Grab your Bibles and turn with
me please to 1 Timothy chapter 1. Hey John. The holy apostle writing to the
young pastor Timothy sets Timothy at charge at Ephesus
not to allow any other to preach any other doctrine than that
which is being preached. He straightens out those who would And listen
to those who teach the law for righteousness and says the law
is not for a righteous man, but for the ungodly. Setting forth
the fact that Jesus Christ's sacrifice has fully set his people
right before God. Made them righteous in Jesus
Christ. Sanctified, justified, and redeemed
them. And they are not under the law
in any way, shape, or form because they are righteous before God.
And the right law has nothing to do with the righteous man.
He goes on to give a bit of his history of what he did as a disciple of the Sanhedrin when
he went out with letters trying to destroy the name of Jesus
Christ and wipe the church off the face of the earth. He said,
I was before a persecutor. I was before a blasphemer. And
in verse 15 he says, and now I'm the chief of sinners. You say, what does that mean?
It means what it means. Paul, designated by the Holy
Spirit to voice the belief of every blood-bought sinner, says this is a faithful saying,
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am chief. Paul said, I'm the chief
of sinners. He said that Christ came into
the world to save sinners. Those two go together very well.
Our Lord said, I came to seek and save that which was lost.
In another place, He said, I did not come to call the righteous
to bring sinners to repentance. These are all very distinctive
statements. Though we know from the teaching of the Scripture
that all of humanity are sinners, We also know that Christ did
not come to save all men. He came to save His elect, or
His sheep, or His church, or His bride. God said, for the
transgressions of My people was He stricken in Isaiah 53. The angel told the mother of
our Lord Jesus Christ that He shall save His people from their
sins. When our Lord said of His people,
when they transgress my law and break my laws, I will visit their
transgressions with the rod. He said, I'll visit them. He
said, I'll visit their transgressions. And He visited our transgressions
in our substitute of the Lord Jesus Christ. He not visited
our transgressions on us. But He's visited our transgressions.
He came to save His people. His people are His elect, and
they are all sinners, every one of them. When He came to die
for them, there was none righteous, no, not one among them. There
was not one of them that sought after God. Lies were upon their
lips. The poison of ass was under their
tongue. They had no fear of God before their eyes. Then He came
to save them. He came into this world to save
sinners. And He did what He came to do. The Gospel language declares
that Christ came to save sinners and likewise declares that He
saved them. We don't find any possibilities
or probabilities concerning salvation in the Word of the Lord. It makes
it clear that those whom He came to save, He saved. He saved His
people from their sins. The people of God, the sheep,
the church, the elect are sinners all. And until they are, by grace,
given ears to hear the gospel and given faith to believe after
they hear the word of the truth, they have no idea, and not even
a foggy suspicion, that they are truly sinners, much less
that they are chosen of God. They don't know either one of
those things. God's elect are by nature, according to Ephesians
chapter 2, children of wrath. even as others. They are by nature.
Thank God they're not by grace. In the matter of sin and the
estate of being a sinner before God, there is no difference between
any person on the face of the earth. We get mad at all these
crazy people doing crazy things on TV. They're us. We're them.
We get mad at the vilest and the worst of humanity. We call
them evil, but we are evil personified by nature. That's what we are. Jesus Christ, in His words when
He said He came into the world to save sinners, did two things. First, it served to eliminate any notion
in humanity that men could ever deserve salvation, accomplish
salvation, contribute or even assist in salvation. And secondly,
all sinners, we are. There's a ring of hope in these
words. No sinner should despair of salvation.
Why? The Son of God, Jesus Christ,
came into this world to save sinners. That's why He came. Now this is a teaching of grace.
This is the doctrine of grace, if you will. And being a doctrine
of grace, it is a stripping truth. It's a stripping truth. A truth
that shuts men up to God alone. The truth that if they are saved,
it must occur outside or beyond themselves. Beyond the abilities
of nature. Christ came into this world to
save sinners. Salvation, though eternal in
purpose, is really a word that belongs to time. Salvation has
to do with being delivered or being freed or being saved by
the act of a deliverer, which means that the sinner is acted
upon. He does not act. He is acted
upon by God Almighty. The salvation wrought by God
was wrought by Christ for God. The sacrifice was made not to
men, It was made for God. The benefits received are received
by the elect. But that offer was made to God. You weren't involved in any way,
shape, or form. For the sinner, salvation is
deliverance. And we need to harp on that.
