Christ by his spirit through
his servant Paul in his epistle here to Timothy has this to say
as recorded in the scriptures which are given for our prophet. This know also that in the last
days perilous time shall come This know also that in the last
days perilous times shall come. Perilous times. Well they are
aren't they? These days in many ways they
are perilous. You'd have to have your head
buried in the sand to not know of some of the perils in our
land in the day in which we live. Socially and politically, we live in perilous days. This
country and the world is so moved in its opposition against the
truth of the gospel. is so moved in its opposition
against that which is right and true. It passes laws to turn that which
was once right and proper to be that which is considered evil
and to declare that which this nation once said was evil and
to describe it as true. The good are trampled underfoot
and the iniquitous are promoted to the position of power. You've seen the headlines, you've
read the stories in just the last two, three years following
the passing of various laws of how the liberty of Christians
to freely worship, to freely conduct their business, To freely
speak is being curtailed. The day's fast approach where
our freedom to meet like this becomes harder and harder, where
the ability to rent a hall will be denied us. and where if you
speak out against the evils of the day and the generation and
speak of the truth and of Jesus Christ, you are the one who will
face jail and persecution. But it should not surprise us
because Paul wrote that in the last days perilous times shall
come. And he wrote to all believers
and of all believers, yea, and all that will live godly in Christ
Jesus shall suffer persecution. They are perilous times, socially,
politically. They're perilous times in our
own pathway as we work and live in this world. The distractions
of this age are deadly, many of them. They're not neutral. There are
so many things that can take up our time and our passions
which are designed to lead us away from Christ and designed
to lead people away from the truth and designed to foster
and feed that sin which dwells in the hearts of men and women. The entertainment, the toys,
the music, the riches, the ideals of the world around us are not
things that we should treat lightly. Many of them will lead us to
destruction. They're all polluted and they
all declare one message. that Christ is of nothing worth. If you turn on the television
or you go to the cinema, how many films are produced that
declare the gospel of Christ? And how many books, films, programs,
etc. are produced which ridicule any
who declare the name of Christ? You know the answer. They're
perilous times. But the peril of our times is
not just and not so much in the political world around us or
in the distractions around us. the greatest peril of our time
which has come upon us year after year to as it were a sleeping
Christendom who was warned years ago of its onset and shut its
ears to it and buried its head in the sand and now it's come
upon it and it cries out and says why has the situation got
thus? And why does the land take away
our freedom? And why do these things come
upon us? The peril that has come upon
us is that we find ourselves in a famine, not of bread and
water, but of the hearing of the word of God. up and down this land. You can
go to any town or city and generally you will get into double figures
with the number of meeting places and so-called Christian churches
in each town. But you'll hardly find a place
where the gospel's preached. And that's the peril of these
times. The social and the political
effects merely ripple outwards from that cause. Because the
gospel has ceased to be preached its influence is no longer felt
therefore the politicians grow up dead and barren and unaware
of the truth and they get into power and they pass these laws.
