Well, the privilege is absolutely
mine. I was thinking as I sat over there a moment ago, I thought
of a passage of Scripture in Acts chapter 11. It says, Now
they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose
about Stephen, the disciples, the preachers of that day, they
were scattered. They traveled as far as Phineas
and Cyprus and Antioch preaching the word to none but unto the
Jews only, and some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which,
when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching
the Lord Jesus." That's what we preach, the Lord Jesus. And
it says in verse 21, "...and the hand of the Lord was with
them." That's what we read this morning, wasn't it? Lord, who
shall I say sent me? I am. Who am I, Lord, that I
should go? I'll go with you, was the answer.
The answer to the question didn't have anything to do with Moses.
Who am I, Lord, that I should go? I'm going with you. I sent
you. And the hand of the Lord was
with them. And so they went. And it says there, and a great
number believed. And that's why, because the Lord
was in it. And turned unto the Lord. That's the Lord's doing,
too. And then it says, Then tidings
of these things came unto the ears of the church which was
in Jerusalem, and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as
far as Antioch. Who, when he came and had seen
the grace of God, was glad? How do you see the grace of God? I'll tell you how. He came there
and he saw the people of God. And he said, look what God has
done. He heard the gospel that they preached and he said, this
is God's grace that has done this. The angels will see the
grace of God and sing about it in his people, won't they? Throughout
endless ages, they'll look at us and they'll say, worthy is
the lamb. That's how you see God's grace
in what he's done for sinners. And in the message of his son,
Well, and I, the reason I thought of that is when I came here,
I saw what they saw, what Barnabas saw there in Antioch. And, uh,
I was glad too. I was glad. I'm glad when I see
God's grace upon his people, it's a blessing to my heart.
And I know it is yours. You enjoy God's grace here. You
have a man that has the Lord with him that preaches the gospel
to you. Well, turn, if you would, with
me to 2 Corinthians 3. We've sung about it tonight.
Not what these hands have done can save my guilty soul. Not
what this toiling flesh hath borne can make my spirit whole. Thy work alone, my Savior, can
lift this weight of sin. That's pretty much what I'll
preach tonight, if the Lord is gracious to meet with us. We sang it in that other song
too, God forbid that I should glory. Paul said, God forbid
that I should glory save in the death, the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ. In other words, God don't allow
me to glory in what I've done, but in what He did. His cross
work. And that's what the message of
2 Corinthians chapter 3 is. I have forgotten to turn this
on, so I'm going to do that now. 2 Corinthians 3. We'll start with
verse 5. Paul said, Not that we are sufficient
of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the new
covenant." Now that word able there, first of all, notice that
he didn't find some able ministers. You know, they sing the song
in religion, God looking for a few good men. Well, he's going
to be looking a long time if that's what he's looking for.
He didn't find some able men, he made some. And the word able
there doesn't really speak of any qualification whatsoever
in the ministry. The word means equipped. It means
we've got what we need. He has well equipped us to preach
the gospel. We have his message. We have
his message. And if we don't have anything
but that, what else do we need? What did he tell us to do in
the Great Commission? Go and preach. We have a message
to preach. We're able, aren't we? We're
equipped. We have what we need. from God, from the Lord Jesus
Christ, we have His... And ministers, that word means
servants. It literally means waiters. It means somebody who's
serving the table, serving the food. We didn't make the food,
we don't add anything to the food or take anything away or
say, well, they may not like that, I won't put that out there.
We take His bounty and lay it out for you. Are you hungry?
