In John's first epistle, chapter
5, verse 20, he said this, And we know that the Son of God is
come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is
true, and we're in Him that is true, even in His Son, Jesus
Christ. Now this is the true God And
this is eternal life. I'm speaking to you today on
the subject, the truth of the gospel. I want you to hear me. Will you listen very carefully
as I try to present some things that I believe need to be said
in this day. Now the Lord God, here's the
first thing, the Lord God can send us no greater blessing He
can send you no greater blessing, or your community, or your city,
than to send you a true preacher of the gospel of His grace and
His glory. There's no greater blessing that
God can confer upon a people. To be able to hear the Word of
God declared, preached from the pulpit by a man who knows God,
and you can't tell what you don't know. But to hear a man preach,
to be able to hear a man preach who knows God, who is true to
the Word of God, who in every message exalts the Lord Jesus
Christ and preaches for the glory of God and the spiritual good
of His heroes, that's indeed one of God's greatest blessings. And you know why? Well, I'll
give you several reasons. First of all, me and a Savior
through the preaching of the Word of God. Paul said in 1 Corinthians
1, 21, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save
them that believe. And Paul said again, I'm not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it is the power of God unto salvation. Men are saved through the preaching
of the Word of God. He says over in the book of James,
of his own will beget he us with the Word of truth. And Peter
said, we are born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible
seed by the Word of God. So the greatest blessing that
God can give to you or to me is to send us a man preaching
the gospel, because it's by the preaching of the gospel that
people are saved. And then secondly, true faith.
Faith, without faith it's impossible to please God. He that cometh
to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of
them that diligently seek him. And this faith comes through
hearing the Word of God. That's what Paul said in Romans
10, 17. So then, faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the Word of God. What a blessing to be able to
hear it, to hear the Word of God. Whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved, but how shall they call
on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they
believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent? So you see what a blessing it
is, what a treasure it is to be able to go and hear somebody
preach the Word of God, the true Word of God. For men are saved
by hearing the Word of God, faith comes through hearing the Word
of God, and spiritual growth, spiritual maturity comes by hearing
the Word of God. In 1 Peter 2, verse 2, the Apostle
said, As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word,
desire the milk of the Word that you may grow. that you may grow
in faith, and love, and meekness, and gentleness, and kindness,
and understanding, and humility, and all of these things that
are necessary for the believer. And then in Ephesians 4, 11,
it talks about when our Lord ascended to glory, that He gave
some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some
pastors and teachers. Now you recognize these as being
ministers of the Word of God. Apostles. Our Lord said to the
apostles, go preach the gospel. Go to the whole world and preach
the gospel. The prophets, talking about Christ, said unto him,
give all the prophets witness. The evangelists are evangelizers,
ministers of the gospel, pastors and teachers. Pastors feed the
flock. What do they feed the flock?
The children's bread is the word of God. So he left some apostles,
prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the
maturity of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the
edifying of the body of Christ. So if you're going to grow in
grace and the knowledge of Christ, it will be through hearing the
Word of God preached and taught. And then comfort. Comfort comes
through the preaching of the Word, hearing the Word of God.
Some people down in Thessalonica were concerned about their loved
ones who were dead and had been buried. And Paul said to them,
he said, I wouldn't have you ignorant concerning them which
sleep, that you sorrow not as those who have no hope. For if
we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so those that
sleep will come with him when he comes. Now he said in verse
18, wherefore comfort one another with these words. Comfort one
another with God's promises, precious promises. The words
of men are small comfort, but the word of God is a great comfort
in the most severe trial. So you comfort one another with
the word of God. If you want comfort, it'll have
to be through the word. And then in Isaiah 40, he said,
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. saith the Lord, crowned to her
that her warfare is accomplished, and her sins are pardoned, her
iniquity is forgiven. She hath received of the Lord
double from the hand of God for all her sins. So that's where
our comfort comes from is the Word of God. And then this thing
of assurance. A lot of people have trouble
about assurance, trouble about doubts and fears. Well, assurance
comes through the Word of God. He says in 1 John 5, 13, these
things are written unto you that believe on the name of the Son
of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that
you may believe on the name of the Son of God. That's why the
Word is written to you, that you might believe on Christ,
and that you might have confidence in Christ, assurance. So men
are saved by the preaching of the gospel. That's why the preacher
of the gospel is such a great gift, such a blessed gift from
God. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Comfort and spiritual
growth and assurance. So if you have a faithful pastor
and a faithful minister of the gospel, give thanks to God. Praise God for that man who feeds
the sheep. But if you do not have a faithful
minister of the Word of God, then it would be profitable for
you to do all that you can to get under the ministry of one.