We need to understand what that means. Salvation today means
nothing in most of modern religion. Because they place it on such
a low rung of the ladder, it means nothing. It's a starting
place, a walk down the aisle, something like that. That's not
salvation. Salvation presupposes being captive. It presupposes being in bondage. It presupposes being in a case
that you cannot deliver yourself and you can't get out of it.
It's being in jail or in prison and not able to get out. And
we don't go, we don't free prisoners by going to the prison and saying,
don't you, won't you decide to take Jesus into your heart. That's
not going to do any good. He's still in prison. Somebody
must come, a deliverer, a savior must come and open up the bars
of that prison and let that person out or take him out and free
him. Said if he must break the bonds
and break the chains and shackles that hold him, He must break
the relationship he has with sin. He must do that or that
person stays exactly where he is. Jesus Christ came into this
world to deliver sinners. He came to deliver sinners. He's
being set free and cut loose from the ruling rights of sin,
of Satan and the law. The work of Christ on Calvary
was God-worthy to meet the requirements of God for the acceptance of
His people. who could do nothing to recommend
themselves to God. This is what the major result
of true repentance is when God grants a man repentance. He repents
of everything he thought recommending him to God. It's a change of
mind, a radical change of mind. Because we all think things we
do recommend us to God. We don't want to admit it. We
don't like to think about it. It embarrasses us. We embarrass
ourselves when we think that. But we do some good act and we
can't help ourselves. We can't keep it secret. We'll
bring it up in this conversation somewhere down the line. Somehow
we're going to get noticed for that because that's what we are
by nature. Flesh will always seek recognition. We'll always
seek recognition. Repentance is this. Nothing recommends
me to God but Jesus Christ. Nothing I do, think or say. This message I'm preaching this
morning, that wonderful song they just sung. Bless my heart. That does not recommend it to
God. That must be washed in the blood of Christ. This must be
washed in the blood of Christ. Christ came into the world not
to save righteous men. Not to save those who do good
deeds. Christ came into this world to save sinners. Sinners! We need to say it over and over
again in our minds. The work of Christ for his people
is the application of what he has accomplished for God. When
salvation is applied to the heart of his people, it is an application
of what Christ has done for God. It is revealed in their mind
and heart by the work of the Holy Spirit through the preaching
of the gospel in no other way. That's how it happens. That's
why we get up here and slap our gums together three times a week
and keep on doing it. You for 12 years, me for 38 right
here. Keep on doing it over and over
again. You can ask these people, what do I preach? They'll tell
you what I preach. They'll tell you every time I get up here.
Why? Because we need to rehearse it
continually in our mind. Jesus Christ came into this world,
on this planet, in this earth. for one purpose and one purpose
only, to glorify His Father in the salvation of sinners by His
substitutionary work. This application to the sinner
is the revelation of the purpose and the promise and the proclamation
and the pronouncement and the procurement of deliverance. He's not a Savior unless He's
saved. Christ is not a Savior who wants
to save the man. That's a stupid notion. It doesn't
even make any sense. It's an oxymoron. He's a saver
of saved men. He's a redeemer of redeemed men.
He redeemed them. That's why he wears that title. The bonds of sin have been broken.
The chains have been knocked down. We've been awakened and
resurrected from the dead. Received life and faith. And
no qualification is attached to that except for this. Jesus
Christ came into the world to save sinners. No qualifications attached to
the word sinner as to kind and depth and breadth of your sin. You're just
a sinner. That's one of God's wonderful
generic terms for His people. They're sinners. What does that
mean? Everything they do is a sin. Everything they think is a sin.
Every act they act is a sin. They're sinners. What can they
do? They can sin. And that's all. they can do.
