I did choose thee, Lord, for,
Lord, that Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Neidert. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
9.45 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m. Nursery is provided for all services.
For more information, visit our website at toddsroadgracechurch.com. Now here's our pastor, Todd Nibert. I'm reading from Romans chapter
16 when Paul is giving his doxology to this great book of Romans,
beginning in verse 25 of Romans chapter 16. Now to him that is
of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching
of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery,
which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made
manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to
the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations
for the obedience of faith, to God only wise be glory through
Jesus Christ forever and ever. Amen. Now there could be a message
brought from each one of those phrases, and this morning I want
to bring a message from one of those phrases where Paul speaks
of the preaching of Jesus Christ. The preaching of Jesus Christ. Do you know that to be enabled
by the Spirit of God to hear with hearing ears and a receptive
heart, the preaching of Jesus Christ is the greatest blessing
you can have if God enables you to hear the preaching of Jesus
Christ. This is what God uses to save
and to establish his people. the preaching of Jesus Christ. Now, I realize that preaching
has almost been relegated to the scrap heap in our day. We
have plays and skits and entertainment and music, and that's the big
emphasis in most religious gatherings. But it still is true that it
pleads God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. Somebody declaring God's word. In Acts chapter 5, verse 42,
it was said of the apostles that they cease not to teach and to
preach Jesus Christ. Now the fact that they ceased
not to teach and preach Jesus Christ tells us that's all they
did. They didn't have another message. They didn't have another
agenda. They had the same message to teach and to preach Jesus
Christ. We read in Acts chapter 8 when
Philip was sent to the Ethiopian eunuch and the Ethiopian eunuch
asked him about the passage of Scripture he was reading in out
of Isaiah 53, and we read where Philip at that same Scripture
opened his mouth and preached unto him, Jesus. That was his message. He opened
his mouth There was a particular content to what he was saying. Words came from his mouth. And
it's interesting, it's pointed out that he began at that same
scripture. You see, the scripture is the
authority, not the man speaking. But the scripture, what saith
the scripture, is the only issue. This book is God's revelation
of himself. It's divinely inspired. That's
what it claims for itself. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God. That's what the Bible says about
itself. Somebody says, well, how can you expect me to believe
that? Well, I don't expect you to, but I know it's so. And if
God can create the universe, he can reveal himself through
a book and keep it pure and preserve it. It's the work of God, no
doubt. The Bible's like no other book. You can read any other
book and you can get tired and bored with it after you've read
it so many times, but the Bible's not like that, if you have hearing
ears. Now, he began at that scripture and preached unto him Jesus. Now that's the message of scripture.
In John chapter 5 verse 39, the Lord said to the Pharisees, you
search the scriptures and in them you think you have eternal
life. You think if I keep this rule and if I do this and if
I stop doing that and if I can do what this chapter says and
keep from doing what that chapter says not to do, I'll have eternal
life. And the Lord says, they are they,
the scriptures, which testify of me. All of them. The teaching
and preaching of Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus. That is the message
of Scripture. Now, if I'm going to preach Him,
I'm going to preach His preexistence. He was before He came. He's the
eternal God. He said, I am that I am. To preach Jesus is to preach
Him as the surety of God's elect. Before time began, He took full
responsibility for my salvation. All of the weight and burden
of my salvation was placed upon Him. And He took responsibility
for it all. That's why He became flesh. He
became incarnate. He became flesh. He became a
man because He's going to save all of His people. They're men.
He became flesh so that He might save them. We preach His perfect
life, His righteousness. He never sinned, and His perfect
life is the believer's personal righteousness before God. God
took my sin and made it His sin, and He took His righteousness
and made it my righteousness. Now, God can do that. I couldn't
do that. You couldn't do that, but God can. With God, nothing
shall be impossible. And all of the sins of all of
God's elect were charged to Christ. They became His. His perfect
righteousness becomes theirs as the sinner's substitute, and
we preach His life as the perfect righteousness before God. It's
the personal righteousness of every believer. We preach His
death as the sin payment. sins that are ever before me,
he took them all in his own body on the tree and he put them away.