If you are, you'll come and eat. If not, you won't. But what's
our business? We're just the waiter. We're
just the waiter. Now, he said, we're able ministers
of the new covenant, not of the letter. That's strong contrast
there. Not one thing, but absolutely
the other thing. Not of the letter, but of the
spirit. For the letter killeth. That's
why we're not ministers of it. I don't have to stand up here
and tell you that if you'll do something for God, God will do
something for you. That's death for you. That's
hopelessness for you. The letter killeth. It always
has, and it always will. But of the Spirit, the Spirit
giveth life. What did the Lord say? The flesh
profiteth nothing. But the spirit, the words that
I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. The flesh,
the deeds of the flesh, the keeping of the law, the flesh profiteth
nothing but the gospel, the very words of life itself. But if
the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, that's
why he calls it the letter, because it's written. It's written. This
is the letter. He told those Pharisees, you
search the Scriptures, you know the letter, you understand, you
see the letter, and you have the letter, and you boast in
your knowledge of the letter. But the letter speaks of Him
who is the Spirit. They are they which testify of
Me, and you will not come to Me that you might have life. But if the ministration of death,
the letter, written and engraved in stones, was glorious, so that
the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face
of Moses for the glory of his countenance which glory was to
be done away how shall not the ministration of the spirit be
rather glorious rather glorious for if the ministration of condemnation
be glory much more that the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory
For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this
respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth." That's the title
of the message tonight, and I pray the Lord will give me grace that
without Him I will not have to speak to you of the glory that
excelleth. Paul, obviously here, well, I
say obviously. If the Lord teaches us something,
it'll be obvious to us. He's contrasting the two covenants,
the old and the new. He calls the old Mosaic covenant
the letter because it consisted in God's written law and His
command to obey that which was written. It's written and engraven
in stones, it says in verse 6. And Paul clearly and bluntly
says we do not preach the letter. We are not ministers of the law.
Does that mean we avoid mentioning the law? Of course not. The law
is the schoolmaster that drives us to Christ. But the law does
now what it has always done. It kills. Paul said it. I was
alive without the law once. I thought I was doing pretty
good, you know. I had it hanging on my wall, you know, like everybody
does. And I checked, oh, I hadn't killed anybody today, and I hadn't
committed adultery, and I'm doing pretty good. But then he said
the commandment came to my heart. I realized what God was saying.
in that law. And sin revived. I realized what
I was before God. And I died. All my hope of pleasing
God, all my hope of having acceptance with God by the deeds of the
law, perished on that day. That's what Paul said. Alright,
we do not preach the law. Why not? And I'm always amazed
and rejoiced in how relevant The gospel is timeless, isn't
it? There are those tonight, as we sit here, that would have
us preach law. There was a woman in Texas that
attended the worship where I was there with Jack Shanks for many,
many years. And this woman attended the worship
there for, I guess, 15 some odd years at least. And we had fellowship
with her and her husband and believed that they loved the
gospel to all outward appearances and evidence She loved the gospel
of Christ and then one day her husband fell into great sin and
just unmentionable, grievous sin. And that dear lady blamed
Jack and myself and said, if you had preached more law, my
husband would not have fallen into sin. She did this to Jack's
face and he told me later that I was implicated also in that.
If we had just preached the law, it would have constrained him.
No, it wouldn't have. It wouldn't have done that. The
law has never done that and it never will. Why don't we preach
the law? Why don't we preach at least
a little bit of law so we'll all be in line and won't fall
into sin? Well, Paul here says that that
law is glorious. And it was. It's wonderful. God
wrote His will on tablets of stone. He didn't have to do that. He didn't have to express His
will to sinners. He could have just done with
us what ought to have been done with us, what we deserved. And
He'd have been righteous to do so, just. But God wrote His will,
His moral standard, an expression of His holiness on rock. and
gave them to man. And the circumstances of the
giving of that law were glorious. They were accompanied by a revelation
of God's glory, a manifestation of His greatness. When Moses
came back down from speaking with God, the folks couldn't
even look at Moses' face because it shone so brightly with the
reflected glory of God. Just from being in the presence
of God, His glory shone from His face. It was glorious. The
display of God's thundering justice had a glory about it, no question. The outward obedience to that
law was glorious in all of the pictures and types of Christ
that were daily put on display. The law is full of pictures and
types and ceremonies that set forth and exalt the Lord Jesus
Christ. When God took Moses up into that
mountain and said, thou shalt and thou shalt not. When he gave
him the 10 commandments, he said, okay, okay, I want you to make
a mercy seat. And when you break my law, here's
what you do. The law points to Christ and God has always had
the same message to sinners. The law never has been a means
whereby, it was by faith that Abel offered a more excellent
sacrifice than Cain. And these folks, they weren't
justified by the law. The blood of bulls and goats
could never, never take away sin, and they knew that then.
