Alright, let's turn together
to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. You will find the burden of my
message this morning in verses 11 and 20. Knowing therefore the terror
of the Lord. Knowing the terror of the Lord. If you are here without Christ,
you ought to be terrified. Terrified. Brother Don, you mean
we ought to be scared of God? Scared to death of God. Our God is a consuming fire.
If you fall into his hands with no refuge for your soul, whatever
hell is shall be yours forever. Now I know that. I know that. I don't have any question about
that. And therefore, I'm here to persuade
you to flee from the wrath of God, to flee to that only refuge
God has made for sinners, Jesus Christ, His Son, His blood, His
righteousness. Flee away to Him right now. Come
to Him right now. Believe on Him right now. Verse
20. Now then, we are ambassadors. In this passage, in this context
specifically, Paul is not talking about every believer, though
there is a sense in which it is true of every believer. Our
Lord says, you are my witnesses. All of God's people are missionaries.
All of God's people are witnesses. All of God's people are preachers
in a common sense, that we all are responsible and delight to
bear witness of Christ and his saving grace and mercy towards
sinners. But here, Paul's talking about
preachers. We are ambassadors for Christ. We don't have any other motive. We don't have any other object.
We don't have any other message. We don't have any other master.
We are ambassadors for Christ. The old prophets understood something
about this. They spoke of the burden of the
word of the Lord. We are ambassadors for Christ
as though God did beseech you by us. Now hear me, I have a word from
God specifically for you. Now either that's an awesome
fact and true or I'm totally deceived in what I'm doing. I have a word from God for you,
for Wes Roseboom, for Doug Hacker, for Faith Hacker, for Larry Brown,
for you, for you, for you. God is talking to you through
this empty, worthless, rusty pipe by His Word. You give me things to consider.
I'm not here to give you something to consider. I'm here to give
you a word from God and you better hear it. You better hear it. We pray you in Christ's stead. Moses, you stand and speak in
my stead. You fathers, you stand before
your family in Christ's stead. I stand before you in Christ's
stead. And this is what God calls you
to do. Be you reconciled to God. I can't think of anything more
important, more pressing, more demanding to my soul than these
three things. God Almighty has sent me to you
to preach the gospel. He says to me as he said to Jeremiah
of old, I formed thee in the belly before I knew thee. Before thou camest forth out
of the womb, I sanctified thee and ordained thee a prophet. Thou shalt go to all that I shall
send thee, and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak." I'm just God's messenger, and
yet That doesn't mean I'm just an ordinary messenger. If I were
sent to you carrying a message from someone
else in a sealed envelope, I'd hand it to you, and I wouldn't
care what the message said, who it came from, or how you responded. That's not the case. That's not
the case. I sometimes hear preachers say,
I don't care whether you believe me or not. I do care. I do care. I'm responsible as
God's messenger to give you the words God has put in my mouth
and press you to believe what God says. Not only is that waking. But the message God's given me
weighs heavy on my soul all the time. All the time. Paul said, Christ sent me not
to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words,
lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. God Almighty
has made this my responsibility. He's entrusted to me the treasure
of the gospel of His grace, and He commands me to preach to you
the gospel of Christ. I wish I had the ear of every
preacher in this world right now. I'd say, brethren, preach
the gospel all the time, everywhere, to everybody. Preach the gospel. Quit playing religious games
while sinners perish. Quit standing around and building
fine systems of theology while the world's going to hell. Preach
the gospel. Preach everywhere Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. This is the means. by which God
saves sinners, and this is the means by which God edifies, strengthens,
comforts, and instructs his elect. Preach the gospel, and not with
the wisdom of men's words. Now, for me, that's not a difficult
task. But sometimes I hear fellows preach, and they use deliberately
great eloquence and great logic and great rhetorical arguments
and words that just kind of sail over the head of the average
Joe. I recall years ago a fellow, a friend of mine, he's talking
about a preacher and he's just bragging on him. Oh, such a great
young preacher. He said, I've never heard him
preach. I didn't have to go and get a dictionary to find out what he was talking
about. Now, preach the gospel, not with
the wisdom of men's words, but in simple, simple, plain English
language that everybody who hears can understand. And this weighs on my heart. Your immortal souls. I don't pretend to be able to
say with Paul, I could wish myself accursed
that you might know God. I don't pretend to understand
what Paul meant when he said that in detail. But I can enter into something
of the passion with which he said it. This is what I want
for you. I want you to know Christ. I pray that God Almighty will
be pleased to step into your life and make himself known to you.