That's why he died. The wages of sin is death and
he demonstrated that. When my sin became his sin, God
smote him and his death is the sin payment. His resurrection,
oh, when we preach Jesus Christ, we preach his resurrection. He
was raised from the dead for our justification. You see, he
justified everybody he died for. We preach His ascension back
to the Father to be the Great High Priest and representative
of His people. Wherefore He's able to save them
to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth
to make intercession for them. He's going to return as a mighty
reigning King. And don't miss the preaching. of Jesus Christ. Now let me give
you some scriptures. Now when I'm talking about the
importance of the preaching of Jesus Christ, I'm not talking
about the importance of the preacher. I despise the clergy lady like
preachers think they're in some kind of cut above what they call
the lay people. The Bible doesn't know anything
like that. I know as I'm preaching to you I'm the chief of sinners.
That's how I feel about myself. And every true preacher feels
that way about himself. This is not trying to exalt and
glorify the preacher, but it is glorifying the preaching of
the gospel because God does it. Please God by the foolishness
of preaching. to save them that believe. You
mean God will take a fool like you to speak to a fool like me?
That's exactly what I mean. That's what God uses. It's humbling.
It's humbling. We can't figure this out. How
shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent? Titus 1.3 says God has manifested
his word through preaching. Now it is through the preaching
of the gospel that God reveals His Word. It's through the preaching
of the gospel that God reveals Himself. So what is the preaching
of Jesus Christ? That's what Paul gave in his
doxology, the preaching of Jesus Christ. What is the preaching
of Jesus Christ? Well, we're preaching His name. Jesus means Savior. Matthew 121, Thou shalt call
his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. And he earned the title by what
he did. He came to save his people and
no one else. He said, I pray for them. I pray
not for the world, but for them which you've given me. He saved
them. He came to save them, and He
saved them, the Redeemer redeemed. He's the Savior, Jesus the Savior,
the successful Savior. All He died for must be saved.
His death wasn't some kind of offer to you. He was actually
saving by what He did. The Savior, Christ, that's His
offices, the Christ, the Messiah, God's anointed prophet. He's
the Word of God. God's anointed priest. If he
represents you, you must be saved. God's anointed king, ruling and
reigning and in absolute control of all things. Now I repeat,
what does the preaching of Jesus Christ mean? And the reason I
say that is because it's possible to preach about Christ and never
preach Jesus Christ. What is the preaching of Jesus
Christ? Paul said, I've determined not
to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.
If he's not all that's preached, he's not preached at all. Let
me repeat that. You can think about that. If
he is not all that is preached, he's not preached at all. Now,
first of all, in the preaching of Jesus Christ, there is a declaration
in no uncertain terms of the deity of Christ. Jesus Christ
is God Almighty. Jesus Christ. I want to repeat
that. I like the way it sounds, and I know it's true. Jesus Christ
is God Almighty. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. He said before Abraham was. I
am. He's the same one who spoke to
Moses from the bush that burned but could not be consumed. I am that I am. That's who Jesus
Christ is. He is the eternal God. Philip said, Show us the Father,
and it sufficeth us. He said, If I've been so long
time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip, he that
hath seen me has seen the Father." Those are the words of Jesus
Christ. Now to say Jesus Christ is God is to say that He's the
Creator. All things were made by Him and
for Him. And He is before all things,
and by Him all things consist. He created the universe. To say that Jesus Christ is God
is to say that He is sovereign in all things. That means He
is the cause of everything, and He has complete sovereign control
over all of the free and uncoerced actions of men. He's in control. What's going on in your mind
right now? You're thinking freely. You're thinking what you want
to think. You're doing what you want to do. But He's in control of
all that because He is God. The only option is atheism, and
that's no option. Jesus Christ is the absolute
sovereign of the universe. He's the first cause of Everything. Nothing happens without Him.
What about all the natural disasters? What about the problem of evil?
You can call it a problem of evil if you want, but God's God.
He reigns. He's in control. Whatever He
does is right, just, holy, and true. I don't claim to understand
everything that's going on, but I know this. He's God, and He's
in control of it. That's who Jesus Christ is. He's
the sovereign God. To say that Jesus Christ is God
is to say it's impossible for Him to be in any way associated
with failure. It's impossible to think that
he could die for someone and pay for their sins, and that
person ended up being damned anyway. It's impossible to believe
that kind of foolishness, and that's what it is. He said, this
is the will of him that sent me, that of all which he hath
given me, I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the
last day. I love what Isaiah chapter nine,
verse six says, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. and the government shall be upon
his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor."