They knew that then. It was by faith in Christ that
they worshiped God and had fellowship with God. It always has been
that way. And so it was glorious, wasn't it? In the pictures, in
the displays, in the daily displays, Every day blood was shed and
sinners could see in vivid terms that the wages of sin is death.
And they could see by that that the only way God can be approached,
they understood at least mentally, it was right there in their face
every day that God demands justice for sin. And the sinners, they
had a visual testimony every day that God can only be approached,
worshipped, pleased by the blood, the death of an innocent victim,
dying in the stead of the sinner. Every day they had that unmistakably
displayed before. Glorious! Yes, it was glorious.
It was glorious. Exodus 15-11, who is like unto
thee, O Lord, among the gods? They could see that in the law.
They could say that. Who is like unto thee? Glorious
in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders. Who is like unto thee? God is
glorious in holiness, which is displayed in the giving of His
law and in the outward obedience to that law. But there's a problem. There's a problem in this for
us. And this is This is the first
answer to our question. Why don't we preach the law? Because, glorious though it was,
and Paul said, I delight in the law of God after the inward man. And people talk about God's ceremonial
law and God's moral law and the Levitical law and the Mosaic
law. God just has one law. The law is the word, the testimony. It's everything God says. Everything. And here it's specifically is
that old covenant that God gave to his people,
the nation of Israel, the earthly nation of Israel. And in that
outward obedience, Christ was displayed and it was glorious. But here's the problem. God's
law in itself gives a sinner no hope whatsoever. No hope. Romans 320, therefore by the
deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his
sight. That sounds hopeless to me, doesn't
it you? No flesh justified. That's bad news because we've
got to be justified if we're going to have anything to do
with God other than his wrath falling on our heads. No flesh
justified. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin. And that's all that the law can do for us in relation
to sin is make us knowledgeable of it. That's it. That's it. That's what it does.
We could preach more law. And presumably, you know, the
presumption is at least that we would be more outwardly moral
if we preached law. You know, you've got to keep
people in line now, you know. If I studied on how to identify
and combat the sins of the flesh, you know, and dealt with that
every time I got up, I could talk to you about how to ward
off the devil. The last time I found myself in the unhappy
circumstance of listening to a preacher that didn't know the
gospel, that's what I heard about, how to ward off the devil. He
talked about Satan for 45 minutes and never mentioned Christ. That's
what the law will do. And I left there. Not having
heard anything, any hope for sinners. None whatsoever. But
we could do that. But even if we did, even if it
had that effect, if it made us more moral, if it caused us to
become outwardly more moral, what would we be? Where would
that leave us? We'd be a bunch of Pharisees,
wouldn't we? That's what we are by nature anyway. We'd love that
the flesh would eat that up. Because that's what we are. That's
why people love to be told what not to do and what to do. Give
me something to do. Naaman, if he'd have given you
some great thing to do, you'd have done it. You'd have done
it. And we will. But where would
that leave us? We'd be self-righteous, goody-two-shoes,
holier-than-thou, Christless, hell-bound, hopeless sinners.
That's what we'd be. But you know, the law doesn't
even do that. It can't even make you outwardly more moral. It
can make you think you are. Turn to Matthew 23. This is what
we would be. Verse 24, you blind guides which
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you make clean the outside
of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion
and excess. You blind Pharisee, cleanse first
that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside
of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites. I believe it was your pastor
that wrote an article not long ago on dealing with the symptoms
of the problem. and not dealing with the problem.
