you can return in your Bibles
to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. It is good to be here, and I'm
in this area because 40 years ago I graduated
high school. Then I went to four years of
college, and then I started attending church with some of you, so I
know how long I've known you. And it has been a blessed time. This is one of my homes in the
world. And my brother Mahan once pointed
out that scripture that says if any man gives up homes, whatever
he has, he'll have a hundredfold. And people wonder what that means.
Some get covetous with it. You know, they think that means
that the Lord was promising that somehow or another they'd get
rich in this world. But Henry said, I've got houses
all over the United States of America. He said, there's places
where I can go and I can knock on the door and they'll open
up and say, come in. And they'll take care of me. And this is
one of those places for me. I know if I am coming this way,
about all I've got to do is call. And they'll open up the doors
and open up this pulpit, actually, which is even a greater privilege
than having the front door of somebody's house open. So I'm
glad to be here. And we had our reunion the last
couple of nights, Friday night and Saturday night. I met with
about 45, 50 other people I graduated with and their spouses and had
a good time. I kind of hope you don't I've
been around this crowd long enough that I remember when Henry had
his 40th, and they actually had a worship service, and he preached
at it. I remember him talking about that, but no such situation
was arranged at my reunion. But I thought, oh, I wish I'd
had an opportunity to preach the gospel to them. It's not mine to judge their
hearts, and I certainly didn't have long enough to sit down
and talk with each of them and find out what it is they believe.
They are much more religious than I remember them being when
I was in school, but I thought, what would I say
to them? You know, that's an interesting question to ask yourself.
If you had one shot to talk to somebody about eternal things,
what would you say? I remember hearing the story
of Johnny Cash when he went to record the first time, and he
tried recording other people's music, and the guy stopped him,
and he said, that's not your song. He says, I want you to
imagine that you've been in a car accident and you're laying in
the ditch, and you've got enough life for one song. Sing me that
song. What if we had an opportunity
just to speak once? What would we tell someone? How
would we describe to them that which we believe, which is different
from what most of religion believes, even most of what that religion
that goes under the name of Christianity believes? There's a lot who take
to themselves the name Christian And I won't say they're not worthy
of it, because none of us are worthy of that name. You know,
we're not talking here about us being better than them. We're
not. We're the same kind of people as everybody else in the world.
We're not exalting ourselves because there's nothing to exalt.
But there is a difference between the Christ we worship and the
Christ that most of so-called Christianities worship. There's
a difference between the gospel that we declare and the gospel
that most other Christian religions are declaring. And you say, well,
what makes you think that? Well, all you have to do to prove
that point is tell them what you believe, and they'll say,
I don't believe that. Isn't that so? What is it that is different? We live in a nation that at least
once called itself a Christian nation, and that's still the
dominant religion, at least by name. And yet we realize that
folks who believe, as we do, are just a handful here and there.
Now, because of what we believe, we don't despair at that. We
realize, just as the Lord told the prophet, you're whining that
there's nobody else. He said, I've got 7,000. The
perfect multitude is what he was saying by that number 7,000.
The perfect multitude. Everyone I've reserved to myself,
they haven't bowed the knee to Baal. And it doesn't matter what
the rest of them do. Isn't that true? And though there
be only a handful here and there that believe the gospel as we
see it in the scriptures, that doesn't mean that some are slipping
by that should have been saved. The Lord said, I won't lose any
of them. I won't lose any of them. I've
entitled this message, The Distinctive Message of the Church of God.
I was talking to Brother Gabe Stoniker here a week or so ago. He's going to come up and preach
for us some. And we were talking about preparing messages and
that. And we used that phrase. Got
to prepare a lot of messages. And I said, you know, really,
we don't have to prepare a message. We've only got one. We have one
message. We prepare sermons, and these
sermons are simply platforms that we put together to enable
us to declare the message. That's all. Isn't it so? Every
message that I have heard since I began to associate with this
crowd, with this assembly, every one that I willingly listen to
anyway, was the same message. Every time, different sermons,
thousands of different sermons, one message. This book that we
open every time we preach, in my copy of it here, it's upwards
of 1,700 pages by the time you get to 2 Corinthians. 1,700 pages,
one message. And it is a distinctive message.