But the rot set in a long time ago. And it set in because professing
believers in churches shut their ears to the truth, opened their
ears to compromise in an effort to increase their numbers, threw
away the gospel, and brought in catastrophe into their meeting
places. They're perilous times because
of the rarity of hearing the gospel. And I don't mean the
gospel as it is lightly taken and spoken of in multitude of
churches and professing churches. Everyone says they've got the
gospel. We all know the gospel. That's
obvious, isn't it? Well, the gospel, well, it's
just a message of, well, Jesus, we believe in Jesus. He died,
he rose again. Oh, we all believe the gospel. The reality is they don't know
the gospel. That what they call the gospel, as Don mentioned
earlier, Paul calls another gospel which is not another. and it
will damn you. It may refer to a person they
call Jesus. It may refer to his death. It
may refer to his resurrection. But it's not the Christ of the
Scriptures. It's not the sovereign God made
man. It's not the God that does all
things as he pleases. His death is not that effectual
death for his own people by which he ransomed all his people from
the grave and saved them effectually. His resurrection is not that
resurrection with that people when they died with him and rose
again with him in victorious power, never to die again. Their new birth is not that work
of the Holy Spirit, that sovereign work by which God quickens sinners
to life, to believe the gospel. Their walk of Christian walk,
their life Their idea of the pilgrimage is not that which
the gospel declares. They put men under works and
back under law to live right by their own efforts and their
own deeds. Their gospel is one which either mixes works and
grace or the will of man and grace. And though it refers to
Jesus, though it refers to him dying, though it refers to him
rising again, it's not the gospel. and it will take you to hell. That's the peril. Perilous times
shall come. The time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine. but after their own lusts shall
they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears and they
shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned
unto fables. You see the people described
here are not necessarily irreligious. These are ones who will heap
to themselves teachers. They'll go to this church and
to that church. They'll listen to this man and
to that man. They have itching ears. They
want to hear. They want to hear something new. They want to hear
something encouraging. They want to hear not how the
churches are dwindling and not how persecution is coming, but
they want to hear how there's some great revival coming and
how the churches are growing. And they want to see the young
people in. So they'll go to this man and to that man and the other
man. Their ears itch and they listen. But they have turned
their ears from the truth and are turned unto fables. A fable won't save you. A fable
will damn you. It's perilous. The gospel is
not a fable. The gospel is the truth in Jesus
Christ and only the truth in Jesus Christ will save you and
spare you from peril. They may turn under fables. but
those whose eyes have been opened by God in his sovereign mercy,
those whose ears have been opened to hear the truth, those whose
hearts have been quickened to life by the mighty operation
of the Spirit of God within, those who know they're nothing
but a guilty sinner whom God has looked upon in grace and
set his love upon. These have not turned away from
the truth to fables. These have heard and believed
the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have not followed cunningly
devised fables. The gospel and the gospel alone
is truth. It is truth as it is in Christ,
for Christ himself is the truth. I am the way, the truth and the
life. There is no way to God but Christ,
no truth but Christ and no life but in Christ. Men may say what they like regarding
that. They may say what they like about
many ways to God. They're fables. I am the way,
the truth and the life, Christ tells us exclusively. and everything else is perilous. The peril of our day is if you are starved of the
gospel. The peril of our day is to be
distracted by your television set, and your record player,
and your iPod, and your magazines, and your football, and your sport,
and your school, and your college, and your work, and your family,
whatever it is. If it all adds up to take you
away from that which will save your soul and deliver you from
hell, then it adds up to peril. I'm not saying you shouldn't
have a family, you shouldn't work, you shouldn't live, you
shouldn't listen to any music or anything. But I'm saying that
the world around us is geared to starve you of the truth. And
what we need is the truth. And the truth is in the gospel. Very well. We need the gospel. But what
is the gospel? Well I'll tell you something
about the gospel. The gospel today is assaulted
and corrupted on every side. Confusion is sown all over the
place. Such that you will hear a thousand
gospels in a thousand meetings. And you've no strength or wisdom
to work out which is which. Let's be plain about that. You
can get the best books, you can go to the best teachers, you
can go to the best college, you can study it all out and be as
blind as a bat. There's one gospel, there are
thousands of counterfeits, and if we don't have the true gospel,
we're lost. perilous isn't it? Perilous. The political and the
social movements of our day move at a mighty pace. Millions of
people are led to believe certain things and the few believers
in this world who stand up as a voice against it have no strength
to stop its incessant march. the entertainment, the distractions
which would feed our flesh and lead us away from Christ get
their grip on us so easily and we've no strength to resist them
by ourselves. And the confusion of false gospels
and false messages and false churches is so utterly bewildering What strength have we got to
stand in the face of such peril? We've got none. And that's a good place to start
learning that you have no strength and you have no wisdom and you
have no ability. Because by nature we are nothing. We are blind. We cannot see the
truth though a man so clearly present it to us. Christ himself
could be stood here as he stood before others in his lifetime
and you'd no more believe him than you believe me. Others heard him in his lifetime
they said away with him crucify him. We will not have this man
to reign over us. You may say, oh it would be different
if I was there then. It would not be. It's the same. You'd no more believe him than
believe one he sends. You have no ability, you cannot
see, you cannot hear. You hear the words, you hear
my words, but they're just words. You can pick up a Bible and see
the words on the page. You can read them all. You can
read it through in a year and read it again and read it again
and learn it and memorize it by rote. And you'll never see
Christ unless God opens your eyes to see him. We can't do
it. It's not by learning. We don't heal unless God opens
our ears. We are dead. We are dead in trespasses
and sins and it's in such a state that the gospel comes unto us.