in the glory of Jesus Christ our Savior in his redemptive
grace and mercy. And with those things in mind,
let's look at this passage here in 2 Corinthians 5. I'm going to try to persuade
you to be reconciled to God. using just the arguments here
given, arguments given by inspiration, arguments used by the Apostle
Paul speaking to the Corinthian believers and speaking to those
who would read this epistle, speaking to you and me. Arguments
given by divine inspiration. That's as good an argument as
I can give. Here's the first one. I'm calling on you, and
I'm calling on me. I'm calling on everybody here.
to be reconciled to God. What does that mean? That means
to set your heart in agreement with God. That means to quit
fighting God. That means to quit resisting
the fact that God Almighty is God. That means to bow down to
Him, be reconciled to God. And here's the first basis of
my appeal. the immortality of your soul. We're not animals. We didn't
evolve from some worm or germ or ape. We do not pray our God,
which is up a tree, but our God who is in heaven. God formed
man out of the dust of the ground. and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life. And man became a living soul. We live in these tents of clay. We live in these bodies of flesh. We live in these crumbling, temporary,
earthly tabernacles. But we are living souls. What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? What will it profit a man if
he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? You and I are going to spend
eternity somewhere either in heaven in the bliss
and glory of God's presence and God's smile in God's approval
and God's embrace or in the darkness and torment and terror of hell
and God's eternal frail and God's eternal punishment. Whether God
Almighty shall cause your conscience and your mind as a worm that
never dies to burning your soul as a fire that can never be quenched,
to torment you forever with the consciousness that you fully
deserve is everlasting damnation. Paul said when he came to the
conclusion of chapter 4, we look not at the things which are seen. That is, we don't set our hearts
on the things we can see. Old Samuel Rutherford said, don't
build your nest in any of the trees of this forest. They are
all marked to be burned. Set not your heart on things
on the earth. Immortal souls, don't set your
heart to grasp after air. Don't set your heart to grasp
after nothing. Don't set your heart on vanity. We look not at the things which
are seen, but the things which are unseen. Eternity. Christ,
the glory of God, everlasting salvation. For the things which
are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal. Alright, look at verse 1. You and I, as believers, live in the expected hope of
immortality. We know. We know. Oh, bless God,
we know. We know. We've got lots of inner
conflicts. We've got lots of struggles in
our souls. We have lots of things that bother
us, but we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved,
if it were dissolved, what's this? We have. Just like that. We have. We have a building of
God. A house not made with hands eternal
in the heavens. For in this, Here, in this crumbling
tabernacle of clay, we grow. Oh, how we grow. Under the weight
of our own depravity and sin, the struggles of this world,
with the cares of this world, with life in this world, we grow. We don't grow as frustrated.
defeated men and women who have no sense of purpose in life.
We don't groan in despair and desperation as men and women
who don't believe God. No, no, no, no. We groan with
what we are. We groan with our present nature. We groan with
our ungodly, ungodly nature. We groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed
upon. with our house which is from
heaven. What's that talking about? Well, folks who don't know anything
about things by experience, I'll tell you what they think it's
talking about. I'll tell you what young wet behind the ears
fellows think it's talking about. Oh, we're just anxious to die
and go to glory. Go up to the hospital and find
me somebody who is. That's the way I am. I'm telling
you, you don't know what you are. You haven't been there yet. No, no, no. Oh, I'm anxious to
be with Christ, to be like Christ, to be clothed with perfect immortality,
light, and righteousness. Yes, I am. But I'm groaning too. I'm groaning because I'm still
trying my best to hang on to this life. I'm still trying my best not
to let go of anything here. Not to let go of anything. Now
I know what I'm talking about. I've been there. I know what
it is to live in the immediate prospect of death. To be faced
with being separated for a time. from family and maybe for eternity. From being separated from those
you love and being taken from them. God's people in this world
and your wife and your daughter. I know what that is. And with one hand you hold as
tight as you can hold and with the other you say, let me break loose from this
thing. I know what that is. So we struggle and we grow. But this we earnestly desire. Oh, my God, I earnestly desire
at last to be clothed upon, to drop this tabernacle of clay
that has been and is my worst enemy. that has demanded so much
attention and care to drop this tabernacle of clay and take upon me glorious immortality in perfect
conformity to the Son of God. We're not anxious to be naked.