If we get the opportunity to tell it to people, they'll recognize
it as a distinctive message, as certainly not the message
they have heard. It's difficult for a church to
stand out in our day because there's so many of them, and
nearly all of them use the same words, and most people are satisfied
with what they have, so they're no longer looking for anything.
To be heard is difficult. We say words like sin, and Jesus,
and grace, and salvation, and heaven, and they think we're
saying the same thing. And you know, sometimes it works
the other way. We'll hear one of them. Well, that's what we
say. How come I'm being so hard on
them? Well, you listen a while and you realize, well, they don't
mean the same thing when they say grace. That's what we mean. They don't mean the same thing
when they talk about us being sinners. They don't mean to say,
when they say Jesus, by the time they're done describing Him,
we say, well, wow, I don't know that fellow. That's not the Jesus
I know. The church of God does have a
distinctive message that differs from all other churches. Now, the church is a speaking
organization. What was the Lord's command to
His apostles as He was leaving? Go into all the world and Set
up charitable organizations? Go into all the world and protest
cultural decay? No. I'm not saying those things
are bad things to do. But it's not what the church
was sent to do. The church was sent to preach
the gospel. And a church that isn't preaching the gospel isn't
a church. Whatever else they're doing.
You know, if you were If you lived in a town and there was
one doctor, and only one, would you want him to open a
grocery store? Would you want him that when
there's a disaster in town and some houses are knocked down,
would you want him to put on his carpenter's belt and go out
and start rebuilding people's houses? Those are good things
to do. Why shouldn't a doctor do it?
If he's the only doctor, he better stick to doctrine. Because the
people need it. Now, the Bible says that the
church is the pillar and ground of truth. She is not the one
that made up the truth. She's not the one that figured
the truth out. God did that. But she is the only one that
supports it in this world. And if she doesn't go about supporting
it and proclaiming it, nobody's doing it. Let other people, keeping with
my illustration, let others besides the doctor build the houses and
sell the groceries. Let the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ preach the gospel. Even if the world thinks she's
heartless because she doesn't stop to do all the other things
that should be done in this world. Well, don't you believe in feeding
the hungry? Yes, I do. But if I feed them, The most
I can do is help them for about 70 years. I've got something
that will help them for eternity. I'll stick with that. You feed
them." Does that sound hard? No, that's loving. That's not allowing the best
to be replaced by that which is merely good. Whatever else the church may
do, it must speak, it must preach. And she must preach that one
thing that makes her different in all the world, the one thing
which from the very beginning has been the distinctive of those
who believe God. She must preach it no matter
what the world does with it, no matter how the world reacts
to it. She's got to declare this message. If the world receives
it, thank God. I've got no problem with the
idea if God wanted to. He could send a revival across
this land when there's 300 million of us. He could save every last
one of us if He wanted to. He has the power to do that. And He has the authority to save
absolutely none of them, or any number in between. But however many the Lord has
determined to save, everyone that He saves, He will save through
the preaching of the gospel. So we go out and just keep doing
that. As frustrating as that gets sometimes. I mean, let's
face it. You look at this little crowd
here. By religious standards, this is a little crowd. You know? And you look at this little crowd
and you think, wow. Why isn't there more? What can
we do to bring in more? Don't do anything else to bring
in more. Because if you do something else to bring in more, what you're
bringing in is goats. The last thing you want in a herd of sheep,
in a flock of sheep, is some goats kicking around causing
trouble. The gospel will reach every one of God's people. It
will call them. It will instruct them. Keep them
and preserve them until they are in the presence of God without
blame and full of joy. Nothing else is needed. Nothing
else can even help. I keep saying the gospel. You
know what? Because it's about Christ and
Christ is all we need. It's not just a set of doctrines
we need. There's people that got the doctrines
we don't have Christ. You can have all the true doctrines
