What we have been doing in these past weeks has been an outworking of the concern

of Peter when he said in 2 Peter chapter 1, I think it meet as long as I'm in

this tabernacle to stir up your minds by way of remembrance, though ye know these
things and be established in them. And certainly, apart from perhaps some new
insight to a given text or aspects of it, what we have been dealing with is not
new. We are not going into new territory, but going back to those things which lie
at the very heart and soul of true spiritual concern. And I want to continue in
that general perspective by directing your attention this morning to a question
which we shall attempt to answer from the Word of God And the question is simply
this, what is the gospel? What is the gospel? And as we address ourselves to this
question, I wish to do so, first of all, by considering with you briefly the
seriousness of the question. Secondly, the source of our answer to that question,
and then, for the bulk of our time, the substance of the biblical answer to the
question. First of all, then, the seriousness of the question, what is the gospel?
In other words, why should you sit here this morning and seriously engage your
mind and heart for some 50 minutes with this three-word question or four-word,
what is the gospel? Well, I would answer that question by directing your attention
to Galatians chapter 1, where we have perhaps the clearest statement concerning
the seriousness of the question before us. What is the gospel? Why is it
important that I understand the biblical gospel? Why is it of such personal
concern that I embrace that gospel? Having embraced it, why should I be involved
in its propagation, in its preservation, in its defense? Well, the apostles' words
in Galatians chapter 1 are a very vigorous answer to all of those inquiries.
Verse 6 of chapter 1, I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that
called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel, which is not another
gospel, only there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of
Christ. Notice how the whole concern of this paragraph is with the gospel. But
though we or an angel from heaven should preach unto you any gospel other than
that which we have preached unto you, let him be anathema or accursed of God. As
we've said before, so say I now again. If any man preacheth unto you any gospel
other than that which he receiveth, let him be anathema." Now you see the
seriousness of the question before us. What is the gospel? And the question is
serious because the maintenance of the integrity of the gospel is a matter of
life and death. And the Apostle Paul was stirred as he begins to deal with these
Judaizers who were tampering with the Gospel, because the Apostle thought in
biblical categories. And one of the fundamental categories of biblical thought is
this, that what you believe is the difference between life and death. In other
words, contrary to the mentality in our day, it is not the sincerity of your
belief that is the difference between life and death. It is the object of your
belief. To believe the truth is to be saved. To believe a lie ever so sincerely
is to be damned. And this is why the Apostle says in his second letter to the
Church of the Thessalonians, chapter 2 and verses 9 to 12, that God will send to
man a spirit of error that they may be damned who believe a lie. The lie may be
spoken in the very language of some of the gospel thought forms. The terms
forgiveness and pardon and God and Christ may be profusely used. But if there has
been a tampering with what God means in those words, and a tampering with the
proportion that God gives to those words and their meaning, we may believe that
tampered gospel ever so sincerely, only to be damned by our sincere belief. And so
the seriousness of the question is proportionate to the issues of heaven and hell,
of life and of death. And if we embrace and believe a wrong gospel, we shall do so
to our own destruction. And so everyone gathered in this building this morning
ought to be deeply concerned with the question before us, what is the gospel, if
for no higher reason than your own salvation? For again, according to the apostle
in Romans 1 16, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And there is no
possession of God's salvation apart from the gospel that God himself has given.
And so you ought to be concerned with the question because of your own safety. But
furthermore, you ought to be concerned if having embraced the gospel, you are
accurately conveying that gospel to others. For one of the great privileges and
responsibilities of every believer is that according to his gifts and station and
opportunities in life, he is to be an evangelist. He is to proclaim the message
of God's salvation in Jesus Christ. And then, of course, for the life and well-
being of the Church, Unless the integrity of the gospel is preserved, true godly
living cannot be long maintained. For the only soil out of which true godliness
grows, or in which it grows, is the soil of a pure gospel. And therefore, one of
the great concerns of the Apostle is to explain the nature of the Gospel to those
who already have embraced it, that he might advance the cause of holiness and
godliness amongst the people of God. The Book of Romans is a classic example of
this, a systematic explanation of the Gospel to those who've already embraced it,
that understanding it, there might be the promotion of holiness of life. And then,
if we can to the now generation even talk in these terms, we ought to understand
what the gospel is in the interest of the safety and well-being of unborn
generations. There was a time when our forefathers thought long and hard of the
legacy they would leave to future generations. We're the now generation.
economically, politically, and in every realm, the one concern is my desires
fulfilled now. If I have to tear down the structures erected by my forefathers in
their godly foresight, tear them down. If I have to leave nothing for unborn
generations, too bad. I'm part of the now generation. And one of the crowning sins
of our generation is its irresponsible contemporaneity, concerned with the now.
