountain, sail to the cities of Judah, behold your
God. Now, if we stop there, that wouldn't be the biblical gospel,
but if we don't start there, I wonder if it is. You hear me? If we stop there, that wouldn't
be the biblical gospel, but if we don't start there, are we
being Pauline as we seek to communicate the gospel to the pagans in the
mid-twentieth century? May God grant us to face the
question, go to the line in the wall, and come away with the
answer. dictated by Holy Spirit.