and not have Christ. Pharisees went to hell with the
Bible in their hand. They didn't have Christ. to understand it and lay hold
of it. And you won't have to argue with
them about it. And you won't have to spend a
whole lot of time keeping them afterward. Now, what is that message? I've
talked about the distinctive message of the church of God,
and it can be expressed in several ways. But here's one of them. Just that first phrase, I believe,
captures the essence of the difference between the message of God's
church and the message of all other religions. All things are
of God. I remember Brother John, the first
one I ever heard preach on this particular text, and I remember
what he said, and actually what he said is in my notes here a
little bit. But that was way back, way back, John, when you
and I were in or mid-twenties probably, something in that neighborhood,
all things are of God. You know, all things are of God
absolutely. I mean, we can say that with
absoluteness. There is nothing happening that
God didn't decree. There's nothing going, nothing
exists and nothing happens unless God says it's going to exist
and it's going to happen. That's just how it is. God is
as much in control of the history of this world as an author is
in control of the story of his book. Do you believe that? I do. The only reason anything
happens is because God said it would. People say, well, you know, God
gives man free will and he can only go so far in determining
what a man is going to do. Well, that's just silly. If God
only goes so far and says, well, I'll determine that he'd be born
in this country and I'll be I'll determine that he is he's going
to be in such and such a town where there's a church preaching
such and such a thing and all that. I tell you, when it comes
right down to the deciding moment, I can't determine that. Then
you know what's going to happen at the deciding moment? Absolutely
nothing. Either way, because when God
stops writing, the action stops. Why am I here this morning preaching
this gospel? I could give you a lot of secondary
causes, but here's the first cause of it. In eternity, God
wrote down that this would happen, as it were. You and I in reality, what we
call reality, is simply God's mind. Why are we here? Because God
thinks we are. And reality bends to His thoughts. Yea, it flows from it. So we
could say that everything absolutely is of God. History is of God.
Every detail is written by God. He says, I kill, I make alive,
I bring peace, I bring disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things.
Everyone loves to attribute to the Lord those things which made
them happy. Thank God we found a cure for
such and such a disease. And yes, thank God. Who do you
think was made the disease? I thank God that I got, I had
cancer, but he healed me. And you should. Who do you think
gave you cancer? Our Lord calmed the sea. Who do you think troubled it?
Isn't that so? I admit, some things God does
are easier to give thanks for than others, but if we believe
Him in everything, give thanks, because everything comes from
Him. But Paul's point here, he's not
talking about the absolute sovereignty of God. He's not talking about
God's control of human history. The all things which are of God
that Paul's talking about are all those things mentioned here
in verse 17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold,
all things are become new. And all these things, they're
from God. Now we rejoice that God is, all
things are of God absolutely and all things are of God in
history and all that. But Paul's bringing it down to
a fine point, to eternal matters, the matters of salvation. Now
the difference between what the scriptures teach and what nearly
everyone in the world believes is that salvation is absolutely
a work of God from start to finish. from the center outward, everything,
there's nothing left for us to do. Period. Most of religion is, most of
your so-called Christian religion has this, could say this. Well,
salvation's by grace, but you gotta, and they got something
after that. Early on in my preaching there
in Iowa, we started talking about religion and their but you gotta's.
And what's your but you've got to? Because everybody's got a
but you've got to at the end. You've got to do this, you've
got to do that. Well, friends, the moment you tell a dead man
he can be alive, but he's got to do such and such, what have
you done? You've put life out of his reach. Lazarus come forth, but now you
have to want to. Lazarus can't even do that. Not one aspect of the salvation
of a sinner depends on the sinner. He's not called on to accept
it or reject it. If that's all God did, I can
tell you what every one of them will do, including you and me.