And there's a sense in which they say, I don't care about the past. I have no
concern for the future. And may God help us as confessed disciples of Christ to
be delivered from that. For the scripture speaks again and again of generations
and the responsibility of the godly to the unborn generations. Therefore, I hope
every one of you is convinced that the question is not an academic one. It is as
personal, it is as burning as the issue of your own salvation, the witness of the
Church to this generation and the legacy that we leave to unborn generations. So
much for the seriousness of the question. Now, secondly, what will be the source
of our answer to that question, what is the gospel? And the best text I know to
use in saying what will be our source book for the answer is Isaiah 8 in verse 20.
to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is
because there is no light in them. to the law, to the testimony, that is, to the
inscripturated revelation of God's mind, found in the Old and the New Testaments,
here and here alone, do we have that inflexible, that eternal, that unchangeable
sourcebook to answer the question, what is the gospel? And there is nothing in
human experience that is like to it. I used to use the illustration of physical
measurements, that someone may claim something is six feet long and all of their
protestations and the bringing in of philosophers and the rest cannot change it.
But you see, men could get together and agree that a foot shall now be called a
yard and the yard shall be called a foot and live thereby. So that a foot is no
longer a foot, the yard is no longer a yard. But you see, there will never be a
council of men who can change what God has said concerning what is the gospel. And
because God is not man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should
repent, he will never change the standard of measurement. Therefore, when we come
to the Scriptures, we come to that which the psalmist celebrates and says,
Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Or in the words of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass
away. That's why the apostle Paul is confident that no angel or no subsequent
apostle will ever be sent by God to change the gospel that has already been
delivered. So he says in that passage in Galatians, if you wake up some morning
and you hear the fluttering of angels' wings, and your room is filled with blazing
light, and you're convinced that this is a supernatural manifestation, that angel
begins to open his mouth and say, thus saith the Lord God of heaven and earth, And
he speaks with a voice that sends shivers down your spine because of its unique
and awesome authority and power. And he says, the gospel preached by apostles and
prophets is now to be altered. Paul says, tell that devil to go back, that angel
to go back to the pit from whence he came. The curse of God is upon him. And if
there comes a man who seems to have the credentials of an apostle, who seems to
speak with apostolic authority, who can even perform signs and wonders, if he
tampers with the gospel, he's under the curse of God. So you see, the source for
our answer is the changeless, the timeless, the Word of the living God. Now
someone says, but Pastor Martin, why spend the whole message dealing with this?
Doesn't 1 Corinthians 15, 1-3 tell us what the gospel is? And I've heard so many
simplistic approaches to this question by someone glibly quoting 1 Corinthians
15, 1-3. Listen, 1 Corinthians 15, 1-3 is not a comprehensive statement of the
apostolic gospel. It is an underscoring of certain facets of the gospel that were
being attacked there in the Corinthian church. And so the apostle is underscoring
the factuality of the death and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ as an
integral part of the gospel. But elsewhere he intimates that those facts, Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, rose again the third
day according to the Scriptures, is not a comprehensive statement of the Gospel.
And let me give you just a couple of examples to convince you. He says in Romans
2 and verse 16, In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men's hearts
according to my Gospel. He says the preaching of future judgment, a judgment in
which the thoughts of men's hearts will be disclosed, is a part of his gospel.
Again, in 1 Timothy 1 in verse 11, he intimates that there is another strand of
truth that is part and parcel of the apostolic gospel. Having mentioned the
proper function of the law, he concludes by saying, according to the gospel of the
glory of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. What he's been doing is
saying there is a proper function of the law which is to be understood in
relationship to the apostolic gospel. So you see, a comprehensive understanding of
the question, what is the gospel, must go beyond. It must never leave nor abandon,
but must go beyond and include more than the mere statement, Christ died, Christ
was buried, and Christ was risen. When we come then to the Gospels, the Book of
the Acts and the Epistles, and we seek to boil down all of the data that is here,
to come up with those things that form the irreducible elements of the Gospel,
what do we have? And at this point I'm not at all embarrassed to say that I
believe nowhere has that distilled essence been more succinctly and accurately
stated than in Dr. Packer's little book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, in
which he addresses himself in, I believe, the second or third chapter to the
question, what is the gospel? And his answer is that the gospel is a message
about God, about sin, about Christ and about repentance and faith. And I believe
his outline is accurate and without embarrassment I shall use it this morning,
putting on the flesh I trust of my own independent contribution. Think of it this
way. The proclamation of the facts concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ
are like the bride and the bridegroom in a bridal party. Who Christ is, is the
bride or the bridegroom. What he has done is the other part of the couple. The
person and work of Christ are the bride and the bridegroom in the bridal party.
