Chapter 1, if you would. The book of Galatians, chapter
1. I just want to read down through
verse 9. Chapter 1 of Galatians, verses
1 through verse 9. Paul, that apostle, Not of men,
neither by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who
raised Him from the dead. And all the brethren which are
with me unto the churches of Galatia, grace be unto you and
peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who
gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this
present evil world according to the will of God and our Father.
to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. I marvel that you
are so soon removed from him that called you unto the grace
of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there
be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel
unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be
accursed. As I said before, so say I now
again. If any man preach any other gospel
unto you than that which you have received, let him be accursed. My text this morning is found
in verse 4. And if you look at this text
closely, you will see three points that I want to emphasize to you
this morning. The first is Jesus Christ our
Lord gave Himself for our sins. And the second one is to deliver
us from this present evil world. And the third thing I want to
look at is according to the will of God. That's the three things
we want to look at from this verse this morning. The Lord
Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins. Now, brothers and sisters,
that is the most wonderful message that I could ever declare unto
you. And it's a wonderful grace for
you to be here this morning and hear this message. And it's a
greater grace if you hear this message this morning and believe
it. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself
for our sins. Wednesday, we looked just for
a minute about that mighty angel, Michael. You remember him? That
warlike angel? that was called one of the princes
of the angel and archangel? Can you imagine our feelings
towards such a mighty being if he had come down from heaven
and taken our humanity and died for our sins? Why, we'd love
him to death, wouldn't we? We'd be amazed that such a mighty
creature would come down from heaven and die for our sins.
But brothers and sisters, the message that our text declares
unto us, that one has died for our sins, but he's not a creature. He's not a mighty angel. He is
the Lord Jesus Christ. He himself is the Creator. If he'd have been a creature,
we'd have gloried and loved him for it. But it's the Lord Jesus
Christ incarnate The Eternal Son of God incarnate. How much worth is in this death? How much merit must be in His
giving Himself upon the cross for our sins? The Lord Jesus
Christ, the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father, gave Himself
for our sins. I love to just repeat that. I
love to just look at it. When Paul wrote this, he described
who gave Himself for our sins, and he describes who He is, identifies
Him, by the names that He gives Him. He says the Lord gave Himself
for our sins. This word Lord means the sovereign,
independent, self-existent, eternal Lord. He has no beginning of
days and no ending of days. He is Deity. And then He describes
Him in His humanity, Jesus. That's His human name. In Matthew
chapter 1 and verse 20, when the angel spake to Joseph and
said, Joseph, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for
that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth her
firstborn son. It is her son. And thou shalt
call his name Jesus. That is his human name. So here
we have these two descriptions of our Savior. One, He is the
eternal Lord. Self-existent Lord. The Creator
of all things. And now He is in our humanity. Jesus. Jesus. And then Paul describes Him like
this, He's the Christ. That Christ there means the anointed
of God. He's the servant of God, spoken
of throughout all the Old Testament scriptures, and He came to do
the will of God and to magnify the law of God and satisfy the
justice of God. The Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself
for our sins. unchangeable, eternal deity,
now in our fallen humanity, sin accepted, coming into this world. And what was He to do? The will
of God. And what was the will of God?
For Him to give Himself for our sins. If you and I had been with
those shepherds that night watching the sheep, And we would have
heard the announcement of that heavenly host that unto you is
born the Savior. And we would have went off with
them unto the little town of Bethlehem and found the little
cave or stable. And we saw this baby laying in
the manger with his mother Mary. We would have saw a real human
child with a real human soul. Breathing and moving and His
beautiful bright eyes shining. But there is something we would
not have seen and they did not see because it is unseeable.
And what is that? That is the Deity of Jesus Christ. That is what He was before He
came to this world and what He never ceased to be when He came
to this world. The Lord of Glory. The Lord told Moses, You cannot
look upon Me and live. No man can see the deity of Jesus
Christ. He had it concealed. He had it
revealed behind His flesh. Sometimes you could see reflections
of it coming out. Sometimes you could see light
shining through the flesh and you'd say, That's not a mere
man. But you could not see the deity itself, just mere reflections
of it. I love that song that Charles
Wesley wrote, Veiled in human flesh I see, God the Eternal
Deity, Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel. But you can't see the Deity,
can you? You can't see the glorious Deity
that was behind His humanity. Listen to Philippians chapter
2. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. What kind of mind did He have?