We reject it. If the least amount of goodness
or anything positive toward God is required of a sinner in order
that he might be saved, then salvation is a useless concept. Going from law to grace, going
from the old covenant to new covenant, is not merely making
something away that's not quite so hard as the law was. In all reality, the law is easier
than the gospel, because the gospel is absolutely impossible
to a natural man. Paul says concerning those things
which are in the law, I was blameless. He didn't even say pretty good,
he said blameless. But under the gospel, he was
condemned to his very core. We can't obey the Gospel. Dead
people can't do anything. Oh, and it's needful, isn't it,
for the sinner that all things be of God. I read, and you read
in the Scriptures, that all things are of God, and we rejoice in
that. We hear that salvation is of God, and who shall be saved,
and how they shall be saved, and when they'll be saved. We
read those, and we think that's wonderful. Because that means
somebody will be saved. We know ourselves well enough
to know this. If that's not the way it happened, it never would
have happened to us. Do you believe that about yourself?
Boy, we say, I believe totally depraved. Forget that. Do you
believe you're totally depraved? There's a difference. There's
a difference. Well, I believe in sovereign
grace. Do you believe in the gracious sovereign? I believe in limited atonement.
Do you trust a successful Redeemer? I believe in irresistible grace.
Well, has it ever come to you? We'll boast in anything, won't
we? We'll even boast in the knowledge of our sinfulness. Well, in our
church at least, we know we're sinners. Isn't that so? We're so sinful
we have no clue how sinful we are. If a man can do nothing of himself,
isn't it good that God does it all? The Bible says the natural man,
that's a man to whom God has done no sovereign work, no No
work of grace without the man's permission. Hadn't been born
again. The natural man. He doesn't understand
the gospel. He does not receive the gospel. He cannot know the gospel. So
certainly he cannot believe it. Just can't be done. He cannot
come to Christ unless and until God does something for him and
in him without his permission. People think that God's waiting
for permission, which is, let's be honest, kind of a silly thought.
God waiting on permission? If you were God, would you wait
for permission to do what you wanted to do? You don't even
do that now. You might get stopped, but you
do pretty much what you want to do, don't you? Do you honestly
believe that God's up there saying, well, I really want to save this
guy, but he won't let me? If your child was out in the
middle of the road with a semi-truck bearing down on him, would you
stand on the side of the road and say, Honey, come on over
here now. I don't want you to get hurt, but I dare not cross
your will. Or would you run out in the road
and scoop him up and get him out of the way, even as he fought
you while you did it? Is God less loving towards His
people than you are towards your children? God will do whatever
it takes. to save his people. He says, I am God and not a man. Though my people deserve my wrath,
I will not give it to them. And though they will trust in
other gods, I will block their way until they have nobody but
me. And I will roar and they will
come. This is a scriptural concept.
The Bible is the sole authority for spiritual truth, and we must
bow to it. When it comes to matters of the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, thus saith the Lord, puts an
end to discussion. Now, people are afraid to say,
I don't believe the Bible. And if you will not believe the
Bible, I really don't have much I can tell you, because that's
the foundation for what we say. When I have discussions with
people, mostly online, somehow or another, I've told them sometimes,
I'm not going to try to make you believe this. All I can do
is show you this is what the Bible says. It'll be up to God
to make you believe it if you're ever going to believe it. And
that's what we do. We open up this Bible and say,
this is what the Scriptures say. The interesting thing is, as
near as I can tell from reading the Scriptures, the very Gospel
that men cannot and will not believe is the message that God
uses to give people the ability and willingness to receive and
believe that Gospel. Only God could do a thing like
that. This business of salvation being
entirely the work of God is part and parcel of the glory of God.