But they are not the whole bridal party. There is the best man, and there is the
maid or the matron of honor, and sometimes a bridesmaid or two. Now, when we ask
the question, and I guess I think in bridal categories because of the events of
the summer months here at Trinity, we had 14 of them last year and now we're up
to, I think, seven, with one to go and possibly another one that I'm not free to
disclose at this point. Since the engagement has not been officially announced, I
usually am the little bird that gets in on these things first. But anyway,
thinking in terms of these categories, here is the bridal party. Now, central in
the bridal party ought to be the bride and the groom. It's legitimate. It's their
day. They are the central figures, but they are not the exclusive figures. There
is the best man. There is the maid or matron of honor. There are the bridesmaids
and sometimes the ushers. Now, when we address ourselves to the question, what is
the gospel? Think of it in terms of the bridal party. The substance of that
answer is that central is what the gospel says concerning Jesus Christ and his
person and work. But it is not the gospel unless the person and work of Jesus
Christ are flanked on the one hand with what the gospel says about God, and on the
other hand what it says concerning sin, repentance, and faith. A mere
proclamation of Jesus Christ in his person and work without these attendants is a
defective, if not an erroneous, proclamation of the gospel. So think of the bridal
party as we come now to the substance of the biblical answer, what is the gospel?
having seen the seriousness of the question, the source of our answer, now the
substance of the answer itself. And first of all, the gospel is a message about
God. Think with me. What are the distinct blessings held forth in the gospel? Are
the blessings of the gospel big bank account, luxury cars, Long and affluent
retirement? You say, of course not. What are the distinct blessings of the gospel?
Blessings that nothing else can hold for. Is it peace, joy, happiness,
fulfillment? Well, some would say yes, but they're wrong when they say those are
the distinct blessings of the gospel. The distinct blessings of the gospel are
forgiveness of sin, peace with God, acceptance before the Almighty, the assurance
of eternal life, the pardon of all our sins. If you've read the Bible even half
asleep, only a few times, certainly you would agree that these are the distinct
blessings held forth by the gospel. Now think of them for a moment. You can talk
about full bank accounts and about affluent living and luxury cars without any
reference to God, to guilt, to His law. But the moment you start talking about
forgiveness, pardon, justification, sanctification, adoption, you see, you're
talking about things which have their starting reference point in the living God
of Holy Scripture. Sin is an offense against God. Forgiveness is the pronouncement
of that God that our sins are no longer reckoned to our account. Justification is
the declaration of that God that we're accepted before His tribunal as perfectly
righteous, as having obeyed His holy law. Adoption is being brought into the
family of that God and given the legal status of sons and daughters. So you see,
unless the gospel starts with God, all of its distinct blessings cannot be
appreciated. When forgiveness merely has reference to me getting rid of this
carking pressure of guilt upon my back, somehow, somewhere, in some way, that's
not the gospel. There are people who get rid of their psychological guilt feelings
every day who don't have a clue of what the gospel is. And there are multitudes
having some kind of a religious experience that has something of Jesus and the
cross and the blood who have nothing more than the person gets when in his group
therapy he spills out his guts and feels better. Because God has not been the
starting reference point. They have never seen that their sin is moral offense
against the God who made them. They have not seen that their sin brings them under
the holy wrath and anger of the God of the universe. They have never seen that
Jesus Christ's death is to be understood in terms of God the Father bruising God
the Son. And so the gospel must of necessity begin with a message about God. And
certainly the classic example of a gospel preacher who understood this is the
Apostle Paul himself. And in the 17th chapter of the book of the Acts, standing as
a gospel preacher in a pagan society that knew nothing of the true God, longing to
see these people brought to the knowledge of Christ, liberated from the ignorance
and the bondage of paganism. This is all there in the text. His heart is stirred
within him. He sees the city given over to idolatry. He longs to see them, through
Christ, come into the knowledge of the living God. Where does he start? Before he
moves to the bride and the bridegroom, he starts with the best man. Before he
moves to the bride and the bridegroom, the person and work of Christ, he starts
with a message about God. And he says in verse 24 of Acts 17, The God that made
the world and all things therein, He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not
in temples made with hand, Neither is he served by men's hands as though he
needed anything, seeing he himself giveth to all life and breath and all things.