He had a lowly mind, didn't He? He had a meek spirit. He had
a humble heart about Him. Who being in the form of God,
the Lord Jesus Christ was in the form of God before He ever
came to this world. He was the exact expressed image
of God, Hebrews 1 tells us. And therefore, he thought it
robbery, he thought it not robbery, to be equal with God, for he
was equal with God. And yet, he did not insist, or
demand, or enjoy all the perks of being God, even though he
was God and equal with God, but listen to this, he made himself
of no reputation. God in our humanity making himself
of no reputation, not insisting, not demanding that he be treated
as God in this world, but right to the opposite, humbling himself
and being hungry and thirsty and weary, he did not insist
on the perks that come with being God, if you will. But he took
to himself the form of a servant. The unseeable God became the
seeable God in the person of man. So he could suffer and die
and redeem. And because He has done that
and humbled Himself as a servant unto death, even the death of
the cross, God is highly exalted in it. Who is the Lord Jesus
Christ? Brothers and sisters, He is the
Eternal Son of the Everlasting Father, and He is hanging on
a cross. And why? He gave Himself for our sins. Ain't that amazing? That's the best good news that
I've ever heard in all my life. Old Scott Richardson used to
say, since I heard this good news, I've not heard any bad
news. There is no bad news if you hear this good news. All
our lives are sins against God. All our lives are sins against
God. have been a source of burden
and grief and guilt to us, have they not? Nobody here this morning
could deny that they're sinners against God. We can't even remember
when we began to sin, can we? I've sinned all my childhood,
all through my teenage years, all my adult years. And if the
truth is known about it, I need to confess sin this morning.
Man at his best state is altogether vanity. There's enough sin in
my preaching to damn me. And you've got some that just
cannot bring themselves to admit that they're yet sinners and
they're yet sin. Christ gave himself for our sins,
not for our goodness. Not for our potential, but for
our sins. Somebody said, well, I just don't
agree with that. Well, what does God say about it? What does God
say about our sins? Here's his estimation of us.
There is not a just man upon this earth. Not one just man
that doeth good and sinneth not. That continually does good with
no evil mixed with it. There's not one. All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. If we say we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we say
that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and His Word is not
in us. If His Word is in us, then we
judge ourselves as God judges us. And what does God say about
us? You sinners. You sin by nature. You sin by
deed. The evidence is overwhelming,
isn't it? You and I have sinned. We've been conscious of this.
We've been made conscious of this. And we cannot escape the
reality and burden of it all. David traced his sin all the
way back to his youth. and said, Lord, don't remember
against me the sins of my youth. We understand what David meant
when he said that, don't we? How many sins against God have
we committed that we don't even know about? We're not even conscious
of them. And yet, the Bible says, though
we wished it not, Yet are we guilty. Will we know it or not? We are guilty. But in our text,
we have the true way and the only way of peace with God and
quietness of conscience. Don't you want a conscience that's
quiet, that's restful, that's not screaming at you when you
lay down of a night? You'll pay for this, bud. God
remembers this, bud. He'll get even with you, bud.
Your conscience is screaming. Well, here's something in our
text that will quieten a screaming conscience, that will give you
peace with God and let you see the face of God. And what is
it? The Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself
to atone for our sins, to put away our sins. To satisfy law
and justice for our sins. And brothers and sisters, that's
why I begin this message by saying, this is the best message. This
is the only message worthy to be declared to a fallen generation. My sins are great. And your sins
are great. But I tell you something that's
greater than mine and yours put together. And that's the merits
of Jesus. I'll tell you something that
will clothe our naked souls, and that's the righteousness
of Jesus. I'll tell you something that will give us peace with
God, and that's the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ our
Lord. The fountain of Emmanuel's blood
has been opened, and it's been opened on purpose. And what was
God's purpose in opening that fountain of blood? To atone for
our sins. Isn't that good news? When the
devil, Luther, says, come to you, and he tells you, you're
the worst sinner in this world, you're still sinning against
God. You're worthy of hell fire. Agree with him. Tell him that's
true, and you don't know the height of it. And yet I have
a surety. Jesus Christ stood a surety for
me to deliver me from my sins by His dying upon the cross. Who is he that condemneth? It's
Christ that dieth. Paul emphasizes that. Secondly,
he makes this statement in order to deliver us from this present
evil world. The present evil world. If you
and I had the ability to go back to the beginning where Adam and
Eve fell, and we had the ability to live in that generation, and
every generation following, and get so acquainted with it to
see what it was all about, you know the conclusion we'd come
up with. This is an evil generation. And we'd go to the next generation.