We're all dead. and only when God brings his
gospel in that state of peril in which we find ourselves and
speaks it by power by his spirit only then will we hear the truth,
will we know the truth, will we love the truth and will we
see Christ. Or have you? Today have you? Look back on your pathway. Think
about it. It's easy to be brought up. It's
easy to have friends that take you to church. It's easy to be
brought up to go to church and embrace many things outwardly.
Many people make a profession of faith. They go through the
waters of baptism. They claim to have believed this
and believed that. And yet in their hearts they
know they're dead. They know it's just words. It's
an intellectual assent. And when somebody else cleverer
comes along and writes a book, when a Dawkins comes along and
gives them some unassailable arguments in their eyes, all
that they have is tattered. It falls away because it was
just in their minds. Is that you? Because if your
faith is of your works and your understanding and your intellect,
it won't stand. When as it were the thunders
of God's wrath, when the rain comes, like it came upon Noah
and his ark, when that flood comes, you'll be washed away. We need something more than words
and mental understanding. The Gospel and the revelation
of the Gospel unto God's people is far more than them coming
to hear a message, accepting that message, believing that
message, receiving it and following it. And yet unfortunately that
is all that so many professors of Christianity have. And that
is why in the last 30 years the numbers in the churches have
crumbled. Because those people faced with
the onset of perilous times pressing upon them from outside of the
churches have been washed away. And if you're just like them
you'll be the next to be washed away. We need something greater
to keep us. And that's the gospel. The gospel. What is the gospel? Well it's
assaulted, it's jeered, it's ridiculed, it's corrupted, it's
confused. Yet to be confused about the
Gospel is to have the very foundation of our faith of salvation undermined. Our salvation depends upon the
Gospel. Therefore it is vital to be clear
about what the Gospel is and vital to know that Gospel by
revelation. God must teach it to us. Which brings me to my second
point. The Gospel. The gospel cannot,
cannot be separated from its preacher. And that preacher and
that subject is Christ. The gospel is the message of
Christ, the doctrine of Christ. It is not just a message about
Christ. But it is his message that he
declares, not simply 2000 years ago which is then written in
the book for us to read, but he preaches it now. And unless you've heard that
gospel preached from Christ on high in this day and age, you've
never heard the gospel. You may hear men come to the
scriptures and take words and phrases and teachings from the
scriptures and present a message but that's them talking it's
just words. But the gospel when we hear the
gospel is to hear Christ's voice. It's to hear his speech. is to
hear him in heaven above this day speak through his spirit
whom he sends into the earth. As he sends forth preachers,
men whom he calls and sends forth with his word, whom he speaks
through. When we hear a man sent of God,
we hear Christ by his spirit, by his lips. And if all you hear
is the man, you've not heard Christ. You might as well go
home. But if that man speaks by the
Spirit, you're hearing Christ. And you'll only hear the gospel
when you hear Christ speak. When you hear him speak. It's
recorded in John. The hour is coming and now is.