And He made of every nation of men, He made of one every nation of men to dwell on
all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons and the
bounds of their habitations, that they should seek God, if happy they might feel
after Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. What is He
doing? Some have said that, well, Paul sinned. In a moment of weakness, he tried
to conquer Athens with Athens. He tried to go after pagan philosophy with mere
human or even Christian philosophy. And so Paul erred, and somehow between here
and his visit to Corinth, he came to his senses, repented of his sin, and when he
came to Corinth, all he did was say, Jesus loves you, believe on him. That's the
understanding. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Paul despaired of
human philosophy from the moment of his conversion. When he had a revelation of
Jesus Christ and saw in him the glory of God, he was done with human philosophy.
He was done with human wisdom, done with carnal resting places. Philippians 3 is
the eloquent testimony of it. What is he doing? He is simply preaching the gospel.
And he's starting with the best man. He's saying, I long to put the spotlight on
the bride and the bridegroom. That is the person and work of Christ. But you
people have no knowledge of who God is, that you are made by Him. You're
accountable to Him. He is the determiner of the destinies of men and of nations.
Look at it. He preaches biblical determinism, biblical predestination to pagans.
And some of you who claim to be Christians take offense when we preach it. Shame
on you. He says in verse 26, He made of one every nation, having
determined their appointed seasons and the bounds of their habitation. He
preaches general predestination to a bunch of pagans. He does! Because he says the
God with whom you have to do is the God who has a plan for his world. You're not
running the show. The great of the earth are not running the show. Caesar and the
other potentates don't run the show. God who made his world is Lord of that
world. Isn't that what he says? He that made heaven and earth, he is Lord of that
heaven and earth. Imagine, preaching this to pagans, when they take some of us to
fall to try judiciously to preach it to Christians, and it's called strong meat.
Isn't that amazing? But that's what he preached. Now, don't argue with me. It's
there in the book. This is what he preached to them. And you see, he did so for
one great reason. When he comes to what is apparently an abrupt conclusion because
of the response, he is introducing the subject of judgment and accountability. And
so we read in verses 30 and 31, he commands all men everywhere to repent because
he's appointed a day in which he'll judge the world in righteousness. Now if a man
begins to take those facts seriously, God has made heaven and earth God has made
me. He's Lord of heaven and earth. He's judge of the world. I'm in his hands for
good or for ill. I've been the creature who, having received life from Him, has
my life sustained by Him. In Him I live and move and have my being. What a crime
that I've lived ignorant of His laws, indifferent to His fellowship, unconcerned
about His glory, utterly bereft of any desire to know and to give myself to the
very purpose for which I was made. What a creature am I! At least the worm
fulfills the function for which God made it. At least the beast and the birds
fulfill their function. I was made to know this God, to have communion with Him.
He is not far from us. We were made in His image. Yet I've lived so ignorant of
Him that I raise my statue to the unknown God and stick it along with all the
others. Now when some of those Athenians begin to take that seriously, it's no
wonder that we read in the following verses, look now, Acts chapter 17 and verse
32, Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, others
said, We will hear thee again concerning this matter. Thus Paul went out from
among them, but certain men clave unto him and believed. They said, Paul, this is
serious business. Almighty God has made us. And all we've done is erect a little
altar and say, to the unknown God. And once in a while we throw him a chicken's
head and we mumble a few prayers. What a sin! What a crime! Paul, Paul, tell us
more about this God. Is He all might and all power and all holiness and all
righteousness? Is there some other facet of His character? And Paul can say, yes.
He is infinite love. And he so loved the world that he sent his only begotten
son, that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.