Christ did not come to save awakened sinners. I was dead when I was
resurrected into Christ. He did not come to save sinners
who have an interest in Him, because by nature we have no
interest in Him at all. He did not come to those who
were seeking Him. He came to them, saved them,
and they began to seek Him. He did not come to those who
need Him, or know that they need Him. Didn't do that. I didn't
need Christ when I heard the gospel. I was set in religion,
a five-point calvary, preaching when I heard the gospel. I didn't
need Christ. I thought I had all I needed.
But then one night I found that I didn't. You know what I felt? A need, a hunger, and a thirst. Before that I wasn't thirsty
and I wasn't hungry. And I didn't have a name. Christ
didn't come to save a person who knows they need Him. He came to save dead people.
Dead in trespasses and sin. He did not come to save sinners
who will exercise their will and give Him a leg up on saving
them. Dead men have no will. Ask them. Next time you're at
a funeral, ask the dead man or the dead woman. Do you have a
will? I bet you they won't even answer
you. Why? They don't have a will. They
thought they did. They willed to live. I've never
met anybody that willed to die. I've met a lot of people who
are on their deathbed willing to live. They willed to do that.
Death is the final proclamation and declaration that man's will
is nothing and can do nothing. Christ came to save sinners.
It means that He came to deliver blood-bought sinners at their
appointed time. And He did it. He did it. Alas, and did my Savior bleed?
Did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head
for such a worm as I? That's exactly who He devoted
that sacred head for. All that comes with the application
of the work of the Spirit to the sinner It's through the gospel. If anything in man existed before
the Holy Spirit applied salvation to man, then it's not salvation. So when we read that Christ came
to save sinners, it means He came to deliver blood-bought
sinners when He was supposed to. What will happen? They will
have an experience. Now people have experiences all
the time, and I never question man's experience. And I've heard
some weird experiences in my time. I've heard people tell
me, I've heard people who say they believe in God's grace tell
me about when they were six years old and their mom was sick and
prayed for them and they accepted Jesus and still talk like that
even though they say they received the doctrines of grace and believe
the truth. They'll talk like that. People have experienced
it. People have told me about it. People have dreams. I know
people have dreams that have come true. I know people whose
dreams come true. People say they've seen ghosts.
I know people who've seen ghosts. I've never seen one. Well, I
thought I did, but I'm not sure. People say a lot of things. They
have experiences. I went down an aisle, I can't tell you how
many times, to the Antioch Baptist Church in Winston-Salem and cried
my eyes out over my own guilty conscience. I've had experiences
in religion. I went over to preach at Larry
Simpson's one time and got into flesh. Having a good time preaching. Preached on the potter and the
clay. Had people speaking in tongues in that place that night.
I didn't ask them to do that, but they were speaking in tongues.
Wowed that crowd. Got them going. I've never so
embarrassed in all my life after I got through without support
in the world have I done. What have I done? People still talking
about that message over there. That potter and that clay. I
actually brought a piece of clay up. Kept that bad boy right in
the hand. Had them going. That's all it was. I've had experiences. People have experiences. Don't
fuss with them about their experience. Somebody said, I experienced
that. Say, yeah, I understand. But does it line up with Scripture?
Does your experience line up with what God says He saves in
it? Because that's the key. That's
the key. But you will experience the grace
of God if you're a God's elite. You'll experience it. You may
be one who Christ simply speaks to and opens your heart and your
mind in this way. You may be someone who applies
mud to your eyes to get you to see. You may be one he tells
you to go dip in the pool of Siloam ten times. You may see
at first in your salvation men as trees walking. But you will experience salvation
if you're his child. That application of the Holy
Spirit makes it so. The sinner who is saved by God
is the sinner whom God reveals Christ to in the gospel. The
sin that is revealed is singular. This is important. The sin revealed
is unbelief. That's what it is. Everything
flows from that, but that's the sin. The sin is not believing,
not believing. The Lord said when the Holy Spirit
comes in John chapter 16 verse 8, He said the first thing He's
going to convict you of is unbelief. Because you do not believe on
the Son of God whom you sin. Unbelief is relative to Christ
and His work. It always has been throughout
the Scripture. It is His salvation. And men
don't believe. Unbelief never changes. Don't
think that your unbelief will become belief. It won't. It never
changes. Your unbelief is still there,
still in you right here this morning. I recall in Numbers
chapter 14 when the people of Israel said, we can't go in there
to Canaan. There's too many giants there.