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live. It's now. That hour is now and
you must hear the voice of the Son of God if you will live. But if you do hear the voice
of the Son of God, praise God, you will live. You will live. It's that powerful a voice. That voice spake and this world
was brought into being from nothing. That voice spake and the blind
man saw. That voice spake and the dumb
spake. That voice spake and the lame
jumped and walked. That voice spake to Lazarus,
come forth, and he got up and came out of the grave though
dead four days. And if that voice speaks to your
soul, then your dead corrupt soul, dead in trespasses and
sins, blind to the truth, apathetic, cold, arrogant, proud, your soul
will live. It will live. Not as men and
women live on this earth, with a natural mortality, which is
really simply a living death, but it will live with a life
of a different order altogether, eternal everlasting life. You
will live because you will have in you the very life of Jesus
Christ himself. Because when he quickens a sinner
unto life by his spirit, when he says unto them, live, and
the spirit enters in, and Christ by his spirit, he takes up residence
in the heart. It's a total and an utter transformation. Total. You come from darkness
into light, from death into life. And all it takes is one word
of the gospel uttered by the voice of Jesus Christ. No wonder then, no wonder that
Paul said of that gospel, I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation. to everyone
that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The power
of God unto salvation. One word of this gospel uttered
by Christ's lips can take the hardest heart and break and melt
it. You may come here because your
parent has dragged you here today. Your thoughts and minds might
be on the latest football school or what you're going to do when
you get home again. You may come here because a friend
has twisted your arm. And your heart might despise
these things. It might say of the gospel and
of the message of the cross of Christ that it's foolishness It's for people in the medieval
ages. Before our scientific day in
which we live, we know better. It's just foolishness. But if that's your cry, I will
tell you what God says of you. He says in 1 Corinthians that
the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. You say it's folly. That's because
you perish. That's because you're in peril.
And that's because your heart is wicked and evil and thinks
evil thoughts continually. That's because your ears and
your mind and your eyes are shut to the things of God. And you
can't change it. It's a weariness to you. burden. But if God should look upon you
and if God should come in the person of Christ and say unto
you, you are one for whom I died, you are one for whom I was slain,
You are one whose name was on my heart when they nailed my
hands and my feet to the cross and when they lifted me up in
the midday sun. You are one whose name was on
my heart when the light of the sun was taken away and when God's
wrath was poured out upon me because I took your sins and
bore them in death because I was made sin for you that you should
be made the righteousness of God in me. You are one for whom
I gave myself and suffered because I love you. You are one I have
purchased with my blood. If he should say that to you
personally then you will know what it is for your apathy to
fall away and what it is to pass from death unto life. You will know the gospel. How
will you know the gospel when there's so many counterfeits
when you hear it? when Christ speaks it by a preacher whom
he has sent to speak it to your soul. For it's not simply a matter
of picking up the Bible or picking up a word and getting it yourself.
God is sovereign in how he declares his gospel. He's sovereign. He could do it any way he liked. He could say it's just a matter
of reading John 3, 16. Everyone who picks it up and
reads it will be saved. But he's not said that. He has
said, whether you like it or not, he has said that it is by
preaching. For after that in the wisdom
of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. You must hear. The preacher,
the preacher you must hear is Christ. But Christ means is to
send his spirit through men he calls and raises up and sends
forth to preach. We must hear. The gospel cannot
be separated from Christ. What is the gospel? The message
of the gospel? It declares it begins with the
person of Christ. God, almighty God, the one true
living God, the Son of God. truly God but that person of the Godhead
who chose to be made a man, made a little lower than the angels
even for the suffering of death. The gospel's about Christ. It's about what he has done,
who he is and what he has done to save his people from their
sins. And its power stems from who
he is. He is God. He's the son of God,
yes, but he is God. When God spake to create the
world it was through the Son, by His Word. God's Word, God's
speech, when God speaks, when God Himself speaks, the speech
is Christ. He is the Word, the speech of
God. When God spake and created it
was by Christ. Christ was truly God and truly
man. Truly man. Just as much a man
as we are, yet without sin. He had flesh and bones. He was
born. He was a man. He felt pain. He felt suffering. He felt trial. He grew tired. He's a man. The gospel concerns
his son Jesus Christ our Lord which was made of the seed of
David according to the flesh. He was made a man. And so many of the corruptions
of the gospel attack these points. They attack who Christ is as
God. They attack his eternal nature
as the Son of God, that he always was the Son and he always will
be the Son. They say he could not be truly
God or he was not truly equal with the Father, yet he was. They say he could not be truly
man. He just took some of the nature
of mankind upon himself. But he was truly man. A divine
person with divine nature and human nature joined. Almighty
God and sovereign. As God he is entirely sovereign. He is an almighty King, the Lord
of Lords and the King of Kings. He says and it's done. If he says to you this day, thou
will go to hell, depart from me ye worker of iniquity, I never
knew you. That's what will come to be.