That's what they did. They put band-aids on it and
covered it up and made it pretty. Put makeup on over the scars. You hypocrites, woe unto you. Verse 27, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you are like unto whited sepulchres, coffins,
graves, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full
of dead men's bones." Full of it. And of all uncleanness. There's
not any room for anything? You're full of it. Of all uncleanness. All uncleanness. Now, "...even
so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men." Oh, you see, there's
the key right there. The truth is the law doesn't
make us more moral. It just makes us better at hiding
our sin. That's all it does. It makes
us experts at appearing moral. But within you are full of hypocrisy
and iniquity. Now, why does something good,
the law is good. We confess, Paul said in Romans
7, that the law is good and right and just. Why does something
good result in such a bad thing? Wickedness. Well, it's not the
law that's wicked. In Romans 8, the first few verses,
what the law could not do in that it was weak through the
flesh. Ah, there's the key. The law can't do some things. So one thing in particular. Why? Because it's weak through the
flesh. It's not the law that's weak. It's not the law that's
lacking. It's you. And the law The covenant of law
was a conditional covenant that the conditions depended upon
your obedience. So the law can't do what some
people think it can do. Why? Because of your flesh, because
of you, because of your inability to live up to it. 1 Timothy 1,
let me read this to you. 1 Timothy 1, 5, now the end of
the commandment is love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience,
and of faith unfeigned, from which some, having swerved, have
turned aside into vain jangling, desiring to be teachers of the
law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm."
Desiring to be teachers of the law because they say, all right,
this is God's will for you. Thou shalt, thou shalt not, thou
shalt, and this is, if you do and don't do, then God will be
pleased with you. They don't have any idea what they're saying.
No idea. Or where of they're from. But
we know that the law is good if... Well, the law is always
good in and of itself. It's the expression of God's
character. But he's saying the law is good
for us if a man use it lawfully. So why does a good, holy, just,
perfect law result in an evil thing? Because of the way it's
used. That's why. The way you use it
and I use it. A man. It's us that are wicked
and vile. Knowing this, if a man use it
lawfully, knowing. Don't miss that. By the law is
what? The knowledge of sin. How do
you use the law lawfully? Knowing this. If the law makes
you know this, then you've used the law by God's grace lawfully. That the law is not made for
a righteous man. It's not made for somebody that
is righteous. It's not made to make somebody righteous. But
for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly, and for sinners."
Listen to this description of us now. He talked about the Pharisees
well ago and said you're full of all manner of uncleanness. That's what he's saying here,
and he's describing some of it here, isn't he? For unholy and
profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for
manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves
with mankind, for men-stealers, for liars, for perjured persons. Is he saying now that the law
It condemns all these different kinds of people. Murders of fathers
over here and murderers of mothers over here. Now, remember what
He said to the Pharisees. You are full of all uncleanness.
These are not different types of people. These are all you. Every one of them. And me. And if there be any other thing,
Paul said here, that I've left out that is contrary to sound
doctrine, And he said, now look at the context here, he said
the law to be used lawfully is to know this, and this is verse
11, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which
was committed to my trust. According to my good news, I
didn't hear much good news in what Paul said there did you?
But he's not done You see in order to know the good news and
understand the good news. You got to hear the bad news
first, don't you? the bad news The lawful use of
the law is not to use it as a basis for which to attain righteousness
before God But to use the law to know to know verse 9 But to know what? That you are
before God a lying, defiled, whoremongering murderer, among
other things. And I am too. If the law causes
you to know that and confess that and bow to that truth and
acknowledge it before God, own your sin before God, then you've
used the law lawfully. By the law is the knowledge of
sin. Romans 3.19, we know that whatsoever
things the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law
that every amount... Why does it say it? So that we'll
know how to act? So that we can put it on our
wall, you know, and try to live up to it every day? No. So you'll
shut up about your law keeping. That's why it says what it says.