And cleaving to Paul, they hear about the bride and the bridegroom. They took so
seriously what the bat's mind said. They said, we've got to find out about the
bride and the bridegroom. I say to every person in this room who cannot answer an
honest yes to that question, My dear friend, I preach to you as Paul did, the
living God. He made you. He governed you. He will judge you. You're accountable to
Him. And in reality, nothing else here on earth really matters. What about you,
dear child of God? You who can say, yes, I have taken seriously what the Scripture
says about God. And I have, by the grace of God, been led, as these Athenians
were, to the heart of the gospel and embraced it. Oh, my dear Christian friend, I
plead with you. Do not succumb to all the pressures that are upon us to trim down
the gospel, to do away with the painful and often tedious task in personal
witnessing of seeking to acquaint men with whom God is, to acquaint them with the
living God and tell them who He is. The pressures are on us constantly to deviate
from the method of the apostle in gospel ministry. And I say to you young men
preparing for the work of the ministry, don't give up the gospel under the guise
of wanting to be jealous for the gospel. I've heard people say, no, no, no, I
don't want to preach about God, Creator, Judge, Sustainer, Ruler. I'm just so in
love with Jesus. I just want to tell people about Jesus. My friend, if you give
up biblical theism, you give up the heart of the gospel. You'll give up true
worship. You'll give up true godliness. Well, I must hurry on. The gospel is not
only message about God. It is, in the second place, a message about sin. It is a
message about sin. Now, how do we know this? Well, for the simple reason that
Jesus Christ came to deal with the problem of human sin. Matthew chapter 1 and
verse 21, perhaps the most succinct statement in all of Scripture, concerning the
purpose for which a virgin's womb became the mysterious dwelling place of God
Himself. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh. That
manifestation began in the enfleshment of the eternal Word in the virgin womb of a
young peasant maiden called Mary. And upon that conception the announcement is
given by the angel in Matthew 1.21, And she shall bring forth a son, and thou
shalt call his name Jesus. For his name will be a distillation of the whole
compass of his mission. His name is the index of his work. Thou shalt call his
name Jesus. which means Jehovah our salvation, for He shall save, not He will
attempt, He will try, He will possibly. He is Jesus, mighty Savior, who shall
save. No question about it, Mary. When you're in the throes of your birth pangs,
Mary, never forget you're bringing forth a conqueror. He shall save. And whom
shall He save? His people. His people. Mary, before you bring Him forth, He has a
people. He is the eternal Word, who in the councils of eternity with the Father
and the Spirit committed himself to be the surety of a people, a people that he
sees in his own mind, has upon his own heart, and mystery of mysteries, to whom
he is joined in covenant fidelity long before the world was born. Mary, he has a
people. and as the mighty deliverer, he shall save his people. And what will be
the sphere of that salvation? Not their hang-ups, not their frustrations, not
their economic necessities, Though all of those things have some secondary
reference as the fruit of the real thing from which He saves us, but Mary, He is
coming forth to save His people, not in, but from. The force of that Greek
preposition is like an arrow pointing in this direction from this. He shall save
them from, away from, out of the direction of their sins, their moral guilt, their
bondage, their pollution, their servitude to the flesh and to the devil. How then
can we preach the gospel of Christ and not understand that an essential
ingredient of that gospel is the message about sin. For in direct proportion of
our understanding of the malady will be our appreciation of the remedy. In direct
proportion. Jesus said, to whom little is forgiven the same what? Loveth little.
To whom much is forgiven the same? Loveth much. You remember the words of our
Lord Himself? Here is that mighty deliverer in the midst of his own nation, his
own countrymen after the flesh, and all they see is a young upstart rabbi who's
rocking the ecclesiastical boat. And our Lord turns to them and says, look, you
people upset because of the company I keep. You find me hobnobbing with the
outcast of society, the harlots, the scribes, the harlots and the publicans. And
he turns in Matthew 19 and says, go and learn what this means. Understand what
God was trying to tell you there in the Old Testament. I will have mercy and not
sacrifice. He said, go understand what your prophets were telling you. That
Almighty God delights in the conferral of mercy to sinners. And that is never
conferred unless men see themselves as sinners in need of that mercy. You people
think all you are is a bunch of people that are pretty good and acceptable, and if
you'll just do your religious duties, everything's all right. So you go on with
your sacrifices, you go on with all your religious trappings. But when the real
heart of what your religion is all about is being enacted before your eyes, you
react against it. Go and learn what that means. I will have mercy and not sacrifice
for. I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repent." He says, that's
my mission, to call sinners, those who see themselves as sinners, those who know
themselves to be sinners, those who feel themselves to be sinners, and to call
them out of their sins into a life of faith and obedience in myself. The gospel
then is a message about sin. It asserts the ugly reality of man's estrangement
from God. It doesn't simply use the word sin and explains the nature of sin. Isn't
that the book of Romans? Paul's theme in Romans is what? It's the gospel. He
announces it in verse 60. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God
unto salvation to everyone that believes. And now as he starts to expound his
gospel, where does he start? Verse 18 of chapter 1, all the way through the end of
chapter 1, all of chapter 2, all of chapter 3 to verse 20, is nothing but an
exposition of the universal reality of sin, the specific manifestations of sin,
and the demands of sin. It demands judgment from God, or the provision of an
adequate substitute. And then he says in verse 21, But now a righteousness apart
from the law hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.
