What are you going to do? Well, we are just going to hang out
together for three days. Well, are you going to listen to great preaching? No.
We are just going to hang out together for three days. Well, what about
preaching? We do that a lot, but we are just going to hang out together for
three days. We’ll listen to each other’s testimonies and talk about Christ. I
have met so many people here even this weekend that I have never met and it has
been such a great joy. I spent a lot of time with old brother Luke back there
and just talking about so many things and you really need to pray for him. He
has gone through some things that few men… he has gone through something in
particular that few men could ever endure and survive. And I have been praying
for him and I mean this year his wife started hunting and she killed a bigger
deer than he did. I know few men who can survive a trial like that.

And so pray for him. Pray for him also because I plan to go to
Iowa and have no mercy on him either. But I will tell you. I know I seem to be
running on, but cherish moments like these. Cherish times like these. Cherish
being able to be brought into the presence of another believer in whom dwells
the Christ. It is such a great privilege. Today I don’t even know where to
begin. I want to talk about prayer, but then in order to talk about prayer there
are other things that you have to understand and in order to talk about
those things there are other things that you must understand. If I were to
address anyone, address my own son about prayer I couldn’t go on to the things
of prayer until one seed was solidly sown in his heart. And that is this. God is
good. God is good. Now, I know you say, “Ok. Let’s go on now. Let’s learn some
things about God.”

No you could spend an eternity just trying to understand that
God is good. And the way I see most believers live, even those that are very
pious, much more devoted than I am, the lack of joy and the lack of believing
that God is for them, they are so mesmerized by their own failure that they
don’t even see that is not even the point and that the whole… are you
expecting one day to be swallowed up in the fact that you finally know how to
live the Christian life? Are you expecting one day to draw all your confidence
from the fact that finally you are able to dot every eye and cross every T? I
mean what are you expecting, to one day arrive and then come into this great
joy? You are never going to arrive and therefore you are never going to come
into this great joy because the great joy doesn’t come from that. It is not your
continuous work for God, but Christ’s finished work for you. And that is what
you must understand. I want us to look for just a moment. We are going to hop
all around today and I want you to go to Ephesians for a moment in chapter two.
In talking about prayer there is… and talking about the goodness of God there
is something I would like to say. Sometimes, you know, if we were to speak with
a doctor, Dr Barry or just any physician, do you realize that he would know much
more about my wife than I do. Do you realize that? A physician could sit down
and tell me things about my wife that I never knew with regard to how her heart
works and how her muscles contract and expand and how well all the different
things about how her body works…. He knows more about my wife than I do, than
I ever will. He can grasp concepts about my wife that are so far beyond my tiny
mind that I will never be able to know them. But he doesn’t know my wife like I
know my wife.

It is the same thing in everything about God, especially for the
young theologian. You need to understand this. You may be able to quote the
Westminster. You may be able to… you may understand the Greek and the Hebrew
and you may read so many books, but do you know him? You may be able to analyze
him, but do you walk with him? Do you know him?

Sometimes we are so concerned about knowing all this stuff that
we are like the difference between a scientist and a child. My little boy Ian,
for example, I mean the kid could pass out from excitement by looking at a white
wall. You know, and you stand there and you have this scientist and he is
looking at a sunset and he is explaining how the light reflects and all these
different things and why these colors occur and why this happens and what
exactly the tilt of the earth and the clouds and the atmosphere and everything
and my little boy is just looking at him like… But the colors. He wants an
explanation. The little boy just wants to look at the colors, just wants to see
the beauty, just wants to wonder how God painted such a thing, from where did he
get the paint and what was his brush?

It is the same way in so many things about God. You want to know
this. You want to know that. You want to… how do you pray? How do you study?
How do you do all these things? But the thing that you most need to do is just
look and go whoa. Just look at him. There is such a difference between knowing
truth and knowing God. Now knowing truth is a means. It is part of the journey.
It is essential. It is foundational. But it is not the whole thing. It is not
the whole thing. And that is why a little old woman in Romania who can barely
read the Bible can experience more of the workings and the truth of God than a
man who can read it backwards and forwards in the original language.