That's what he says. Look at it. If so be the being
clothed upon, we shall not be found naked. For we in this tabernacle
do grow being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed. Now
sometimes we get to whining. Sometimes we... We get feeling
sorry for ourselves and we cry, oh, poor me. And we, oh, I'd
just like to die and get out of this world. That's not faith.
That's flesh. Oh, I'd just like to get away
from all this. That's not faith. That's flesh.
Not that we would be unclothed upon, but we have a positive,
anxious desire. But clothed upon. That mortality. all the sickness and pain and
sorrow and death and sin and ungodliness and unbelief and
mortality might be swallowed up of life. I want to live, don't
you? I want to live. Paul said, for
to me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. But if I live in
the flesh, If this is the fruit of my labor, yet what I shall
choose, I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. For I'm in a strait betwixt two. I'm between a rock and a hard
place, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is
far better. But for you, it's needful I stay
here a while longer. But this I know. I know whom
I had believed. And I am persuaded that He is
able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that
day. Look at verse 5. Our faith in
Christ gives us confidence and assurance with regard to these
things. Now, He that hath wrought us
for. The text reads, He that hath
wrought us for. It does not read, He that hath
wrought for us. He that hath wrought us for the
selfsame thing. What? Immortality. Everlasting
life. Who also hath given unto us the
earnest of the spirit, the promise, the down payment, the pledge
money of the spirit. Therefore, we are always confident This I am confident of. This I know. This is a matter
of assurance. This is a positive, not a positive
mental attitude, but a positive apprehension of faith. Confident,
knowing that whilst we're at home in the body, we're absent
from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by
sight. We are confident, I say, and
willing. Rather to be absent from the body, and to be present
with the Lord. And yet, our faith and confidence
doesn't cause presumption. I don't know that I can explain
the difference between confident faith and baseless presumption. Except that presumption, a baseless
presumption, is just the reception of facts and theories and principles
and doctrines without experience and faith and hope. Martha said
to the Lord Jesus, I know he's going to rise in a resurrection.
And the Lord said, Martha, I'm not talking to you about a doctrine.
I am the resurrection. Our confident faith in everlasting
life does not cause presumption, but rather causes us to constantly
seek Christ. To take nothing for granted.
Look at verse 9. Wherefore we labor. We're in
a constant struggle about this thing. That whether present or
absent. Whether we live on this earth
or whether God takes us out right now. whether present or absent,
we may be accepted of him. With Paul we say, I press toward
the mark for the prize of the high calling of God that is in
Christ Jesus. I count not myself to have apprehended
Though I've been apprehended of Christ, I haven't yet apprehended
what I'm seeking. I haven't yet arrived at this
everlasting immortality with Christ in glory, so I continually,
constantly press toward Him, seeking Him, calling on Him.
We recognize that there are multitudes who, as soon as they die, must
forever perish under the wrath of God. And many of those who
perish in hell vainly presumed that they were
perfectly accepted of God and never gave it a thought. I made
a decision. I had a religious experience.
I remember when I was baptized. I remember when I quit and started.
I remember. Don't be so foolish. If you die
without Christ, You're lost forever. Settle this matter then. Settle
it now. Make it your business to keep
it settled every day. Am I or am I not accepted of
God in Christ Jesus? Nothing else matters. Nothing
else matters, not everlastingly, not eternally. All right, here's
the second basis of my opinion. Not only are we immortal souls,
but we're going to soon face God in judgment. For we must all appear before
the judgment seat of Christ. We're going to face the bar of
a holy God. in the person of the God-man
who died in the place of sinners at Calvary, to whom the Father
has committed all judgment. And we're going to appear before
his judgment seat that every one of us may receive the things
done in his body. We're going to be judged of God
by Christ himself and judged in perfect righteousness. judged
according to exactly what we deserve by the books in heaven. Exactly. You men who are businessmen,
when a fellow comes time for him to get his paycheck, he gets
his paycheck based upon the amount of work he's done for the price
agreed upon according to the record you have kept. Is that
right? The fellow said, but I kept this
record. I don't care what kind of records
you kept. I'm paying you on the basis of the books I've kept.