To shut me up. That's why He gave it, to shut
us up. It says what it says to us, that
every mouth may be stopped. And in the case of His people,
it accomplishes that, doesn't it? Paul said, I died, I died. And here it is, and why else? That all the world may become
guilty. If the law has caused you to
become guilty before God, then you've used it lawfully by God's
grace, because you won't unless He has mercy on you. Oh my, my
mouth is stopped and I praise His grace forever that He has
shut me up about what I've done. Paul said, not having mine own
righteousness, I wouldn't have it. I would not step before God
for three seconds with it. I would not offer up my filthy
rags to God for anything. Why? Because He broke me and
showed me His law and His spiritual truth and how guilty I am before
it. And He showed me how that law
can be honored, glorified, kept, preserved, and He can still save
me. He can still save me. When the
law is used unlawfully, the result is self-righteous presumption
and pride and hypocrisy. What is the result of the lawful
use of the law? Well, in Galatians 3.22, the
scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by
faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were
kept under the law. Shut up unto the faith which
should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster. to bring us unto Christ that
we might be justified not by law, not by what we've done,
but by faith in Him who did honor God's law. Did you see the promise
by faith of Jesus Christ there in verse 22? That word is the
faithfulness of Jesus Christ. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ.
The promise. We receive the promise and the
blessings of this new covenant of the grace of God in Christ
Not by what we've done, but by what He did. There's the difference. So we are not ministers of the
law. What the law could not do is
the one thing that must be done for me. You see, the law cannot
make me righteous, and I've got to be righteous, so I can't find
any hope in the law. But what the law could not do
in that it was weak through the flesh, God sent His Son down
here to do." God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. Christ did
for me what the law could not do for me. He made me righteous. The very righteousness of God
in Him. The second reason that we are
not ministers of the law, of the letter. That is why we do
not preach law. There's another good reason,
and I'll be through. It's because we have something
infinitely better to preach. Why in the world would I preach
to you? Do this and do that and do the other thing, when I can
preach to you something so much better than that. Oh boy. We're made able ministers,
equipped ministers of the Spirit, not the letter. Called the minister
of the Spirit here because whereas in the old the law was engraven
on tables of stone, but in this ministry of the gospel, the word
of God, the gospel, the truth is engraved upon the heart of
the sinner. Turn to Hebrews chapter 8 with
me. I'll try to be brief. Hebrews 8 and verse 6 But now hath he Christ obtained
a more excellent ministry and And that's the ministry that
we have the ministry of the Spirit. That's what Paul's talking about
here Not of the letter by how much also he is the mediator
of a better covenant Which was established upon better Promises. Oh that law was glory the promise
that God gave it is perfect He's not saying better intrinsically
He's saying this promise is better for me It's better for me For
if that first covenant had been faultless then should no place
have been sought for the second so it's it's not faultless There's
a fault in it And again, it's not in the law itself, it's in
you. The problem, we'll see that in a minute. No place should
have been. For finding fault with them, verse eight, he saith,
behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I'll make a new
covenant with the house of Israel. Not this do and live, this do
and I'll bless you, and this don't do and I'll curse you.
No, this is a different covenant. This is a new covenant, a better
covenant, established upon better promises. Not according, verse nine, to
the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when
I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.