And it's recorded in Matthew that he will say to many that,
And it's an awful thing to think that some should hear that. But
if he speaks it, that's so. But if in grace and mercy and
love he says to others, just the same by nature, just as wicked
as them, if he comes unto them, if he comes unto you and says,
you are mine, live, then you will live. He speaks and it is
done. Salvation is entirely in his
hands. The gospel is attacked in every
way. The preaching of the gospel is
maligned. The person of Christ is maligned. And the sovereignty of Christ
to save whom he will is hated. We hate that because the nature
of what we are. What we are as descendants of
Adam and Eve from the fall are those that worship self and those
that rebel against the authority of God over us. That's what we
are. That's what the fall was about.
That's what it brought in. Adam and Eve in the garden were
created innocent. They had freedom to do what they
will. Except for one thing, to eat
of one tree they were commanded not to eat. And they could not
take that in the end. The nature of the fall was that
they rebelled against the authority of God to rule over them. We
will do what we will. And the nature of fall and Christendom
and the false gospels which are rife in its doors is that their
gospel is one that says man wills. Man will choose his destiny. I am saved because I accepted
Jesus into my heart and no God is going to force my hand. I'm
going to have the choice. Very well. Take it. in peril to your doom. Because your choice will never
ever truly choose to follow Christ. It will follow a Christ, an idol
in your own heads that you've dreamed up. An idol that you
can command to save you because you've decided you wish to be
saved by him. But that little tin pod idol
is in your head and no further. And he won't get you to heaven.
Your will will damn you. You say that's not fair, I can't
believe in a God that would change the will. I can't believe in
a God who would be sovereign, why doesn't he leave it up to
me? How the Armenians rail against this, they say it's not fair.
But how utterly illogical every Armenian is when it comes to
the salvation of all of their friends and family. For themselves
they say, God's not going to rule my will, I chose Christ,
that's why I'm saved. But when it comes to their hard-hearted
children, and their wife who will not believe, and their friends
at work that they long to see saved and embrace the gospel,
they get on their knees and pray to their God to change those
people's hearts. And they say, Lord, save this
one. Save my son. He's set against
thee. Change his will, Lord. Please,
Lord, save him. What fools! Why do you say he
cannot change your heart and your will, but he's free to change
the wills of these you love? What utter inconsistency if he's
able to answer your prayer and change the heart of your hard-hearted
son who's in the world heading for ruin. If he can answer that
prayer and I tell you he can then I tell you also that if
you're ever to be saved or ever were saved or ever are saved
it's because he changed your will too. The will of man by nature is
set against God. As we heard earlier, no one sought
him. Romans makes this clear, no man
sought God, there's none that doeth good. No, not one. The will of man is set to sin,
it rebels. But if we are ever made willing,
if we ever believe, if we ever receive Christ, if we ever rejoice
and hear his word, if we ever believe on the gospel, it's because
God changed our heart and made us willing. As Psalm 110 says,
thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. Because he spake and said to
that one who would not, you will. And he turned and said, Lord,
have mercy upon me, a sinner. Man hates the sovereignty of
God, he hates the message of the gospel regarding what we
are. We've spoken a little of it.