They'll kill us. They believe the lies rather
than believe the true prophets told the truth. And God said, OK. You don't believe. I'm going to turn you back into
the desert. above 20 years old that came
out of Egypt was going to die out there and rot out there in
the desert. You know what they did? They didn't believe. They
said, oh, we'll go. That's what they said. Why? They didn't believe. You
can't believe. Unbelief can never believe. Your
flesh will never believe God. It doesn't believe God today.
It doesn't believe God today. It never changes. The sinner
who is saved does not see his sin until he sees Christ. Have
nothing to measure by until you see the glorious Christ. Isaiah
chapter 6 is very clear. In the year the king Uzziah died,
I saw also the Lord high and lifted up. His train filled the
temple. His voice shook the doorposts. Smoke filled the temple. And
I saw Him. I saw the King of Glory. And I said, woe is me. I'm undone. I'm unclean. I'm a man of leprosy. Unbelief is relevant to Christ
and His work always. In natural religion, unbelief
is not high on the list of sins. It's not even really viewed as
a sin, like say drinking or carousing or taking dope or such. Religion
holds that belief is really only an unexercised attribute that
all men possess. Therefore, belief is but an act
of the will that is nothing more than a change of opinion. In
religion, unbelief becomes belief. but not in reality. Not in reality. In reality, the twain shall never
meet. Sin to natural religion is a
list, a litany of shameful deeds and societal taboos and religious
convictions that are usually regional in nature. According
to what part of the country you're from is what's really a sin.
Sin is in a box or a bottle or a computer or a movie show. And
all men ready to confess to these things and call themselves sinners
and lump themselves with the rest of humanity by saying things
like, well, nobody is perfect. Or everybody has made mistakes.
I'm hearing a lot of that in these elections by these two
candidates that are running for president. I'm hearing a lot
of this, nobody's perfect and everybody makes mistakes. I guess
they think they're sinners too. Such are often convicted for
their behavior, but this conviction is the conscience, and therefore
takes place within the realm of the law. Teresa Brewer sang
a song many years ago. That's the date, mid-1950s. Let
your conscience be your guide. Remember that? Some of you remember
that. Remember Teresa Brewer? Little
old teeny woman, big old voice. Don't let your conscience be
your guide. Your conscience will always tell you you've done something
wrong, then will tell you what to do to undo it, and then will
tell you that's not enough. It will always do that because
it operates within the realm of the law. Conscience, listen very carefully,
your conscience will never convict you of unbelief. Not your conscience. Your conscience
will never convict you of unbelief. In fact, your conscience will never be convicted by the
gospel. It won't. This is not a realization
of what the Bible defines as a sinner whom Christ came
to save, a person who's convicted in conscience and tries to reform
his life. A sinner is guilty of sin, and
that sin is unbelieving. That's the carnal sin. That's
the sin. That's what David called the great transgression. The
great transgression. And the sinner that is saved
by grace desires to be delivered from it all the days of his life. And is not delivered from it
until he dies. and leaves the flesh behind.
Unbelief is the disease and everything else that is called sin. It's
just a symptom of the wretched malady. The most shameful thing
in the world is unbelief. Because it is wholesale, overt
rebellion against God and against His command to believe. And it
calls God a liar. A sinner who is saved by grace
is delivered, but not from unbelief. He's delivered from unbelief
only in the sense that unbelief is overshadowed by something
else. Unbelief is not removed, but
it no longer reigns and rules in the life of the child of God.
Thank God. Has no right to rule over you
anymore. This takes place in the sinner
when something is added to him. Not something that flows from
within him. Not something he comes up with. Something that's
added to him that ultimately subdues and overcomes unbelief. We overcome the world by faith,
John said. And that thing added is faith.