God glorifies Himself in all things to be sure, but His chief
glory is found in the salvation of sinners. That's the way He
set up this universe you and I live in. That's why He set
it up. Don't misunderstand history and
think that Adam's sin was a surprise to God and an overthrow of His
original purpose. Adam's sin was part of God's
original purpose. It's the only purpose God has
is His original one. You and I have to have plan A,
B, C, and D, you know, through there, and A, subsection 2, and
all that, because we've got to keep altering it because it wasn't
good to start with. God made the right plan to begin
with. And part of that was that Adam would fall. Why? So that
Christ could come and be the Savior and glorify God. So that
Christ could be made head over all to the glory of God. No wonder people get baffled
at why bad things happen to good people, as they say. I heard
a good retort to that. A fellow said, people get upset
and ask why do bad things happen to good people. Well, that only
happened once, and he consented. If you can find any good people
for bad things to happen to, we can have that discussion,
but there's only been one good person, and that's the Lord Jesus. All things are of God in the
planning of salvation. It was of Him that there even
would be salvation. You know, God could have ordained
and created a world. in which the representative of
the world sinned, and he let the whole world go to hell. In fact, he did that once. Because there was a whole group
of angels that fell, and he let every one of them perish. Did
not save even one of them. Isn't it interesting that people
who get all upset about the sovereignty of God and salvation Never do
argue that case in behalf of the fallen angels. Well, they
deserve a chance. God didn't think so. He planned. He said there'd be
one. He said, and all things are of God who hath reconciled
us to himself. Oh, God's idea of salvation is
much bigger than ours. We think that salvation, this
is our natural way of thinking, salvation is being taken from
hell to heaven. Oh, God's got much more glorious
things in mind than that. I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
But let me ask you something. Would you want to go to heaven
as you are and spend the rest of your life, the rest of eternity
like you are now? It says He has reconciled us.
Now, that tells us something about ourselves. And something
that it tells us is that we needed reconciling. Now, you don't reconcile
friends, do you? You reconcile enemies. Well,
I've never been an enemy of God. It's because you haven't met
Him. For the natural man to know God
is to hate Him. That's so. And the proof of it
is this, when He showed up, they crucified Him. I know that was
part of God's plan, but those Pharisees and Pilate and the
Romans weren't saying, well, we've got to do God's will today,
so I guess we're going to have to crucify Him. hatred of their heart for God,
they crucified the Lord Jesus Christ. God determined who would be the
Savior. Behold, mine elect, whom I uphold. People say, well, you need to
choose Jesus. Now do you? God chose him long
ago. You need to make Jesus your Savior. Well, if He's ever going to be
your Savior, you won't have to make Him your Savior. God did
that long ago. Mine elect, my chosen one, whom I uphold. We've got to exalt
Jesus, and we should, as well as we know how. God exalted Him
long ago. He's exalted Him to His right
hand. And right now is making every enemy of his a footstool
for his feet. Salvation is of God in every
aspect. He reconciles us to himself by
Jesus Christ, and it's of God how this reconciliation is going
to take place. He says he's given to us the
ministry of reconciliation. Behold the wisdom of God, the
mysterious wisdom of God, that after such a great work, He should
be determined to spread the news of this great work through men
like me. I say the mysterious wisdom of
God. I mean by that, it doesn't look like that was a good idea. If I had a message that great,
I would have entrusted it to someone more trustworthy. Why
did God do that? If anything good ever comes out
of my preaching, people are going to know it's not because of my
preaching. God works through that method.
He does something with it. My voice won't raise the dead.
His will. My voice won't open your eyes.
His will. And here's that ministry of reconciliation
to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them. Every religion I know except
the gospel is imputing your sins to you. God's the only one who's not
imputing sins to you. All religion is based upon charging
sin to people and then controlling them with that guilt. That's the strings between the
puppet master and the puppet to them. The guilt of sin. What's the Bible say? God's not
imputing their trespasses. They got them. There's no question
about that. But I want you to think of the
glory of that. You who believe, just consider it to give joy
to your heart. And if there's anybody here that
doesn't believe, try to imagine this and see what wonder is set
forth in the gospel. I want you to imagine the mass
of your sins. See if you can conjure up an
idea of just how much you've sinned. And then see God say, I will
not charge him with it. You imagine knowing full well
that you're guilty of murder, and they've got you before the
judge, and the prosecutors stand and say, we're not going to press
charges. That's what impute means, press
charges. We're not going to press charges. You're not going to
press charges? Yeah, let him go. Why? Because that's what we want to
do. God is not pressing charges against his people. Why? Because he pressed charges against
his son. For he hath made him sin for
us who knew no sin." There's mystery in that, and I'm not
going to try to unravel it. I'm just going to say I know
what that phrase means. It means that everything that
was necessary to remove sin from me and remove me from my sin
was accomplished by Jesus Christ. That's what it means, that statement
made sin. It's gone. All we like sheep
have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way, but the Lord hath laid on him, has pressed charges against
him. Do you honestly believe that
God has really put your sin on Christ so that it's no longer
yours? And that Christ willingly received
them and called them his own? I know the historical record
is that what we did, what we did. But the divine record is,
and I almost shudder to say this, but the divine record is that
our Lord Jesus did it. He said, they'll open the books
and everybody will be judged out of the books. What are they
going to see when they open the book? I'll tell you what they're
going to see when they open my book. He did always those things
that pleased the Father. It was His food to do the will
of God. The zeal of God's house ate Him
up. You say, wait a minute. Those
things were said of our Lord Jesus. But God took all those things
that rightly might be said of me and said them of Christ, and
took all those things that might rightly be said of Christ and
said them of me." No wonder the world doesn't understand
or believe this gospel. I scarcely can take that in.