But man hates to think of himself as corrupt and as dead. He loves
to think there's something in him, some merit, some reason
why God should be pleased with him. He thinks if I do this and
do that, if I turn from the sin of this world, if I worship,
if I read the scriptures, if I pray, there's some good in
this. Surely there's good in reading the Bible. Surely there's
good in my prayers. Surely I've done something good. But God says, not of our corrupt
deeds, but of those good things. God says of our righteousnesses,
our prayers, our devotion, our religion, our kindnesses, our
charity. God says of our righteousnesses
that they are as filthy rags. You're dead, you're fallen and
you're stained in sin and you'll only hear the gospel or receive
the gospel when God by his power brings you to see that. Because
when you come to see that it's because you're beginning to hear
the gospel. By nature you fight against that.
We're proud. We're arrogant. But when the gospel comes and
the alarm is sounded and the word begins to hit us like a
hammer and break us down and teach us what we are, we come
to see that we're corrupt. All of us. All of us. We're all wicked. We're all evil. And if any of us in this room
know Christ, it's nothing to do with anything we've done.
Nothing to do with anything we've willed. It's entirely because
he, in overwhelming grace, said, you're going to hear the gospel.
And he came and he preached unto us and he turned us and he brought
us to life. Then what have we got to boast
in? And I say this candidly to you
all as believers, watch your conduct one to another. You've
nothing to boast in, any one of you. Even as believers, it's
all given to you as a gift by grace from God. If you know Christ
and His gospel, it's all free grace. Anything you are, anything
you've done, anything you do as a believer, if you're asked
to lead a meeting, to do a reading, if you've done this deed or that
deed, if there's any worth in it, it's because it's of God.
He brought it to pass. This is why Paul often exhorts
the believers in the churches, in the letters, to think of each other as better
than themselves. He exhorts them to humility because
we're nothing. And all that we have is by grace
in Christ, by that gospel, which we discovered was the power of
God. unto our salvation. I must move on quickly, the gospels
attacked regarding the death of Christ. Because man hates
the sovereignty of God, he hates that God is able to choose some
to salvation and not others. He hates that the scriptures
plainly teach that Christ laid down his life for the sheep and
not the goats, that he has a people like Israel of old that he chose
from amongst all the nations, that God's people are a company
that God has sovereignly elected and chosen. The father chose
the names of a multitude before ever he created this world and
he gave those names to his son and he laid them upon the heart
of his son and his son said I will go and save them. And His Son
came into this world, a world that hated Him and rejected Him
and despised Him and said, away from us, we don't want you. And
a world which took Him and crucified Him and nailed Him to a tree.
And he went to that tree with the names of that people on his
heart and he died for them in particular. And having done so
he brings the gospel message to every single one of them to
the end of time that they all should hear, that they all should
believe and that they all should be quickened unto life and enter
into that glory, that inheritance which he has wrought for them. He died to save his people from
their sins. Thou shalt call his name Jesus,
for he shall save not all mankind, not all men if they will, but
his people from their sins. You say I don't like that, that's
not fair. Why are some saved and not others?
Because God is pleased in grace. Though he justly should destroy
the lot of us, He is pleased in grace to say no I won't I
am going to save a multitude and I'm going to bring the sound
of the gospel to their ears and they are going to know of the
love that I had for them from all time from eternity and they're
going to know the width and the breadth and the height of that
love that sent my son to the cross that caused him to suffer
and to die for them because he loved them. I rejoice that Christ saves all
his own. If God only chose two people
in this world, if he only chose one person in this world, old William Tiptaf said, if he
only chose one then I wouldn't curse God about it. I'd fall
down on my knees and pray that I was that one. Now don't rail
against God that he saved the company. Fall down on your knees
before him and ask him that you are amongst that company. Because
to ignore it and to fight it is to remain in darkness and
to run to your peril. There's life in the gospel. and all who call upon Christ's
name, whosoever calls upon Christ's name shall be saved. Finally, the gospel is attacked regarding
its message of grace. Man must work. He must have something to do
and if it's going to be denied him in this matter of salvation
If the preacher's going to say that your will and your works
won't save you, they won't justify you, then the nature of man in
religious things is to say, but I should still be doing something,
shouldn't I? And he'll get his works and his
ways back in there somewhere. And this gospel is attacked regarding
the fact that in reality the gospel is about God's work alone
from start to finish, about grace from start to finish. But men
won't have that. They'll either make it works
from the beginning, or they'll mix grace and works, or they'll
own up and say, well, I can see the scriptures say that justification
is not by works but by faith. But what of after I'm saved?