Because if you hear from God, now listen to me, if you hear
from God, you'll hear through His Word and it'll come to you
through the lips of a man. There was a man sent from God
whose name was John. God has given his preachers and
teachers and witnesses and missionaries and evangelists Feed the sheep,
feed the sheep. Now then, if the greatest gift
of God and blessing is to have a faithful, true, Christ-honoring,
Bible-believing, God-glorifying minister of the Word, then wouldn't
you say that the greatest judgment that God could cause to fall
upon a people is to be left in the care of a blind, covetous,
compromising preacher. What a sad, sad position to be
led by those who are blind. For our Lord said, if the blind
lead the blind, they'll both fall in the ditch. And you know,
no prophet cried out against false preachers quite like Jeremiah. And when you read Jeremiah's
words about false preachers and false prophets and teachers,
You'll think that it was written yesterday. I want you to take
your Bible there and open it to the book of Jeremiah. And
listen to Jeremiah describe and condemn false preachers. In Jeremiah chapter 6, find it
there, Jeremiah 6, 13, he says that these false preachers are
covetous and greedy. Covetous and greedy. Listen to
it. From the least of them to the greatest of them, every one
of them is given to covetousness and greed. From the prophet to
the priest, everyone deals falsely. And they deal falsely because
they're covetous men. When the Apostle Paul left the
elders at Ephesus, he made this very definite. He said, I coveted
no man's silver or gold. I have assaulted or begged for
it, or tried to get it in any way. He preached for the glory
of God, and God met his needs. But preachers, false preachers
are covetous, greedy men. And then he says in verse 14,
Jeremiah 6, he says, these false preachers, now listen to me,
they give false assurance to religious people. He said in
verse 14, they cry, peace, peace, when there is no peace. They
preach everyone into heaven. They inform people that they're
saved. You're saved. You do this, you do that, you
do that, you're saved. Shake my hand, you're saved.
Quote the sinner's prayer, you're saved. They inform people that
they're saved. You can't tell a man he's saved.
Only God can save a sinner and only God can give assurance of
salvation or confidence in Christ. But these men, these false prophets
Jeremiah's talking about, he said, they're covetous, greedy
men. And they give people false assurance.
They say, peace, peace, peace, it's all right, you're going
to heaven. When there is no peace. It's a fake peace, it's a fictitious
peace, it's a piece of fantasy, it's not the peace of God. It's
not the peace of God. And then he says in the third
place, in Jeremiah 14, 13, he says, These preachers deny the
wrath of God. They deny the wrath of God. It's
all love and no wrath. It's all love and no judgment.
It's all love and no condemnation. Is that not what we're hearing
today? Jeremiah said in chapter 14,
verse 13, "'O Lord God,' he said, "'Behold, the prophets say to
the people, You shall not see the sower, You shall not have
famine. God is love. There's nothing
to fear. God's too good to send a man
to hell. You have nothing to fear. There'll
be no famine. There'll be no judgment. There'll
be no wrath. There'll be no sword. Oh, Lord
God, he said. They deceived the people. And
then he said these false preachers, listen, they were not sent of
God. In Jeremiah 14, 13, he said,
The Lord God said to me, when he said in verse 13, O Lord God,
these men deny your wrath, and deny judgment, and deny justice.