And he begins to expound about the bride and the bridegroom. For two and a half
chapters he has the attention focused upon the best man, the message about Sid.
Having
seen what they are, they may desperately feel and appreciate what they can become
in union with Jesus Christ. May I press the question upon your conscience this
morning? Have you ever heard and received into your heart of hearts the message of
the gospel about sin? About your sin? The fact that your failure to keep God's
holy law in thought, word, and deed, from the moment you had any being, every
transgression, every stepping over that law in thought, word, or deed, every bit
of failure to live up to the standard of that law is criminal offense against the
God of heaven. For the Scripture says, sin is transgression of the law. And again
the Scripture says, for by the law cometh the knowledge of sin. And again, that
sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. Have you seen your sin in
the reality of its legal relationship to Almighty God? Have you seen your sin in
terms of its polluting effect upon your heart and life? Not only your objective
guilt, I have done wrongly, but your inward pollution, I am that. Jesus said, for
from within, out of the heart of man proceed, and he describes every form of sin.
My friend, the gospel is not good news until we've heard the bad news. And the bad
news is we're undone. To use just the language of Romans 5, we are sinners. We
are ungodly. We are without strength. We are enemies. Those are just four words
used in the compass of a few verses in one chapter. Can you take them to yourself
and say, oh God, it's true. By nature I was ungodly. Oh, I may not have been. like
some people, disrespectful to human authority, it says, ungodly, that is unlike
God. I was not reflecting His image, and that's the worst thing of sin. It renders
us ungodly. You say in your heart of hearts, O God, I was your enemy, indisposed
to obey your law, indisposed to honor your Son, Can you say with no tongue in
cheek, with nothing sticking in your throat as you say it, I was without
strength, no power to blot out my sins, no power to change my own heart. I was,
again the fourth word, just a plain old sinner. No pretty adjectives to extenuate
the guilt. No pretty flowery words do in any way, in shape or form, tone down,
pare away the plight in which I found myself. My friend, can you say from the
heart, I know I'm a sinner? No man can say in truth from the heart, I know I'm a
Christian. Before he can say, I know, I'm a sinner. And the gospel is a message
about sin. It tells men just how bad they are. It doesn't overstate the case. It
doesn't say that every man is as bad as he could be. Every man is as wicked in
intensity as he could be. No, no. It dares to assert that the most moral, the most
upright, the most kind, the most gentle, the most beneficent of men who may be a
blessing to his community and an honor to his society, is nonetheless a rebel
against God and exposed to the wrath of God, liable to the judgment of God. Can
you say that with no tongue in sheep? Can you own your sinnerhood? My friend, if
you cannot, I declare the gospel to you this morning, and I say that you are
precisely what the Word of God declares you to be. You are ungodly. If I were
ungodly, why would I be here? Ah, my friend, that may simply be on the one hand a
wonderful indication that God in the overtures of mercy has put you here that you
might know what you are. Maybe for years you've been in a church that flattered
you and told you you weren't ungodly, you just had a religious elbow out of
joint, and if you come to church you get it back in joint and everything's all
right. You've just got a little myopia in your spiritual vision and get the
glasses of going to church and being sweet and keeping the golden rule and you'll
have 20-20 vision. You see, your presence here may not so much be an indication
you're godly as that Almighty God in mercy has brought you here in His sovereignty
to show you that you're ungodly. My friend, don't look at yourself through the
clouded glasses and through the dim vision of your own natural sight. You look at
yourself in the mirror of the Word of God. And Almighty God declares you to be so
undone, so helpless, so guilty, so much in bondage that nothing less than God
himself coming to the enfleshment of the incarnate Word, living upon this life, in
this earth, in this life, a sinless life, going to an accursed death upon the
cross, feeling the full weight of the Father's wrath and anger, the bruising of
His own head with the rod of righteous judgment. Nothing less than that could
answer to your need. Now you see, there is again this direct proportion between an
appreciation of the glory of Christ and something of the reality of human sin. If
all I have as my problem is that I've got a few joints that need to be reset by
being nice and religious and learning a few things about God and the Bible, why,
my friend, must the Son of God become man? If the problem of human sin is, I've
just done a few bad things and if I say the words to something up there called
God, I'm sorry, then he's beneficent and kind and lovely and it'll all be taken
