You'll turn back with me now
to 1 Timothy 2. I want to try to focus on verse
5. And I want this morning, as simply
as I can, and as plainly as I can, and as dogmatically as I can,
to preach the gospel to you. Without this gospel, without
some understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ, there
can be no coming to God. Absolutely no coming to God. Now, you can get religious. All people can stir you up and
it just depends on what you fancy. Some people, a little music,
a little rhythm, a little clapping of the hands, a little participation,
a little audience participation, and boy, they think they are
worshiping God. There is no coming to God without
some understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ. No coming to God. And without
this gospel and without some understanding of His person and
His work, there can be no coming to God. There is no conversion.
Well, I was converted. I did this and I did that. No conversion apart from this. No coming to Him. There will
be no conversion. There will be no regeneration
apart from this. No peace, no pardon, no worship
of the true and living God. Those who would truly worship
the Father shall worship Him, our Lord said, in spirit, now
listen, and in truth. Where there is no gospel, there
is no worship. Where there is no gospel, there
can be no coming to God. Coming to God is not just an
exercise in man's will. It is not a change of geographic
location. It is not coming down an aisle. It is none of those things. We
come to God in faith. And there is no coming to God
apart from some understanding of this Gospel. Listen to what
our Lord said over here in John chapter 6. He said, All that
the Father hath given Me, shall come to me." This coming to God
takes in the eternal counsels of God. He is talking here about
all that the Father gave Him. When did He give them to Him?
The Scripture said, before the foundation of the world. This
coming to God is not just a standing up and coming down an aisle or
a coming to me after the service and saying this or saying that,
professing this, professing that. This coming to God takes in the
eternal counsels of God. Coming to God necessitates a
mediatorial work. I've got to have a righteousness.
I'm not born with one. I've got to obtain a righteousness,
and this righteousness must be acceptable to this God. Justice must be satisfied. And
in this coming to God necessitates an inward work of grace which
I cannot perform of myself. Left to himself and left to his
sin, there is none that understandeth, Paul said, and none that seeketh
after God. No man, our Lord said, again
in John chapter 6, can come to me except the Father which hath
sent me draw him. and I'll raise him up again at
the last day. Every man, therefore, that has
heard and has learned of the Father cometh unto me." And where
there is no gospel, there can be no faith. Faith cometh by
hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. It said in Acts, when
they heard the gospel, when they heard Peter preached this Gospel. When they heard this, they were
pricked in their hearts. And then our Lord said this to
His own disciples. He said, Blessed are your ears,
for they hear. Blessed are your eyes, for they
see. And then He said this, through
this man, talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, through this man
is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. Through Him. So apart from this gospel, there
is not going to be any receiving of this. There is not going to
be any understanding of this. There is not going to be any
faith in this. Forgiveness of sins. And where there is no gospel,
and I hope you will hear me, there is no truth. There is no
truth. Our Lord said to Thomas, I am
the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. Grace and truth, our Lord said,
came by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there are three things which
Paul states here, and he states them with absolute clarity and
simplicity. And if these three things, if
you ever get an understanding of these three things, I tell
you, it will change the way you think about God. We grow up and
we have these ideas and concepts of God, and we listen to men
talk, and over time we mix all these things. We mix what we
grew up with, and we mix what we heard in school, and we mix
what we hear from our friends and our workers where we work,
and we form our own concept of God. But when we hear who God really
is, it changes the way we think. There are three things in this
verse. Now, first of all, He tells us
that there is just one God. One God. Well, somebody said,
you worship your God your way, and I'll worship my God my way.
Well, we could do that if there was more than one God, but there's
just one God. There's just one God. And if your God's not like the
God I proclaim, then one of us don't know God. Is that right?
Because there's just one God. My God wouldn't do that, a fellow
told Barnard one time. He said, I expect you're right,
but the God of the Bible would. And there's just one God. Paul didn't preach a God to the
Athenians, although he walked through and read all their devotions
and saw all their statues and images and things. But when he
preached the God, the living God, when he preached the Gospel
to those men at Mars Hill in Athens, Greece, he didn't preach
Him in such a way as to be set among their gods. He preached
to them the unknown God, the God they'd never heard anything
about, the unknown God. He said, he dwelleth not in temples
made with hands. You can't build him a temple.
He doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. He's everywhere present. He's almighty, all-wise. He made
the world and everything in it. He can't be worshipped with men's
hands as though he needed anything. He made of one blood all nations
of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and determine
the times before appointed, and set the bounds of their habitation."