Now when we look at Ephesians chapter two we understand
something extremely important. Why has God saved you? You know, I have heard
people say, “Well, God has saved you to serve.” Did he have a need? And if he
did have a need, couldn’t he have found somebody better than you? Well, first of
all he doesn’t have a need and yes he could have found somebody better than you
and better than me. And so him saving us to serve I think is pretty much out of
the question. Now we need to serve, but that is not the purpose for which he
saved us. It is not like God has a need. Why has he saved us? Has he saved us so
that we would love him? Well, again, did he need to be loved? Did he save us so
that somehow we would so love him and if we do so love him who is being exalted?
God or us? Is our love to be the topic of the thing of the Christian life? So,
no he didn’t save us just to love him. Why did he save us? If you look in
Ephesians chapter two, going down through there, beginning in verse one talking
about us being dead in our trespasses and sins and all the heinous crimes we
committed in verses two and three. And we get to four and it says, “But God.”1

• Ephesians 2:4

I have a sign in my office. It is quilted and it is in a frame.
And it just has two words, “But God.”2 And every time there is a trial. Every
time there is a weakness of mind that prevails, every time I stumble and fall,
every time I don’t know what I am going to do because things I have already done
that were wrong, I look up and I see those two words, “But God.”3 And that is
all I need. That is all I need. And he goes: But God, being rich in mercy,
because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus… Why? Why has he done all these things? “So that in the ages
to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us
in Christ Jesus.” Why has God saved you? He has saved you to make a
demonstration out of you. He has saved you to demonstrate something about
himself. Now, let’s just imagine for a moment Bill Gates gets a lot of
publicity. Everyone is always talking bad about Bill Gates. I mean, after all,
you get 100 billion dollars and there are going to be people who are jealous.
And like all men he has his faults.

But let’s say that Bill Gates has some terrible publicity
lately. People talking about him, saying he is unkind and cruel and all sorts of
things. So he decides, look. I have got to give the world a demonstration of how
good I am. So I am going to find the lowliest person on the face of the earth
that I can find. He picks one of you college students. And he says, “I am going
to do nothing but lavish on them absolutely the full extent of all my wealth.”

Would any of you like to be volunteers? And, you see, here is
the thing. The lowlier you are and the least you deserve, the less you deserve,
the more magnified in being good to you. Do you see that? Jesus even gave us the
principle. I mean, if you love someone who loves you back, I mean what glory is
in that? You treat those kind who treat you kind, what glory is there in that? I
mean how do you show unconditional love? There is only one way. You show it upon
the one who meets none of the conditions. This has never been about you meeting
the condition so that somehow God would love you. It has always been about God
glorifying himself by loving you unconditionally, you who meet none of the
conditions. Do you see that?

• Ephesians 2:4-6

• Ephesians 2:7

I see Christians all the time and they are in this thing even
though they would not say it. If you look at their life, they are in this thing
of somehow being worthy of something. And that is not what Christianity is
about. Now, back up for a moment and I will say this. The teaching that I am
going to give today, the carnal, unconverted, wicked church member will listen
to it and go, “Man, I can just keep on sinning and keep on walking in
ungodliness and God is going to bless me.” But the true Christian, the true
believer will hear these things and say, “If these things are so, I want so much
to be for him. I want so much to serve him. I want so much to be a blessing and
a pleasure to him.” And we look at this passage: “So that in the ages to come He
might show the surpassing riches of His grace.”

What is grace? Unmerited favor. So he has saved you so that he
could show principalities and powers and mights and dominions every created
thing in heaven and on earth and in hell. He has saved you for one purpose, to
lavish upon you all that is his, all of his love, all of his loving kindness,
all of his goodness throughout all of eternity upon you so that every creature
that turns a glance towards you can only fall down on their face and worship God
for his goodness. Folks, if you are a Christian, you have got a pretty good
future ahead of you, perspectives are very, very good for you. Think about that.
Think about that. Think about that. All that the very reputation of the glory of
God which he is so concerned about, he is giving a demonstration.

Now, let me give you another example that say that you have an
ailment of the heart. You need a heart transplant. There is no one available and
so I march up there to the hospital and I say, “Look. I am willing to die. Take
my heart. Give it to the young man.” And they say, “Ok.” All right? Put me up
there on the table. They take out my heart. I pass away. They put my healthy
heart in you and you live. The next morning the newspapers, about whom are they
going to be speaking? Are they going to be talking about you? Are they going to
be talking about how wonderful you are? Are they going to be talking about how
just absolutely special you are? Are they going to be raving about your moral
character? Are they going to be talking good things about you? Are they going to
be amazed with you? No. They are going to be amazed with me. They are going to
be awestruck about me because I am the one who gave it. It is not the one who
receives the gift that gains the glory. It is the one who gives the gift to the
one who does not deserve it. And that is what this is about.