What about this generation? It's an evil generation. They had all gone aside. Every
one had turned to his own way. There was none righteous. No,
not a single one. You mean from the fall of Adam
till now? From the fall of Adam till now. This is a present evil
world. There is not one thing good God
can say about it. God has to be honest because
He is an honest God. And here is His estimation of
the world. And every generation, it's evil. It's evil. Boy, you take a lot
of words. You can describe what sin is
in a lot of words. But there's one word that people
just don't like. You can call them a sinner, and
they'll say, I agree with that. But you call them evil. You're
evil. Your heart's evil. Your motives
are evil. Your ways are evil. Boy, they
don't like that, do they? That offends them. But that's
the description of God with this world. Turn over here with me.
Put a little marker there if you want to. And turn over to
the book of Philippians, just over to your right in chapter
2. Look here what the Apostle Paul said about this world. Look in chapter 2 of Philippians
and look in verse 14 and 15. Philippians chapter 2. Do all
things without murmuring and disputing, that you may be blameless
and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst
of a crooked and perverse nation among whom you shine as a light
in the world. These two words Paul used to
describe the nation. And you could apply it to the
world of every generation. This word crooked, a crooked
nation, it means dishonest, a corrupt behavior, bent, twisted out of
shape, illegal, unlawful, criminal, dubious. This present evil world
is crooked. and cannot in and of itself straighten
itself out. It's crooked. And he uses this
word perverse, this word perverse showing a deliberate and obstinate
desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable and is unacceptable,
often in spite of the consequences. Now that's the way he describes
this world. Unreasonable. I was listening to a debate this
last week by two pastors. One was a gay pastor, a homosexual
pastor, and one was a straight pastor. And they were debating
on this issue, is homosexuality a sin? And the gay pastor said,
God does not approve, and I quote, God does not approve of a violent
sexual relationship. He was dealing with Sodom and
Gomorrah. And he said the problem with Sodom and Gomorrah was not
homosexuality, it was violence. And he said God does not disapprove
of a loving homosexual relationship. In other words, if it's based
on love, God does not disapprove. The straight pastor asked him
this question. Can you show me that in the scriptures? He said, well, it's the overall
view of the Word of God. He said, I'm not asking for your
overall view. I'm asking for one verse. One
verse that God approves of your homosexual relationship. And
the gay pastor said, and I quote, no, I cannot, because the Bible
was written by straight, heterosexual men, like Paul, who either, one,
did not understand what a loving homosexual relationship was,
or two, he was just prejudiced against them. He was a homophobe. And he made this statement. He
said it was men like that who wrote the Bible, and the gay
community never had opportunity to respond. Listen to this, brothers and
sisters. The Bible is not man's opinions. The Bible is not man's
carnal reasoning or personal convictions, not even Paul. But it's the truth straight from
the mouth of God himself. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God. It's God-breathed, and it's profitable
for doctrine, for reproof. You're wrong. Who said I'm wrong? God said
you were wrong. For correction, for instruction in righteousness. And listen to this in 2 Peter
1 and verse 20. Knowing this first. There's one
thing that we need to know first before we try to figure out anything
else. Knowing this first. That no prophecy of the scripture
is of any private interpretation. It's not man's opinion. It's
not man's personal conviction. For it came not in old time by
the will of men, but holy men of God spake, as they were moved
by the Holy Spirit." Homosexuals did not need someone to represent
them and speak on their behalf. The Holy Ghost has already spoken. And what does He say? God gave
them up to vile affections. Even their women did change the
natural use into that which is against nature. Men, likewise also the men, leaving
the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one to another,
men with men working that which is shameful, unseemly, and receiving
in themselves that recompense, that penalty, which was due them."
We don't need homosexuals to give their opinion. God has already
gave His opinion, not only of homosexuality, but all unrighteousness. Here is what He says, "...know
ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers,
nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor
thieves, nor covetous, nor liars, nor drunks, nor revilers, nor
extortioners. And such were some of you. But
you were washed. You were justified. Brothers
and sisters, what I'm saying is, this is a crooked and perverse
nation. This present evil world is evil. And it cannot deliver itself.