In Him, he said, we live and move and have our being. And this God is appointed today,
Paul said, in which He will judge this world in righteousness by
that man whom He hath ordained. And He has given assurance of
the same in that He raised Him from the dead, just one God.
All-wise, all-knowing, all-seeing, Almighty God. And this God, the
true and living God, has called men to a judgment. And this judgment is not to determine
if they are guilty. He already tells us that we are
guilty. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. By the deeds of the law, there
shall no flesh be justified in his sight. Judgment is not to
determine man's guilt, but to justify God in all His judgments
toward men, and toward angels, and toward all His creatures. Man become a sinner in Adam.
Man fell and brought upon himself the condemnation of God in the
garden. And you and I are born under
this condemnation, and we live out our days according to the
nature that we inherited from our father Adam. Listen to the
Scripture. By one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men,
for that all have sinned. By the offense of one, judgment
came upon all men to condemnation. By one man's disobedience, many
were made sinners. final judgments, not to determine
your guilt or innocence, but to justify God in all that He
has done toward His creatures, especially in the redemption
of His saints. And this God, this one God before
whom we all must stand, is holy and just and righteous. And He's those things beyond
anything you can imagine. He's righteous unto perfection. He's infinitely just. Somebody told me one time, well,
all I want is what I got coming. No, you don't. No, you don't. You don't want
that. What you want is mercy. Listen to these scriptures. My
soul, I read these things and these things were renewed in
my heart as I read them. Old Job said the stars are not
pure in his sight. You are talking about good works? The stars are not pure in his
sight, much less man that is a maggot. What is man that he
should be clean and he is born of a woman that he should be
righteous? The heavens are not clean in his sight. How much
more abominable and filthy is man who drank iniquity like water? Man's dead. He walks the course
of this world. He follows the path laid out
to him by the prince of the power of the air. And one day he'll
be summoned into the presence of Almighty God to receive his
just reward. God is just. He's just. And I'm telling you something.
He told Moses, he said, yes, I keep mercy for thousands. Yes,
I'm gracious and merciful. But he said, you know this, I
will by no means clear the guilty. God's just, and the soul that
sinneth shall surely die. There's one God, one sovereign,
almighty, all-wise, just, and holy God. And His character and
attributes dictate His actions. He will not, he cannot, he must
not compromise his character in any way. Listen to this. Paul was writing
to Timothy and he told him these things. He said, in his times
he shall show. Here's what he's going to show
you. He's going to show who is the blessed and only potentate,
the King of kings and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality. Here's the statement I want you
to hear. dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto."
That is that light of absolute perfection. There is just one
God. And then secondly, Paul tells
us that there is just one Mediator. What is a Mediator? Well, a mediator,
according to the dictionary, is one who serves as an intermediary
to reconcile differences between two opposing parties. You got
two people here, and they don't get along. They're at odds. And
they can't settle things. Has to be an intermediary. He
has to be a mediator. He's going to come in here, and
he's going to mediate the peace. Going to mediate the peace. A
daisman, a mediator. Now normally a mediator would
go back and forth until he could reach some kind of compromise.
He'd find some common ground. He'd find something there that
this one can agree on and this one can agree on and then he'd
get them to move just a little bit further and boom, he's got
it. Job's over. But that's not so with God. God's
not going to compromise. Not at all. And man can't rise
from where he's at. He can't get out of his prison
cell, the prison cell of his nature. He can't climb out of
the pit. God has to do something for him.
No compromise can ever take place. Nothing but full satisfaction
can be accepted. And God in His holiness and justice
and righteousness has condemned our race and fixed a great gulf
between us. Our sins, the Scripture said,
have separated between us and our God. There's a division. But for the grace of God, that
would be the end of the story for man. But God, who is also
merciful and gracious and kind, has appointed for us a mediator,
one to reconcile us to God, not by reaching a compromise, not
by lowering his standards or winking at sin, but by satisfying
all that this one God demands. God chose a people before the
world began, and He appointed for them a mediator, a representative
man, one to stand for them and stand before this holy and just
God. And this daisman was born of
a woman. He's a man. One mediator, the
man. made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption
of sons. And this mediator established
the righteousness of God for his elect. Because of this daisman,
because of this mediator, I have a righteousness which is provided
for me, something that I could not attain, something that I
couldn't reach, I couldn't do for myself. He did it for me.
And this one who is an apostle, this one that we were talking
about in our Sunday school lesson, this Apostle Paul, he said, oh,
he said that I might win Christ and be found in Him, not having
my own righteousness. Oh, he didn't want to be. That
was his hope before God converted him. He said it's touching the law.