And that's a verb. That's not a name. That's not
a noun. That's not a title. It's like
he's the counselor. He's the one who counsels. He
said, my counsel shall stand. and I will do all my pleasure. Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty
God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Now, to
preach Jesus Christ is to preach in no uncertain terms. You say
it so everybody can hear exactly what you're saying. Jesus Christ
is God Almighty, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Now,
the preaching of Jesus Christ is preaching his true humanity. Jesus Christ is a real man, bone
of our bones and flesh of our flesh. Now there was a time before
his incarnation when he didn't have a body. that he was the
second person of the Trinity and man was made in the image
of God, that means man was made in the image of Jesus Christ,
but he still did not have a body, a physical body of flesh and
blood until he became incarnate and was born of the virgin. He wasn't, the reason we insist
on it, the Bible insists on it, the Bible says he was born of
a virgin. And he didn't inherit Adam's
sinful nature. That's the importance of that.
He's truly the seed of woman, but he had to become flesh in
order to save his people. Remember, he shall save his people
from their sins. For him to do that, he had to
become flesh. He had to become a real, man. The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us and we beheld His glory, His glory as the only begotten
of the Father, full of grace and truth. He became flesh because
He was going to save His people from their sins. Now as a man
He lived, as a man He died. You see He was made sin. That's
why he died. He lived a perfect life. Somebody
had to keep the law. He did. He was made sin. Sin has to be paid for. Now,
this is a difficult thing to think about, but there really
is a place called hell. And hell is eternal because man
can never satisfy God's justice. That's why it lasts forever.
It's never a sufficient payment. That's how infinitely evil sin
is. Now, man cannot satisfy God. The only one who can satisfy
God is God. Man can't satisfy it. God can,
but God can't die. But here's the gospel, that God-man
did both. He died, and He satisfied God,
and that was proved in His resurrection when God raised Him from the
dead. Christ Jesus is God, and Christ Jesus is fully man. Just as much fully man as if
He were not God at all, and just as much fully God as if He were
not man at all. Now, do I understand this? No.
Do I believe it with all my heart? The preaching of Jesus Christ
is the preaching of Him as God and the preaching of Him as man. He had to do something as a man
for somebody like me or you to be saved. Now thirdly, the preaching
of Jesus Christ is the preaching of the solitariness of His redemptive
work. Now somebody says, what do you
mean by that, the solitariness? of his redemptive work. Well,
have you ever heard of the game solitaire? When you play in solitaire,
that means you're the only one playing. It means you're the
only one doing anything. No one else enters the picture. You're the one. Now, in this
work of redemption, Christ Jesus did everything with no help from
any man. He trod the winepress alone. Now, Work's religion, that's
all you can call it, is Work's religion. There's a lot of it.
Work's religion presents his work as incomplete and unfinished. He died for you, but you have
to do something to make what he did work for you. You have
to accept him as your personal Savior, as if he's up for running
for office, up for your acceptance or rejection. That's foolishness.
The issue is not will you accept him. The issue is will he accept
you. That's the only issue. We're talking about the King
of Kings now. But religion says you need to accept Him as your
personal Savior. You need to repent of all your
sins and get your life straightened out. You need to, as an act of
your free will, receive Him, and as an act of your free will,
believe on Him, and you've got to complete His work. He can
die for you. He can pay for your sins, but
you might end up in hell anyway if you don't activate what He
did. It can take another form. You can say, well, true, we're
saved by grace, but we're going to earn higher rewards in heaven.