Where does the law come in then? Surely I should live according
to the Ten Commandments. And back to law they run. Though
the Ten Commandments, though God's law condemned them and
slew them in order to expose their sin and bring them in bankrupt
before Christ, that they should call on him for mercy, though
it laid them in the grave, Still they go back and say with glowing
eyes that look at that law and say but surely I must and they
think that by embracing the commandments that they will keep sin from
their door because their reasoning is thus if you say that we're
delivered from the law as the gospel does as we saw earlier
I through the law am dead to the Lord that I might live unto
God. We are not under law, we are under grace. We are delivered
from the law by the body of Christ. We're dead to it, we're in grace,
we're in the gospel alone. Though that's where we are, man's
thinking says, yes, but I've got the flesh. And that flesh
could war against the spirit and could sin. Therefore isn't
it wise to use the law to check my flesh and keep it constrained?
Isn't it wise to use it as a rule of my life? I know that the spirit
doesn't sin but my flesh keeps sinning and if I use the law
I'll stop it. Well let them try. And if you
think you're going to do anything that way, go on! And see whether
the sin stops. Because if you discover anything
of your heart and not just the outward conduct, you will find
that though in your great effort you might be able to curtail
your outward conduct, that you might be able to force yourself
to attend church every Sunday, to read your Bible, to be faithful
to your husband or wife, to not steal and to never murder. Don't you think you've kept the
law in your heart every day? You've broken every precept of
it. Your heart covets everything. Your heart desires every other
God but Christ. Your heart in anger against every
single person that frustrates you and crosses your path slays
them every day. We're all guilty sinners. The
law condemns us utterly and as believers if we put ourselves
back under that law what that law does to our flesh is to fire
it up to sin all the more. It says thou shalt not covet. and that gleaming iPod 4 waves
around in your eyes and you say I'm not buying it today and it
says thou shalt not covet and eventually the fire burns and
you bought it. Nothing against iPods but whatever. But that's the reality you covet
and the law feeds it and it slays you. What the law says is right
but you'll only fulfill it in Christ and his gospel. You say I've never murdered. We've all murdered. In our hearts
we've all grown up rejecting Christ and his gospel. We despised
him from the day we were born. And though our physical hands
didn't do it, our hearts did. When in Acts it is said, ye with
wicked hands crucified the Lord of glory, the Prince of glory. We took our wicked hands in our
hearts and we slew him. We would not have him. We would
not receive him. We would not believe him. We
would not receive his gospel. We hated him. And yet all the
time that we hated and hated and hated, there are those of
us who he set his love upon. and we hated and he loved and
we rejected and he embraced and we despised and he loved and
we ran away from and he came towards us and we said crucify
him and he died for us and our sins that we indulged he took
upon himself And God judged them in him. And God cancelled them. And God said the price has been
paid. And we hated. And he loved us. And we hated. And he sent his
gospel to us. And we hated. And that gospel
came. And we heard. And we heard a
voice crying in the wilderness. Make the paths of the Lord straight. Make way. for the Son of God's
entrance into your soul. A voice cried and it spake unto
our soul and we hated and that love cried unto us and said,
I gave myself for you that you should live. For you. Well did he give himself for
you? If not, you stand in peril. If you don't care, you're bewitched
by peril. If you'll flee this peril, be
saved from this peril, then it's in Christ and Christ alone. And if you ever discover something of Christ's grace and
mercy, if your hatred is taken away and you come to discover
his love for you, and you come to discover that he died for
you, and that he loves you to the end, no matter what, no matter
how unthankful you are, no matter how unfaithful a servant you
are, if you discover his overwhelming mercy and grace, then you will
find that what is foolishness to those who perish, folly to
those who are in peril, is life, the power of God to those like
you who believe, those who are called of God unto life eternal
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.