That wondrous thing that nobody can really explain. Because when
you try to explain it, you get into trouble because you can't
prove anything you say. It's hard to explain something
when you can't prove it. And you can't prove faith. You
know if you have it. I know if I have it. I don't
know if you have it. You don't know if I have it.
Can't explain that. Men try their best to come up
with terms about the Bible, you know. They have these archeological
digs. They say this proves the Bible.
Don't prove the Bible. You can't prove the Bible is
true. You can't. But if you believe it, it's because
God gave you faith to believe it and you know it's true. And
you can never be taken off of that mark. Never be. This thing added is faith. And
faith is belief that is born of grace through the preaching
and hearing of the gospel. The blessed good news of what
Christ has done for the sinner. In that great substitutionary
sacrifice wherein he satisfied the laws, the man gave divine
justice due by keeping the law in its purity. He fulfilled the
law in his life, but he kept the law in his death. And there's
a difference between those two terms. He kept the law as we
all must keep the law, and we'll keep the law. He died before
the law as a sinner's substitute. And for the sinner, good news
is this. Christ came into the world to
save sinners. That's a report of assurance born of salvation finished on
Calvary Street. How did Christ accomplish salvation
for sinners? Now let's give you two things.
Turn with me to 1 John chapter 3. How did Christ accomplish
the salvation of sinners? He that committeth sin is of
the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this
purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works
of the devil. Now the works of the devil are
not referred to in any general sense, but in the sense of salvation
accomplished for the people of God, for sinners. The works of the devil can be
summed up in two simple principles. revealed in his own actions.
We saw it in Isaiah chapter 14. He said, I will, and God said,
you won't. The works of the devil are to
disbelieve God and believe in self. That's our biggest problem. You want to know who your enemy
is? Look in the mirror. We have seen the enemy, the poet
said, and it is ourselves. For him to believe For Satan
to believe that he could ascend to the place of God, to the rank
of God, he must disbelieve that God is who he says He is. That's
why he's called a murderer, because he desired in his heart to murder
God, and every sinner does. And so when he failed, his emphasis
shifted to murdering God's crown of creation, which is man. The
old adage is, with those who can't do, teach. Teachers don't
get mad at me for saying that. But it applies in this sense.
He couldn't have sinned. He couldn't take to the high
place in the congregation of God. So what did he do? He taught
Eve how to. He taught Eve how to. He was
called a liar because he was not only a liar himself and able
to lie to himself, but he convinced Eve that God was, in effect,
lying to her when he said, Eat and die. You shall not surely
die, he said. His works are to make men believe
in themselves for any and all of salvation, to make them believe
that they are deity, they possess a spark of the divine, to make
them believe that they can produce everything that God requires,
righteousness, faith, justification, sanctification, propitiation,
and expiation of sin. He convinces men they can do
that. And He does it from the pulpits of this nation and the
pulpits of this world. He's not causing you to go out
and get drunk. If you are, you're His failure.
He's not causing you to go to the bordellos. He's not causing
you to go to a whoremongering or go up to the casino and lose
all your money. He's not causing you to do that.
The devil is causing men and women to believe that they can
achieve salvation and righteousness on their own. And he's successful
in his work. He's successful in his work except
for a certain group of people picked out and selected and set
apart before the foundation of the world that he cannot touch
without getting permission from his sovereign. He is God's ape. But he's got a lot of monkeys
following him around as he preaches from the pulpits of this nation. The devil is not in the business
of making folks draw pentagrams on walls and sacrifice goats
out in the woods or open up casinos or beer joints. He's about the
business of making sinners believe that their sin is something they
can undo. They can overcome or reform on,
which will merit them ultimately a righteousness before God that
he will accept. That's what Satan does. And he's
good at it. He's good at it. The works of the devil are to
make sinners believe that they're actually gaining something from
God by unbelief. Think about that. The work of
the devil is to cause you never to rest from your labor for God,
never to trust Christ, but trust your eyes so that you can keep
a mental record of your score and your works. Christ saves
sinners by destroying the work of the devil. The gospel of salvation
by grace for sinners is a chain around the devil's neck that
is dragging him, kicking and streaming to do what God bids
him to do and ultimately to drag him and cast him like a millstone
into the lake of fire. The works of the devil are destroyed
when Christ gives his people simple faith. Because faith puts the crown
of salvation on the head of the Savior and says, But Christ. But Christ. The giving of faith destroys
the power of the devil. But the power of the devil has
in the concept of death and judgment. Because his children were subject
to the fear of death and judgment. He likewise also took upon himself
to say to remove that judgment according to Hebrews 2.14. John
said, perfect love kept us out of fear. We don't fear the judgment.