I scarcely can believe that truth. That's too much. Like the disciples,
when they first heard the resurrection, they could not believe it for
joy. They were so happy at the truth
of it, they couldn't believe it. And we hear of this wonderful
truth of the gospel that God, by his own will and by his own
power, took those things that belong to us and made them belong
to Christ and took the things that belong to Christ and made
them belong to us. So that the record in our in
heaven is not simply our record, that is, is not simply blank.
It's full of wonderful works of righteousness, for they are the works of our
Lord Jesus, credited to us as though we actually
did them. And the result of this Christ
being made sin, King James translation is a little weak here. That word
made in the first part and the word made in the second part
is not the same Greek word behind there. In the second part, it's
a word that indicates either creation, birth, or an utter
change in the nature of a thing, so that it is not what it once
was. This chapter five starts and ends in the same place. us
in glory created to be like Christ. When it says, He hath made Him
to be sin for us who knew no sin, in order that we might be
made the righteousness of God in Him, it's more than simply
that we will be credited with His righteousness. That's true.
And I almost hate to say simply or merely. That's a wonderful,
wonderful thing. But we are not going to be in
glory what we are now. We are going to be like Him. People hear about hell and it's
supposedly full of fire and all that, and all they want to do
is get out of the fire. Brethren, I don't want the fire either,
but I don't want this forever. Who shall deliver me? Who's the
me there? A believer. We're still in need
of deliverance, salvation, aren't we? Who shall deliver me from
this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ.
I'm not going to be this forever. Someday He will recreate me. He's already regenerated my spirit. And it within me rises up and
wants to do everything that pleases God. And the flesh says, I want
to do everything that pleases me. And they've been fighting
ever since that spirit was reborn. And they will fight. until this
flesh is put to death. And the spirit shall be free,
and I'm not going to try to unravel God's timetable, but somehow
or another, sometime or another, there's going to be a new body
made that will get along with that regenerated spirit. And
those two natures that God originally created man with, they're going
to be in agreement. Won't that be good? Won't that be good? when you
can, from the moment you open your eyes, if we go to sleep,
then I don't know. But I've got to talk in terms
of understanding. From the moment we open our eyes until we go
back to sleep, our hearts and minds and every aspect of us
is head over heels in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. And always
doing what He wants done. Worshipping at His feet. I know when our brethren die,
we can't help but weep because they're no longer with us, but
brothers don't weep for them. I guarantee you. They say, what
are you all crying about? Every one of you ought to be
saying, Lord, will it be today for me? Do I get to leave today? I'll bet you men on the battlefield
don't bemoan the day they'll get to go home. We're on the
battlefield right now. And someday, the master will
set gas long enough. It's not going to be, I've heard
people saying this, you know, well, he was so good, Jesus had
to take him home so he could be up in heaven. No, it's not
that. He'll take pity on us and say, you've been here long enough.
It's time for you to come home and rest. and enter into the
full joy and full possession of all that I've bought for you. Brethren, I guarantee you, when
we can see it all, we'll say, well, all this is from God. It couldn't have come from anywhere
else. May the Lord bless you.