And God answered and said to me, verse 14, These prophets
prophesy lies in my name. I did not send them, neither
have I commanded them, neither have I even spoken to them. You
always hear men say, God said this to me. God said, I didn't
even speak to them. And that brings me to the fifth
thing. These false preachers preach their dreams and visions. They do not preach the Word of
God. They preach their dreams and visions. The very same thing
that Jeremiah is condemning in his day. There's nothing new
under the sun. It's just a circle. Jeremiah
says they're covetous. He says they give false assurance
and false peace to their false converts. He said they deny the
wrath of God. He says they were not sent of
God. And then he says they preach their dreams and visions. Does
that sound familiar? Listen, Jeremiah 23, 25. I've heard what the false prophets
say, that prophesy lies in my name. They say, I have dreamed. I have dreamed." That's God speaking
there. They speak a vision of their
own imagination. Let them tell their dreams. But
he that hath my word, let him preach my word faithfully. Behold,
listen, I am against them that preach false dreams. Jeremiah
23, 25-30, I am against them that preach false dreams and
cause my people to err by their lies and by their lightness and
their frivolity and their over-familiarity with a holy God. My friends,
if that's not a picture, will you listen to me? Somebody better. The whole thing, the whole religious
world is moving toward a precipice of God Almighty's eternal wrath. And it's a vanity and a lightness
and a so-called dreams and visions and religious fiction. And God
says they're prophesying lies, they're telling their dreams
and visions, and I didn't send them, and I didn't speak to them,
and I haven't given them a message. They don't preach my Word. And here's the sad note, in Jeremiah
5 31, these false prophets preach error, and he said, and the people
love it. Jeremiah 5 31, the false prophets
prophesy falsely, and the people love to have it so. They flock
after them. crowd their auditoriums, clap,
cheer, entertainment. Our Lord said, I am come in my
Father's name, and you receive me not. Let another come in his
own name, and him you will receive. The Master came to this earth,
and this world spit in his face and nailed him to a cross. And
why did they do that? It wasn't because of what he
did. They had no objections to him feeding the poor, no objections
to clothing the naked, healing the sick, or raising the dead.
They said, we're not stoning you because of a good work. They
hated him for what he said. There was a division because
of what he said. And if a preacher can just preach
without saying anything, he can avoid any divisions, just so
he doesn't tell the truth about God. And that's what I'm going
to get on right now. Well, what shall we do? What
shall we do? This is a perfect picture of
our day. Covetous prophets, greedy prophets, prophets and preachers
giving false assurance to religious people, preachers denying the
wrath of God. God loves you, they say, and
I love you, and everybody loves you, and we're just in a sea
of love. And there'll be no sword, there'll be no famine, there'll
be no judgment, there'll be no condemnation. And they're not
sent of God. And they preach their dreams
and visions. And God said, the people like
you. But I've got a message for those that have ears to hear. God said, he that hath ears to
hear, let him hear. My friend, hear with discernment,
hear with attention, hear with interest, hear for eternity.
The Lord has spoken. He speaks today. He's never left
Himself without a witness. Let me give you four or five
things. The faith of the gospel, the truth of the gospel. The
Son of God had come and given us an understanding. I want an
understanding. I don't particularly want a following,
or a bank account, or riches of the world. I want an understanding. And that faith of the gospel
arises from a right knowledge of God. Who is God? God's not
who you think He is. God's who He says He is. Everybody
can't make up his own God. That's imagination, images. Images come from imagination.
Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image. God's who He
says He is. In John 17, verse 3, our Lord
said, This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only
true God, Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. And no man knoweth
the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal
him. Men by nature do not know God. God said, My ways are not
your ways, My thoughts are not your thoughts. The natural man
receiveth not the things of God. God must be revealed. You don't
know God by nature. He must be revealed. No man knows
God. He's incomprehensible. It's higher
than the heavens. What can you know? It's deeper
than hell. What can you tell? The riches of God's Greatness
are deeper than the sea. God must be revealed in His majesty,
in His sovereignty, in His holiness, in His justice, in His mercy,
in His love. How shall they call on Him of
whom they have never heard? It's worse to have a false God
than no God at all. Because when you have a false
God and in a false refuge, it's more difficult to dig you out.
You've got to destroy your refuge and kill your God before man
can preach the true God. And then secondly, the truth
of the gospel arises from an understanding of the fall, the
fall of Adam and its consequences. God made man upright, the scripture
says. He sought out many inventions.
God made man in his own image, but man fell. fell, fell. According to the Scriptures,
man fell, and when he did, he died. That's the word used all
the way through. Dead in sin. Dead in trespasses
and sin. By one man's sin entered the
world, and death. What kind of death? Well, physical
death follows, but Adam lived 800 years after he died. He died
spiritually. So death passed upon all men,
and Adam all died. By the disobedience of one, many
were made sinners. Our Lord said, I'm not come to
call the righteous, but sinners. Go learn what that means. Do you know what sinners means?