All right, now look at this. He said, this covenant is not
like that one. In what way? Read the next clause. Because they continued not in
my covenant. Any covenant that God gives that's
contingent upon our obedience, we're goners. And I regarded
them not, saith the Lord. This covenant is different. They
continued not in that one. But how is the new covenant better? For this is the covenant that
I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith
the Lord. I will put my laws into their mind and write them
in their hearts. And I will be to them a God,
and they shall be to me a people. And they shall not teach every
man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the
Lord, for all shall know me." Whoever he makes this covenant
with, every one of them, he said, will know me. And they won't
know me by hearing it from their neighbor. Peter, flesh and blood
hath not revealed this unto you. But the one who said, I'll put
it into your mind and into your heart, that's who you got it
from. Oh my, it's better. That's better for me. Every one of them shall know
me from the least to the greatest. How can that be, Lord? I'm going
to be merciful to them. Ah, in what way is He merciful? By causing us to know Him. This
is life eternal that they might know thee and they shall all
be taught of God He has mercy on us by coming where we are
and revealing his son in us Causing us to know his son All shall know me from the least
to the greatest for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness
if No. It's not there, is it? I'm so
glad. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins
and their iniquities will I remember no more. Period. You see why David said on his
deathbed, this is all my hope and all my salvation and all
my desire. That though he passed my family
by, he made a covenant with me. He's not talking about that old
one when he said that. He's talking about that one right
there. I will be merciful. And your sins and your iniquities,
I'll remember no more. And I will be your God. And you
shall be my people. You see how that's different
from the old one? And the old one, it was no good. Why? Because they continued nodding
it. In the new one, there's nothing for you to continue in or not
continue in. There's no condition put on it. And the old covenant, the new
covenant was revealed before the old covenant was revealed.
Did you know that? God made this covenant right here, this new
one with Abraham before he gave the old one to Moses. God had
never saved a sinner any other way but by making that covenant
with him that he made with David centuries ago. Has He made it
with you? If He has, you'll say, that's
all my desire and all my salvation. Alright. The Law. This is a sure
hope now. Look at the way He words it here
in our text. If the ministration of condemnation
be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness
exceed in glory. For even that which was made
righteous had no glory in this respect by reason of the glory
that excelleth. For if that which is done away
was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious,
seeing then that we have Not just hope, but such hope. What hope? What a hope this is. When God says, in blessing I
will bless you, I'll bless you. No condition. And Paul said, seeing that we
have such a wonderful gospel to preach, we want to preach
it just as plain and clear as we can and stay out of the way
of it. Don't we? Don't we, Bob? We've got something better to
say. That's why we don't say what Paul said we don't say.
We don't preach the letter. We have something that excels
in glory. We have something that is the
very glory of God revealed to sinners. Show me your glory,
Lord. I'll have mercy. I'll put your feet on a rock,
and I'll show you how I can be merciful to whom I will be merciful.
You want to see God's glory? You know where you'll see it,
don't you? God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
has shined in my black, wicked heart to give the light of the
knowledge. There's that word again, the
knowledge of the glory of God, where in the face of a person,
the Lord Jesus Christ, that's where the glory of God is revealed.
Paul said later in this chapter that when they read Moses, when
they hear the Word, that veil is over their face. You're never
going to see the glory of God by the preaching of the letter.
Never. That veil will be there. But he said, we who know the
Gospel with open face, no veil, we behold God's glory. We see
it in the face of His Son by the preaching of His Gospel.
The law leaves us with no hope, no flesh justified. But the gospel
message is this. God has loved us and given us
everlasting consolation and good hope. Not just I hope, I hope,
I hope. This is a good hope. Good hope. How? Through grace. Not through
law. Not through obedience. Not through
doing anything. But through his sovereign, free,
effectual grace in Christ Jesus. That's how. That's how He gave
us hope, and He comforts your hearts and establishes you in
every good word and work. Not by law, but by grace we have
a good hope. The law renders us guilty, Romans
3.19, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become
guilty. The gospel declares us justified. Being justified freely by His
grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus because
of who He is and what He did for us on that cross and every
step He took. In eternity, what He's always
done for us because of who He is and what He's done for us.