I hear people all the time saying, “Well, I just want my life to
glorify God. I just want my life to glorify God.” And there is a sense, a very
important sense in which we are to live our life to the glory of God, whether we
eat or drink, do the most menial task, it is unto the glory of God. But that is
not the primary way in which God is glorified in you. God is not worshipped and
God is not adored and creatures do not stand in awe of God because of what you
do for him. They stand in awe of God because of what he does for you. And that
is one of the greatest and most important truth behind all praying. Now, I want
us to go for a moment to Jeremiah. Let’s go to Jeremiah 32 for just a moment.
Now in verse 40, talking about the new covenant he says, “I will make an
everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them
good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn
away from Me..”

Now I want you to look at something here. He has made an
everlasting covenant with them, not only not to turn away from his people, but
he has made an everlasting covenant, an unending promise to do them good. I can
tell you without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that our master withholds no
good thing from his people. Our master withholds no good thing from his people.
And he has made a covenant. He has made an everlasting promise to do you good.
Now, I want us to stop there for a moment because this type of language
sometimes makes us almost think that God is… All right. I have entered into
this covenant with you and I am going to do you good because I don’t break my
promises. I mean if it wasn’t for this covenant you would be history. But now I
have entered into this covenant and I don’t break my promises and, yeah, you are
a rat. And, yeah, you stink. And, yeah, you don’t deserve anything from me, but
I have entered into a covenant and I am going to keep my promise. But look at
the next text verse 41. “I will rejoice over them to do them good. I will
rejoice over them to do them good.”

So it is not… I mean, we would never say these things, but if
you look at the way we live and if you look at our attitudes and you look at our
lack of joy and we look at the way we grumble before God and the things we say
about ourselves, we almost like, “Well, you know, praise God. Even though I am a
stinking rotten wretch, stink in the nostrils of God, he has made a covenant to
do me good and he will do it because he doesn’t fail in his promises.” That is
not what he says. He says, “I will rejoice over you to do you good.”

• Jeremiah 32:40

• Jeremiah 32:41

Now why is that? It is because of what we talked about last
night, you see. When Christ died, right before he died he said, “It is
finished.” What is finished? Sin is finished. Enmity with God is finished. It is
finished. The work or reconciliation, it is finished. Here, you see, when you
doubt these things you are not doubting your own goodness. You shouldn’t have
been trusting in your own goodness to start off with. What you are doubting in
is the power of the cross. The power of the cross put away all your sin. But not
only that, through the perfect life of Jesus Christ, his perfect death on the
tree, his resurrection from the dead, not only have you been forgiven, but the
righteousness of Christ has been given to you. Your standing before God is
always right. And you say, “But how can that be? Because look what I have done
even after being a Christian.” Don’t you understand? It is not about you. It is
about him. It is about his work on the cross. He always sees you now as his
beloved Son in whom he is well pleased. And he rejoices over his people to do
them good.

If I had to look at most Christians, even true Christians’ lives
and lie to him based on their life it would be something like this. You are God
and I am a worm. Step on me and watch me squirm. I think this is like… And so
many people have this type of attitude and they have it thinking they are being
humble when, in fact, what they are doing is casting doubt upon the perfect work
of God in Christ. Part of boldness… now again, a carnal unconverted person
will take this and twist it. But part of boldness is going, “Yes, I can stand in
his presence. Yes, I can enter in where angels fear to tread.” And then when the
devil rises up and says, “But you are not…” Listen. We have been through that
before. This is not about the younger brother. This is not about the younger
sister. This is about the elder brother who is not ashamed to call us his
brothers and his sisters. This is about him. He says, well, the Christian is the
only person who can say, the only person that can honestly say they are going to
heaven and can stand in the presence of God without being proud because their
entire standing and their entire entering in is based on the virtue and the
merits of another. And so when feel as though we can’t enter in, when we feel as
though he does not love us, when we begin to think this way, we are not being
humbled. We are saying the cross has no power, that the work is not finished. We
are saying… when we say that God is not pleased with us, what we are really
saying is God was not pleased with him.

• John 19:30

The work is perfect or it is not perfect at all. The work paid
for everything or it paid for nothing. It says he will no longer count our sin.
My friend, what do you think that means? If you have one sin you go to hell. He
doesn’t have to count very long, just one sin. But all of them have been removed
through Christ. So there is a boldness, a holy boldness, a joyful boldness to
just enter in. Why? Because of him, because of him. It is the one who enters in
and thinks they can enter in because of some righteous deed in themselves that
do violence to the truth of Christianity. But you are not that way, are you?
Haven’t you learned that you stand upon Christ alone or you stand upon nothing?
And if you stand upon Christ alone, it is enough, it is enough. But look at this
passage. He says not only that he will make a covenant, that he has made a
covenant to do his people good, but look at—and I want to use a word here very
loosely—look at the attitude of God. I know it is… or the disposition of God
in doing his people good. Look what he says. He says, verse 41 of chapter 32, “I
will rejoice over them to do them good.”10 Do you see that?