Sinners, you know what a sinner is? A sinner, a sin is a nature,
it's a principle, it's an inward problem. We keep talking about
the fruit of sin, and we're missing the root of sin. And that's where
we're dead. Love in darkness rather than
light. And then thirdly, the truth of the gospel arises from
an understanding. And the Son of God has come and
given us an understanding of the person and work of Christ.
The Son of God has come and given us an understanding. Now, my
friends, do you understand anything at all about the person and work
of Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ the Lord? God has... God has
appointed a day in which he's going to judge the world by that
man, Jesus Christ, whom you crucified. He'll judge the world in righteousness
by that man. Do you know that man? Do you
know anything about him? His person, his work, his attributes,
his glory, what he did, why he did it, who he is, where he is
now. But if God's going to judge the
world by that man, I need to get acquainted with that man.
Well, the law of God's unchanging. It must be obeyed perfectly. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. The justice of
God, we're talking about God now there, the law of God and
the justice of God, which demands the death of all sinners is unchanging. God's justice, like his law,
is unchanging, and that justice must be satisfied. He said, the
soul that sinneth shall surely die. God will by no means clear
the guilty. Therefore, if God is to have
a holy people to populate a holy heaven, a new heaven and new
earth, then he's going to have to save and redeem them in a
way that's consistent with His holiness and His character and
His attributes. God can't be God and then change
to something else in order to save. He said, I'm a just God
and a Savior. He's got to be just and justified.
Now this is what Christ came to do. 1 Timothy 1.15 says this
is a Faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus
Christ came into the world to save sinners. He came to save
sinners. He came to seek and to save the
lost. How did He do it? Well, by His
holy life in the flesh. He was born of woman, made of
a woman, made under the law, tempted in all points as we are,
yet without sin, and by that perfect holy law, as our representative,
as our federal head, as our redeemer, He imputed to us a perfect righteousness
because He kept it in every jot and tittle. He represented us. He who knew no sin was made sin
for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
And by His atoning death, He put away all our transgressions.
By Himself, He purged our sins. See, Christ was a representative
person like Adam was. In Adam we die, in Christ we
are made alive. Sin, by man came forgiveness
and mercy. By one man's disobedience, we
were made sinners. By the obedience of Christ, we
were made righteous. All who are in Adam died in Adam.
All who are in Christ are made alive in Christ. He did for us
what we couldn't do, all that God demanded of us. He's our
representative, our Redeemer. And by faith in Him, these blessings
become ours. He that believeth on the Son
hath life. Now the truth of the gospel produces a well-grounded
hope of our interest in God's mercy in Christ. Here's what
I mean. We're accepted in the Beloved. Not by what we've done,
but by what He did. We're accepted in the Beloved.
He came down here. He was born of a woman. lived
on this earth under the civil law, the law of the home, the
moral law, the Levitical law, every law of God, and kept it
perfectly. And all who are in Him and believe
on Him and trust in Him, His righteousness is theirs. And
He went to the cross and literally bore our sins in His body on
the tree. And He was buried as our scapegoat,
rose as our justifier, ascended to heaven as our mediator, and
we're accepted in Him. Christ in you, that's the hope
of glory. Romans 8.1 says there's no condemnation
to them who are in Christ. Romans 5.1 says, therefore, by
being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Paul summed
it up this way, I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded
that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him
against that day. I know him, who he is and what
he did, and why he did it, and where he is now. And I'm persuaded
that He's able. He's able to save to the uttermost
them that come to God by Him. He's able to do all that He promised. He's able to keep you from falling. He's able to present you faultless,
unblameable, unreprovable in His glorious presence. And He's
able to raise these vile bodies from a corrupt tomb, from a grave. and make them just like His glorious
body. He's able. What a blessing to
hear the gospel and to believe it. If you want this message
on a cassette tape, I have two messages on one tape. This message
and one I'll bring next Lord's Day on His mercy to His Son. Send two dollars and we'll mail
you the tape. The address will be given to
you now. Until next week, God bless you, everyone.