We're justified freely without a cause. That doesn't mean He
didn't have a reason for doing it. It just means there was no
reason in you for Him to do it. without a cause, that's what
freely means. By the law is the knowledge of sin. We read that
in Romans 3.20, but by the gospel is the knowledge of righteousness. Romans 3.21, the very righteousness
of God without the law is revealed, made known to you. How? In the
gospel. In the gospel you can know by
God's grace how you can have the very righteousness of God
without keeping the law. That's Christ. That's Christ.
The law reveals why God is against us. Because we are, by nature, the
carnal mind is enmity against God. And it reveals that. And
the reason why God... The gospel is the message of
God with us. Emmanuel, I call His name Emmanuel. Which being interpreted as God
with us. And God's for us. If God be for us, who can be
against us? And He manifestly is for us. He foreknew us and predestinated
us and called us and justified us and glorified us. If He be
for us, who can be against us? Oh, if the one that on the footing
of law is against me, if He's for me, there is no against. Who can be? It's Christ that dies. The law
demands your death. The wages of sin is death. The
gospel speaks of His death. We preach Christ and Him what?
Crucified. The gospel demands your blood.
I mean, the law demands your blood. But the gospel is the
message of that precious blood that John talked about when he
described Him as He who loved us. and washed us from our sins
in His own precious blood. That's who we preach. That's
why we don't preach law. We've got something better, my
friends. You don't want to hear about the law either, do you?
Our brother prayed that. We don't want to hear that. I
don't either. The law says here's what you
need to do. And they're saying that all over
this town tonight. Here's what you need to do to
be saved. The Gospel says here's what He did. Not what he would
do. No, not what would Jesus do,
what Jesus did do. That's the gospel, what he did
for sinners. The law is written on tables
of stone. The gospel is written on the
heart. Written on stone, you can read it and you can know
it, you can understand it up here. Written on your heart,
you'll love it. Paul said, I delight in the law.
Can't keep it, but I can delight in it in Christ by the grace
of God in Christ on stone You will grudgingly try to obey out
of fear like we talked about this morning And you'll think
you've done a pretty good job because we were masters at justifying
ourselves aren't we oh yeah? We'll think we've done pretty
good, but if he ever writes it on your heart You'll want to
obey Paul said, the things that I would do, I don't do them.
But I would do them. I would honor God, wouldn't you? But we'll realize every moment
of every day how far short we fall of doing that. How far short. And we'll look to Him who did
honor the law. Who is our representative before
God. Who has kept the law for us.
and paid for our not keeping it. That's what he did. You know
what the law says? The law says stone her. Stone her. In John chapter 8,
the passage just before we looked at what we looked at this morning,
the law says stone her. She's taken in adultery in the
very act. We've caught her. She's guilty.
She's condemned by God's law. Now stone her. You know what
the gospel says? Because of the gospel, God says to that sinful,
vile, wretched woman, I do not condemn you. Go free. We have something more glorious,
don't we, to preach. The law killeth. Why would we preach that? That
the Spirit, by the preaching of the gospel, giveth life. I'm
not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth. The law is a moral standard. The gospel, and I'm still learning
this, and I pray that God will teach me this until the day I
die. And that someday I'll know it,
even as I am known. The gospel of the good news is
a person. It's not a system of doctrine.
It's not a creed. It's a person. Salvation, the
gospel, the good news, is a person. The Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
why, Apostle, we don't preach the letter, but we preach a person. That's what He said. We preach
Christ. We preach Christ. And Him crucified. What He did for sinners. Oh, it's more glorious, my friend.
If the ministration of condemnation be glory. And that's what it
is. It's a ministration of condemnation. What they're preaching all around
us is a ministration of condemnation, but much more that the ministration
of righteousness. Therein is the righteousness
of God without the law revealed. The ministration of righteousness. Exceed in glory. For even that
which was made glorious had no glory in this respect by reason
of the glory that excelleth. We don't need the picture now.
We have the person. For if that which is done away
was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious."
We have such hope, and I pray by God's grace that I can declare
that hope with great plainness of speech. May He be gracious
to us. Amen.