It has no means to deliver itself. Every generation, God sends His
Word. I know that for my generation
because I preach to my generation. And every generation before us,
God sends His Word by His servant. and tells this world that it's
evil. And it tells this world of the
consequences of dying without hearing and believing the gospel.
And what's the world's reply? A deliberate, obstinate desire
to behave in a way that's unreasonable and that's unacceptable in spite
of the consequences. We preach, the churches preach
to this world now for 2,000 years the gospel. Noah preached the
gospel. And everybody was flocking to
hear him and flocking to hear the gospel. Oh, that's what I
need. No, the world is unreasonable,
isn't it? And what's wrong with this world?
It's evil. The present evil world. And brothers
and sisters, it's so evil that we have to be delivered from
it. Nothing but the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ will
deliver us from this present evil world. We don't need to
make decisions. We don't need to accept Jesus. We need a sacrifice. We need
a new birth. We need faith in the living Son
of God. And nothing short of that will
deliver us from this present evil world. And thirdly, all of this was
done and will be done according to the will of God. Here we have
our three points. First of all, the Lord Jesus
Christ giving Himself for our sins in order to deliver us from
this present evil world and all of this according to the will
of God. We often want God's will, don't
we? We pray, Father, your will be
done. We seek to know his will. There's only one way I know for
sure that we can know God's will. That's finding it in God's Word.
And here he says it was God's will to send his son to die a
sacrifice to deliver us from this present evil world. That
was his will. Paul had gone among these Galatians. They were lost, they were in
heathenism, and he preached the gospel of the grace of Jesus
Christ. I read that to you. And they
received that gospel. They believed it. And Satan now
had bewitched them and came to their mind and he whispered this.
Yes, you have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, but that's
not enough. Because Christ Himself is not
enough. You must add something to him. You must do your part. You've
got a part you've got to do, you see. I don't know how many
people have told me this. My poor dad told me this not
long before he died. He said, son, you've got a part
to do. I said, dad, you mean for God
to accept me and forgive me and justify me and receive me? I've
got a part to do? He said, absolutely, you've got
a part to do. That's what Satan whispered to these believers
at Galatia. And he said, use your part. You
must be circumcised. And you must keep the law of
Moses. You must keep these feast days holy. You must observe all
of those. Eat what the ceremony tells you
to eat and abstain from things it tells you to abstain from. And Paul said they perverted
the gospel of Jesus Christ. And right at the beginning of
this letter, he tells them what God's will is. And what is it? He mentions this one thing. The
Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself to deliver us from this present
evil world. And that's God's will. And He
stopped right there, didn't He? He didn't add anything to that.
What is God's will to save a person? Just what Christ has done. And
now we look out of ourselves. We look away from our doing.
Away from our works. And we look to the Lord Jesus
Christ, died for our sins. And brothers and sisters, when
we live our lives in the faith of that, I tell you, our hearts
are filled with love for Him. Filled with appreciation for
Him. And if we try to add anything
to them and think it's God's will, then we become guilty. We become doubtful. We become
fearful. Here's the thing. Is it God's
will to save me by the Lord Jesus Christ? Absolutely. Don't look
for anything else. Quit looking for anything else
to make you more accepted. Nothing else could atone for
sin. I tell you the thing that we as Christians look to probably
more than anything else. I've got to have a right frame
of mind. If I can't have this feeling,
I just can't believe. Does feelings atone for sin?
Well, I feel like I've got to cry some. Does tears atone for
sin? Could my tears forever flow?
Could my zeal no longer know? These for sin cannot atone. I've
talked to people and they say, well, I just don't feel like
I'm sorry enough for my sins. Oh, just feeling sorry atoned
for your sins? We put all our trust in these
frames of mind, don't we? And we set them up as a Savior.
We've got to put those things down. and look outside of ourselves
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And not only look to Him initially,
but just keep looking to Him. Live upon Him. Feed upon Him. He's nourishment for your soul.
Look unto Him and just keep looking to Him. And here's what will
happen. You'll live your life. You'll
be joyful. You'll be confident. You'll have
assurance. Your prayer life will change
because you'll quit looking in yourself and you'll look to Jesus
and your heart will be filled with love for the Lord Jesus
Christ. And you'll never do anything
willingly and deliberately to bring shame on His name because
He's died for you to deliver you from this present evil world. Come and let's sing page 61,
if you would, Wanda. Turn your hymnals to page 61.
I think we sang this to the tune of 17. All the deep, deep love
of Jesus. Page 61.