That's all. Well, I'm going to appeal. Appeal
to who? I'll write the check. And I'm
telling you, there is a day coming when God Almighty is going to
reward you and me. You and me. Exactly. According to the record and pay
us accordingly. Either with everlasting damnation
or everlasting life. Based upon what we have done
in the body. Oh, preacher, you're talking
about God. Oh, damn. We're going to stand before God
and be judged for our works. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Exactly. Exactly. Either the record of
works you have performed all the days of your life, personally,
in your flesh, and you're going to be sunk into hell forever. Or on the record of the works
you have performed in a glorious, all-sufficient substitute, Jesus
Christ the Lord, and you're going to be rewarded according to absolute
righteousness with everlasting glory forever. You read Revelation
20 and say, that's not what the book says. You say, well, I believe
God's going to look at what I've done. Stand before God and say, look
here, I've prophesied in your name, and I've cast out devils
in your name, and I've done wonderful works in your name. Lord, surely
you're going to look at me. Yes, sir. I want to look at you
with the fire of my wrath forever in hell. But I've never done
anything. When did we see you naked and
clothed? When did we see you sick and
in prison and visit you? When did we see you thirsty and
give you something to drink? When did we see you hungry and
feed you? We've never done anything! Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There was
a man who came into this world 2,000 years ago who is God incarnate. who now sits upon the throne,
the Christ of God, who lived in this world in perfect obedience
to God from the day he came into his mother's womb and was conceived
in the womb, to the day that he cried out, it is finished,
and said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and bowed
his head as a reverent servant, having finished his work, and
gave up the ghost. Now that man! loved God with
all his heart, soul, mind, and being, and loved his neighbor
as himself. And Bobby Estes, he didn't do
it for himself. He didn't need to. He did it
for somebody, a representative people. And his obedience is
as truly ours as our disobedience was made to be his. His righteousness. is as truly mine as my sin was
truly his. And God Almighty having made
him to be sin, justly punish him for my sin. And God Almighty
having made me to be righteous, the very righteousness of God
in him shall justly righteously, because His holy law demands
it. Look on this sinner, and he's
going to say, well done, thou good and faithful servant. We're going to stand before Him,
and we're going to receive the things done in the flesh, in
this body, according to that He hath done, whether it be good
or bad. Knowing therefore the terror
of the Lord, We persuade man. Philip Doddge put it this way,
you sinners seek his grace whose wrath you cannot bear. Fly to
the shelter of his cross and find salvation there. So shall
the curse remove by which the Savior bled and the last awful
day shall pour his blessings on your head. I know the wrath of God, the
terror of judgment. That's not going to change you.
Nobody was ever scared into the arms of Christ. Nobody. Nobody. Preachers everywhere deceive
and trick. Men and women get you scared,
tell scary stories. Horrid stories about hell and
Satan and judgment, fire and brimstone, scare you, get you
to make a profession of religion and make you two-fold more the
child of hell than you were before. Fear is not going to cause you
to believe. So let me make another appeal. And that basis of this third
appeal is the love of God in Christ. Verse 11, but we are made manifest
to God, and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences. I stand before God, naked and open to the eyes of
Him with whom I have to do. And I hope you see me just as
clearly. Manifest. Manifest in your consciences.
For we commend not ourselves again to you, but give you occasion
to glory on our behalf. Folks had been accusing Paul
of being a false prophet, a false teacher, a false apostle, a deceiver
of men's souls. Paul says, all right, I'm not
going to commend myself to you again. You either know me or
you don't. But I give you occasion now to glory on my behalf. And
folks speak ill. that you may have somewhat to
answer them with glory in appearance and not in heart. Folks think
I've lost my mind? Well, if I'm beside myself, it
is to God. Or whether we be sober, it's
for your cause. Now watch this. For the love of Christ constraineth
us. I'm preaching to you as I do.
I labor for you as I do. I declare the truth to you as
I do, because the love of Christ constraineth us. The believer is ruled by love
for Christ revealed in him. It is the love of Christ that
constrains us to trust him. It's the love of Christ that
constrains us to serve him. It's the love of Christ that
constrains us to obey him. It's the love of Christ that
constrains us to honor him. I try to tell young parents,
best counsel I can give them with regard to raising kids,
you've got to correct, you've got to make them understand,
you either do what I say do or you suffer the consequences every
time right now. You've got to do it. But that's
a real poor motive for obedience, isn't it, David? You want to
have a happy home? You want those kids to be raised
with some measure of responsibility and respect? Somehow, make them to know how devoted
you are to them, how you love them, so that they
are compelled just by virtue of your love for them, to want
to honor you, and want to please you. Now, the law is given for
the unrighteous. The law is given to hold the
ungodly in check for adulterers, and home-mongers, and murderers,
and thieves, and so on. Because if they didn't have any
fear, the world would be under chaos. But that's no way for
a child to live. The love of Christ constrains
us. Constrains us, how's that? Because this is what we judge.