care of. Why, my friend, must there be the agony of Calvary? If your sin and my
sin is not what the Bible says it is, then Calvary becomes the biggest mockery
that ever occurred on the face of God's earth. The Incarnation is utterly
meaningless. But they are not meaningless. Bless God. Though our state was such
that none but a divine human Savior could answer to the need, God provided such a
Savior. Though our condition was such that nothing but the bruising of the
spotless Son could ever provide a just basis for our acceptance, that is precisely
what God did. It pleased the Lord to produce him. My friend, when the gospel
ceases to be a message about sin, it ceases to have any meaning when it tries to
maintain its message about Jesus Christ. Then the gospel is, and I see time has
gone from me. Roger asked me if this would just be one message. I am assured him
it was. But he knows better than I how those promises sometimes fall to the
ground. Let me just give you a distillation of what we'll cover, Lord willing, in
the next message next Sunday morning. Because I do want to put some attention upon
the bride and the bridegroom already have. But the message of the gospel is not
only a message about God and about sin. If that's all it were, then my friends,
having to be a gospel preacher would be the most bitter task in all the world.
Simply to tell people God is creator and God is holy and man is sinner and he is
condemned, what an awful task. But thank God, standing at the center of the
Bridal Party, is the message about the Lord Jesus Christ in His person and in His
work. And the gospel is an announcement of who He is and of what He has done to
meet the need of guilty, helpless sinners. And that's what turns the gospel and
its elements of bad news into the most glorious good news in all the world. It is
no gospel to come to sinners who know something of who God is, who know something
of what they are, and then tell them, there is something you must do to make
yourself acceptable to that God. That is not good news. The good news is this, that
though you've revolted against that God and He could, With every fiber of His own
holy and just character fully intact, He could judge you and me and cut us off for
eternity. That God, in sovereign, free, uncoerced love, has moved out to sinful
men and has given to sinners a Savior such as our Lord Jesus Christ. And He has
sent Him. He bruised Him. He raised Him. He exalted Him. He has seated Him at His
own right hand. And the good news of the Gospel is that every single sinner,
seeing himself to be what he is in reality, God's creature, who has sinned against
God, incurred guilt, condemnation, and come into bondage, every such sinner,
embracing himself to be what God says he is, is warranted to cast himself upon the
Lord Jesus Christ. And on the basis of who Christ is and what he has done, plus
nothing, all of the guilt is removed. That would be a gospel enough to preach,
but God goes beyond it and says, a positive righteousness is imputed. Not only
does he declare you not guilty, he declares you innocent. in union with His Son,
and the righteousness that is Christ becomes ours as we are in Him. And there is
no condemnation. And by the power and virtue of the living Christ, not only do we
become the benefactors of what we would call the legal aspects of salvation, guilt
removed, declared righteous, but the virtue of a living Christ actually comes to
indwell us. And by the Spirit, we are made new creatures with new desires, new
appetites, new loves, new hates, new aspirations, new perspectives. We become, in
the Word of the Apostle, new creatures in Christ Jesus. The old passes, the new
come. Oh, my friends, that's a wonderful gospel to preach. There are times one
wonders, if I may say it without being reverent, if God really seriously
considered The treasure in which he put that gospel is almost more than the mortal
mind and frame at times can bear. The very thought of it, that this great God
should so love sinners as to make such provision and freely confer all of those
benefits upon those who, and that's the bridesmaid or the maid of honor, repent
and believe the gospel. It's a message about repentance and faith. And these are
not works I perform. For what is faith but the empty hand that lays hold of God's
provision? And repentance is simply the acknowledgment, profoundly the
acknowledgment, that without one pinky holding to the world and the flesh and the
devil, I do desire that salvation and that Savior as He is offered. to save me
from my sins, not to save me so that I can continue in my sins with no fear of
judgment, not to save me from hell to come while
I continue to live in the living hell of my rebellion against God. Now, no, no,
repentance is the acknowledgement of my desire to be saved from my sins. by his
free grace and his mercy. The Lord willing will attempt to open up those last two
elements of the gospel next week, if God spares us. But oh, again, how wonderful
to preach. You need not wait till next week to know the gospel is the power of God
and the salvation. You've heard enough of the good news this morning to warrant