We're going to tack our works onto His righteousness, and somehow
that's going to make our standing better. Or you can believe that
through your works, you make yourself more holy and more pleasing
to God and less sinful. It works. It works. It's a denial. It's rubbish. It works, and it's
a denial of this scripture. Hebrews 1-3, when he had by himself. I love that. When he had by himself
purged our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty
on Now why did he sit down? Salvation was completed. What were his last words from
the cross? It is finished. He completely saved everyone
he intended to save. It is finished. I can't express to you what good
news this is to me because I don't have anything that God could
accept. Nothing that could come from
me could be acceptable to a holy God. Now if you're in some way
hoping in your works, you won't like this message. You'll disagree
with it. You'll say it leads to sin. You'll
say it promotes licentiousness, to say that we are saved totally
by what somebody else did, and our works don't have anything
to do with it. I've heard those objections all my life, and they're
not valid. They're not true. It never leaves
a believer to sin. But here is the only hope I have,
that Christ died for me. And if you tell me that Christ
could die for me and I'll wind up in hell anyway, I know where
I'll be, in hell. My only hope is that Christ completely
put away my sin and made me perfect before God. That's what is meant
by the solitariness of His redemptive work. What if it said, Who shall
lay anything to the charge of God's elect? I accepted Him as
my personal Savior. No, it doesn't say that at all,
does it? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justified Him.
A complete work. Who is He that condemneth? He
says in the next verse. Who is He that condemneth? Why,
I believed and received Him, and I believed when somebody
else did. It doesn't say anything that foolish, does it? Who is
he that condemneth? It's Christ that died, yea, rather,
that's risen again, who's even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us. Now, the solitariness of
the redemptive work of Christ is simply this. He did it all. Jesus paid it all. Not Jesus
paid a half and the other half I owe. Jesus paid it all, all
the debt I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. The
preaching of Jesus Christ is the preaching of Him as the only
mediator between God and men. There's one God, Paul said, and
one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. He's the only Mediator. Not Mary,
not someone who claims to be a priest, not some preacher. There's one Mediator, one go-between
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, As man, he reaches
the bottom and brings us to God. As God, he comes down and brings
us, men, to him. The God-Man, Christ Jesus, the
Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings. Now, I love to think of
the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When we preach Him, we preach
Him as Lord. No man can say that Jesus is
Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. You know what that means? He's
Lord. That means he's in control. He's lord of science. He's lord
of physics. He's lord of the weather. He's
lord of the devil. God's devil. He's lord of demons.
He's lord of unbelievers. He's lord of presidents. He's
lord of paupers. He's lord. He controls everything. Most especially, he is lord of
believers. He's the Lord of creation. He's
the Lord of providence. Everything that happens, He's
in control of. And most especially, He's the
Lord of salvation. And listen to this. This is my
final point. The preaching of Jesus Christ is not an offer. The preaching of Jesus Christ
is not an offer. God's not making an offer. All men everywhere are commanded
to repent. God's not offering his son. God offered his son to himself,
and Christ offered himself to God, but God is not offering
salvation. Christ Jesus accomplished salvation,
and you and I are called upon to believe the gospel. You say,
well, how can you do that? Well, if God commands you to,
you can. Can I and myself? No, I know
you won't unless God enables you to, but you are commanded
to repent of all your wrong notions of God and all your wrong notions
of yourself. Now, you can just write this
down, and I say this about me, too. The things we believe naturally,
you can just write it down, they're wrong. They're wrong. Wrong thoughts
about ourself, wrong thoughts about God. repent of your foolish
notions of God and salvation by works, and believe the gospel. You don't need to figure out
if you're one of the elect. You don't need to figure out
if Christ died for you. You don't need to figure out if you've
been born again. You're commanded to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. He said, come unto me, all ye
that labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. That's
a command. If you're weary with your sin,
heavy laden and burdened with your sin, He commands you, come
to me for rest. And your right to come comes
with a command. When Paul said to the jailer,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, that's
a command. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Now let me give you the difference
between a command and an invitation or an offer. If you invite me
to come to your house to dinner tomorrow night at six o'clock,
I may have other plans and can't make it, and it won't be a crime
for me to not accept your invitation. But if you say to me, you're
to be at my house at six o'clock for dinner, or you will be shot
to death I'll be there. I'll be there. The gospel is
a command like that. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be
damned. Now, I want to believe the truth
because it's true. Also, I don't want to go to hell.
I want to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that is the
preaching of Jesus Christ. This is Todd and I were praying
that God would be pleased to make Himself known to you through
the preaching of Jesus Christ. To request a copy of the sermon
you have just heard, send your request to messages at todsroadgracechurch.com
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