For as Christ is, so are we in the world. We don't fear the
judgment. You go into this religious world
today, everybody's scared to death to die. I don't want to
die, but I ain't afraid. I ain't afraid. Because people don't really,
aren't afraid of dying, they're afraid of what's on the other
side of that thing, that reckoning. And they know there's a reckoning,
everybody, human beings know that. But there's a group of people
on the top side of this first cold, a very small elect remnant,
a bunch of scraps of humanity, and they don't fear the judgment.
In fact, they're not even going through the judgment. They've
already been through it, thank you. 2,000 years ago on Calvary
Street. And those books open to judgment.
They won't be judged out of those books. In fact, they're not going
to be judged out of any book. There's another book open. A roll book, if you will. Written before the foundation
of the world. Every name was written there.
And when you face God at the end of your life, here's what
you'll hear. Chris Cunningham. Pleasant. And accounted for. On Calvary Street. Here, Lord. That's what you're
going to say. Your names are going to be called.
You'll gather around the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ came into
the world to save sinners. Came to save sinners. And they
did it by destroying the works of the devil. Then we look at
verse 5 of the same chapter, John 3, and it says this, And
we know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in
Him is no sin. Christ came to this world to
save sinners by taking away their sin. You say, well, I still feel
mine. Yeah, I know, and that's why
we confess it. Confession is for old wretched sons of Adam who
have been saved by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Your
confession doesn't bring you anything. The reason God forgives
you is because He's just to do so. He forgives you because you've
already been forgiven in Jesus Christ. Confession is for you,
it's not for God. We confess our sins, He's just
to forgive us. How's He just? Because Jesus
Christ took away our sins. This is that great act of sacrifice
made by our Lord when His soul was made an offering for sin.
And by His skill and expertise, He justified many by bearing
their transgressions. He came to take away our sin.
And lest you think He might not have actually done it, the writer
adds under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in Him is no
sin. So where in the heck is that
sin? It was made to meet on Him. Where is it? Not in Him. And it's not on us. Where is it? The Bible uses metaphorical
language to help us understand. He bore our sins or bore up under
our sins. That's the meaning of the word
take away. To bear up under our sins. Where are our sins? They are gone. I want to believe that. Don't
you? I do believe it. My flesh don't want me to believe
that. But I believe it. My sins are gone. Clean gone. He actually did it. He actually
did it. Before God, who cannot lie, Our
sins are separated from us as far as the east is from the west.
That's a pretty fair piece. Cast behind his back. That's
metaphorical language. It teaches us something. Buried
in the bottom of the sea. Remembered no more. We all ever
do remember our sins and that is why faith is such a wonderful
gift. And that song in glory we'll
sing, worthy is the Lamb. That was slain. We remember. And has redeemed
us by His blood. Redeemed us from our sins. Out
of every kindred, nation, tongue, and people who made us kings
and priests unto our God. Faith is such a help. We can
say with full assurance of faith Christ came into this world to
save sinners. Christ came to save sinners is
the theme and song of the sinner saved by grace. And He doesn't
have to say more. Only those who are God's people
will ever understand what He's talking about to begin with.
But this is the fact. This is a faithful saying. A
saying that needs to be repeated. A saying that never changes.
A saying that stays always the same. This is a faithful saying
worthy of all acceptation. Jesus Christ came into the world
to save sinners. Isn't that good news? Father
bless us to understand and pray in Christ's name. Amen.