your laying hold of the offered Savior. And oh, dear children of God, Those of
you who frequent this place of worship, you haven't learned one new thing this
morning. I doubt it. Maybe you've heard things stated a little differently. Have
you grown weary with it? Have you sat there this morning and sighed a little bit
and said, oh, when's he going to get back in Ephesians and give us some profound
exit? My friend, listen. That's the spirit that is mother to a relinquishment of
the gospel. When these essential, rude elements cease to be precious and strike a
note of joyous response and are no longer the things for which you die, you've
already in principle given them up and it'll only be a matter of time before
they're gone. Whole denominations, preachers and movements that once proclaimed
this message no longer do. And it began when some who believed it and even
experienced it ceased to be thrilled by it and be willing to pay a price to
propagate it, to preserve and to defend it. So may God renew our love for the
biblical gospel, renew our commitment to that gospel, renew in us the sanctifying
power of that gospel. It takes present influences of the Holy Spirit to give us
present enjoyment of the most elementary truths. Never forget that. Truths that
once burned when the Spirit made them real, and are now settled and lodged in the
categories of memory, need as much the present influence of the Spirit, not to
give us the understanding that's there and settled, but to give us a living
appreciation of that truth. Therefore is only the Spirit constantly present,
constantly operative in the hearts of the people of God that can preserve the
integrity of the gospel. You can't preserve the gospel by embalming it in
printer's ink in a confession of faith. We need our confessions, we have one, to
let people know what we understand the gospel to be. But there's only one thing
that'll preserve the gospel in the heart of a Christian, in the heart of a
congregation. You know what it is? A present ministry of the Spirit making that
gospel precious. And when that goes, it's only a matter of time before everything
else does. Is it precious to you this morning? Do you long to go out and if there
are no people outside, grab the nearest tree and speak this blessed message? Do
you long to gather your children about the table in family worship? Do you tell
them this message? I pity the parent who's not an evangelist to his own children.
all not rubbing their consciences raw every time at the table, are you saved, are
you saved? No, no, that's stupidity, or at best, misguided zeal. But oh, when the
text that you're dealing with, when the passage you're reading, when the Bible
story you're expounding leads naturally, do you love to preach the gospel to your
children? Do you love to proclaim that message? to the man at the shop when you're
having your sandwich together, and the opportunity arises, and you're not boorish
and coarse and unkind. You're gentle, wise as a serpent, harmless as a duck,
always, as it were, laying back with holy scheming. Even when you're talking about
the weather and the this, you're all the time scheming and trying to engineer the
conversation. And then when the Lord opens it up, does your heart leap within you
when you have an opportunity to tell the gospel? Oh, dear people of God, pray
that if the gospel is ceased to be precious, the Lord will give you a new love for
it. And if you're here as one who's never heard the biblical gospel, you've heard
it this morning! And almighty God, who has sent it by his word through his
servant, now says, believe and be saved. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, how we thank
you for that message of good news. And though our hearts are humbled at the bad
news, the announcement of our sin, the recognition of your holiness, how we thank
you that you so loved as to give your only begotten Son. And we thank you for Him
who is not a potential Savior, if we will do this or that. But He is the Savior,
the mighty Deliverer, who shall indeed and with certainty save His people from
their sins. Many of us here in this place this morning have reason to believe we
are your people because we are being saved from our sins. O Lord, bring others to
that blessed discovery, as this day they repent and believe the gospel. And then
we pray, give to us as a church a new love for the gospel. Oh, may this never
become old hat to us. May this never become that which causes us to yawn. But, oh
Lord, keep us in that freshness of our love to the Savior, our love to that
message which you've ordained to be the power of God unto salvation. We pray for
the many young men upon whom your hand is resting for the work of the ministry.
Lord, give them a new love for the gospel, a new understanding of how to preach
it, and then all of the grace they'll need to preach the full-orbed apostolic
gospel in a day when that gospel is despised, watered down, denied, ignored, O
God, give to our own needy generation an army of mighty gospel preachers. Hear us,
Lord, in this our prayer, and dismiss us with your blessing and benediction
resting upon us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.