That if one died for all, then we're all dead. Now let me tell
you what that means. If Christ died for all his people,
If Christ died as our substitute under the penalty of God's holy
law, having fulfilled all righteousness, but made to be sin for us, if
Christ died under the terror of the Lord, if Christ died under
the terror of divine judgment, when he died, we died. And that's exactly what the pastor
says. If one died for all, then all for whom he died died when
he died. Verse 15. Well, why did he die
for us? He loved me and gave himself
for me. He died to redeem me. Died to keep me out of hell.
Yes, but a whole lot more than that. And that he died for all. Not everybody in the world. That
would be nonsense to suggest such a thing. He died for all
for whom he died. died for all who are saved by
his grace, died for all who believe God, died for all God's elect,
and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto him that died for them
and rose again. Brother Lindsey has been doing
such a great job dealing with God's grace, Christ's redemptive
work in the Bible studies. He died for Lindsey Campbell
so that Lindsey Campbell would no longer live for Lindsey Campbell. He died for Don Fortner because
he loved me. So that Don Fortner would no
longer live for Don Fortner, but unto him that died for them
and rose again. Now watch verse 16. Wherefore,
since Christ died for us and we died in him, and he died for
us, making us to live now unto him. Wherefore, henceforth know
we no man after the flesh. What on earth does that mean?
No man after the flesh? I got to know you after the flesh.
Bob Duff called me, came in here, introduced himself to me, brought
his wife Mary, introduced her to me, got to know you talking
to you just like you'd know anybody else. But we don't know you after
the flesh. What's he talking about? No,
no man after the flesh. Our relationships and our esteem
and our love and our attachment is no longer determined by flesh. You remember what the disciples
heard our Lord say when they said, Master, your mother is
looking for you? And the Lord Jesus pointed to
his disciples and said, Behold, my mother and my father and my
brothers and my sisters. This is my family. This is my family. And I esteem you, my brothers
and sisters, not according to your flesh, not according to
your abilities. I look at natural things and
admire natural gifts and talents, but my esteem for you, my love
for you, has got nothing to do with anything you are after the
flesh. Nothing. My relationship with
you got nothing to do with anything you are after the flesh, be it
good or bad. Oh no. My relationship's got
nothing to do with blood kin. Not with God's family. Not with
God's family. I hold you with both arms as tightly as
I can hold you. Because you're Christ. And we're
one in Him. Read on. Yea, though we've known
Christ after the flesh, I used to know Him just like
I met Bob Duff and got to know Him. After the flesh. I used to know Him by the report
men gave of Him. I used to know him as a historic
figure who once lived and died in the world. I used to know
him as a doctrinal figure. I used to know him after the
flesh. I knew him by that which could
be apprehended by the flesh and that which could be communicated
by the flesh. But no more! There came a day,
bless God, when the glory of God was made to shine in my heart
in the face of Jesus Christ the Lord to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God. And now I know Him by divine
revelation. I know Him. I know Him. You see, you can't be talked
into a profession of faith. You can't be conned into a profession
of faith. You can't be talked into faith. You can't be conned into faith.
You can be talked into and conned into profession. But faith? Faith is the revelation of Christ
in you. The revelation of Christ in you. So that God Almighty comes to
a sinner and He is pleased to reveal His Son in us by His grace. Now let me give you another appeal. I call on you to come to God,
to believe on Christ, because of the blessedness of God's salvation. Verse 17, I can't imagine language more
beautifully, powerful, and more perfectly calculated to persuade
you to be reconciled to God than this. Since Christ loved and redeemed
his people by the sacrifice of himself, if any man be in Christ,
by God's election by the Holy Spirit's effectual call, by faith
in Christ. If right now, if right now, you
believe on the Son of God, if right now you plunge into that
fountain drawn from Emmanuel's blood, or drawn from Emmanuel's
veins, if right now you're washed in his precious blood, he's a new creature, he's a new
creature.