He said, I blame us. Boy, he took pride in that. And
then he found out who God was. And he found out what righteousness
was. And he said, I don't want to be found of God in my own
righteousness, but that righteousness which is of God by faith. A righteousness, the only righteousness
that satisfies the demands of a holy God. And this mediator
appointed for God's elect, He appointed him as their substitute. He bore their sins in his own
body on the tree. He stood before God as the sinner. In my stead, in my place, being
one with me, he stood before God. bearing our sins. God laid on
Him, it said, the iniquity of us all. For He hath made Him
to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him. And I'm not going to attempt
to explain that. I don't pretend to understand
it. But I read what God has declared about it, and I stand in awe.
God made His soul an offering for sin. Isn't that what the
Scripture says? Now, if you see the same thing
in that as you see in that substitutionary sacrifice, there is something
wrong with you. That substitutionary sacrifice could never do that.
It was only a picture. It was only a type. And yet Christ stood before God
in my stead. He stood before His holy law. He stood before His perfect justice,
His infinite justice. And He stood there as me before
Him. You see what you will, what this
sinner sees is the glory of God's justice being satisfied in the
substitutionary sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. God poured
out upon him His unbridled wrath, and when he saw the travail of
his soul, it says he was satisfied. Satisfied. And this mediator, this one who
has wrought out a righteousness acceptable to God, who bore my
sins in his own body on the tree, this mediator reigns in glory. And he alone has the power and
authority to reconcile men to God. Power to intervene in men's
lives and power to intercede with God on their behalf. and
power to arrange all things to ensure their reconciliation. There's one God. Can you hear
what Paul's saying? There's just one God. Let's all
get on the same page about this. There's just one God. And the
Bible tells you who He is, unchangeable, immutable, sovereign. No contest with men, no hand,
no nations, no people, no armies, no amount of demons can stay
his hand. He is Almighty God, all wise,
one God. And there is one mediator, just
one, who can reconcile sinners to
God and reconcile God to sinners. You hear what he is saying? Just
one. One mediate till Mary can't.
She can't mediate for you. None of the saints can mediate
anything. Some men pray. They pray to saints.
Saint James and Saint this and Saint that. Saint Francis and
all this kind of nonsense. None of the saints can mediate
anything between you and the Lord. The Pope can't mediate
between you and the Lord. Don't kiss His ring or make your
request to Him. Preachers are not mediators.
I can't make peace for you. There's just one God and there's
one mediator between God and me and the man. And that's the
third thing Paul says, the man, Christ Jesus. Because of His
glorious person and work, because of his fulfilling of the offices
to which he was appointed, because he entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For this cause,"
Paul said, he is the mediator of the New Testament. He is the
mediator. Oh, he is able, Paul said, to
save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him. And to mediate this peace, God
the Son took to Himself the flesh and bones of His people. He became
one with them in body and soul and nature, and He did for us
what no man could do for himself. He gave Himself a ransom for
all His elect to be testified in due time. Thomas said to the Lord, we know
not where You go, and how can we know the way? And Jesus said,
I am the way. I am the way. Now, listen to
what He says next. And no man cometh unto the Father
but by Me. That's the only way you're going
to go through Him. And I don't care if you're just
talking about faith in Him, or talking about worship of Him,
or talking about anything that has to do with God. You can't come and worship. You
can't come and pray. You cannot come in faith. You
cannot come in truth unless you come unto the Father in Christ.
And you cannot be reconciled to God any other way. That guilty
conscience cannot be purged any other way. All this nonsense
about dreams and visions and strange experiences, it's all
just superstitious nonsense. That's all it is. The only way
you can come to God is through the person and work of this mediator. The Lord Jesus Christ, and the
only way you can come in Him is by faith. By faith. By faith we receive God's testimony
concerning His Son. We believe on Him. We rest in
Him. We trust Him. We see and understand
it. We understand these things through
His Gospel, how God can be just and justify all who believe. We see and understand that through
this priestly sacrifice and work, He can save to the uttermost
all who come unto God by Him. There is one God and one Mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. The man Christ
Jesus. May God in His mercy make us
to see this and cherish this in our hearts. One God, unchangeable,
tolerant, just, yet merciful, gracious, kind, beyond anything,
unto perfection, the glory of His character. It is called His
perfections. And we see those perfections
all and as clear as they can be manifested in the person and
work of His Son. And we come to Him and worship
Him with this understanding. cometh unto the Father, but by
me." God helped give us an understanding.