Now this is the language of a bride groom with his bride. This
is the language. I know a lot of you young guys aren’t married, but about the
happiest moment of your life is going to be after you get married. The fact that
you have entered into a relationship with… you are just so excited. You are
just as though you are going to run into a wall. You don’t even know what to do.
You are so happy. And that’s good. You ought to be. The problem in the Church
today is not too much passion, it is a lack thereof, all these dead holy people,
they just… they are boring. Passion. I mean, whoa. That’s right. Amen. At
least there’s one that’s alive here this morning. But it is like I can’t wait. I
can’t wait. I can’t wait. Man, preacher get through this thing. Get the wedding
over. No I am not going to the reception. Jump in the car. I am gone. I can’t
wait. God is going, “I can’t wait.” Man. What are you going to do today, Lord? I
am going to do my people good. I am going to do them good. I am going to do them
good.

• Jeremiah 32:41

Oh, yeah, sure. I could go out there and create another couple
of gajillion universes. Oh, yeah, I could sit here all day and talk to you
angels. I am going to do my people good. I can’t wait. I rejoice over that. It
brings delight to my heart to do my people good. And most of God’s people almost
think that God grudgingly does it because he has entered into some contract to
do it. No. He rejoices to do it. And that is so exciting to me. And it is not he
rejoices to do it to Charles Spurgeon or to Mary Slessor of Calabar or to Amy
Carmichael or to brother Elliot or to John Piper, but to his people and to the
lowliest and most humble of his people he rejoices more to do them good. Why?
More glory. All of eternity, remember this, all of eternity will be nothing but
God lavishing his riches upon your head so that all the angels in heaven stand
there every day if you could say something about glory, every exceeding, every
passing day in glory he will reap, he will heap upon your head a greater and
greater degree of blessing and angels will fall into greater and greater heights
of adoration because of the goodness he has shown to you. But may I ask you a
question? Does eternal life begin when you die? Or does it begin the moment you
are born again? And this demonstration that God seeks to give, does he seek to
give it only to glorified saints made perfect? Or does it start now? It starts
now. It starts now. It starts the moment you believe. Start lavishing upon you.

Anything that I am—I may not be much, but anything that I am—any
blessing, it is just a product of God’s goodness. That is all it is. That is all
it is. And the sad thing about it is I have not more because I ask not for more.
He rejoices to do you good. He rejoices to do you good. He is excited about
doing you good. So many people down through the ages, even up to today have
almost spent their entire lives seeking the favor of some earthly king. Men who
have taken care of an ancient relative only because they hope somehow that an
inheritance will be left to them, men who have given everything just to get into
the presence of someone who has power and hopes that somehow they might be
blessed. And yet the very king of glory has made an everlasting covenant to
rejoice over you in doing you good. Now why is he so concerned with this? Well,
you can say for his own glory and I appreciate that, because that is true, but
be very, very careful. Be very careful with that statement because he also does
it because he is love. He is love. One of the problems that I have—and I don’t
have many—but one of the dangers especially of young men talking about God doing
everything for his glory is that if you don’t see the whole…. you see, if you
emphasize even that, if you emphasize anything about God as the greatest thing
you are probably going to get off the mark, because God is just too big to be
brought into this is everything it is all about. The fact of the matter is God
does everything for his own glory. It is true. It is true. We will spend a life
time rejoicing in that and in eternity doing the same.

But he not only saves you because he wants to get some glory for
himself, he saves you because he really does love you and he really does love
you for this reason. He has decided to. And he is love. It is not just something
he wants to express. As a matter of fact the only reason God wants to express
love is because it is what he is. It is not something he just decides either. He
is love and he is love in absolutely everything he does.

You see, we… especially reformed guys. It is like, you know,
all these covenants and things and they are all… there is a lot of that that
is so important and so true and because of this God does this and all these
different legal and forensic things and they are all true. I spoke about them
last night. But be very careful. You turn this into almost a politic. He is love
and he loves you. He rejoices over you. This is not just about making a promise
that he is going to keep. This is because he really does…

Do you think it is hard for him to keep that promise? That is a
question I like to ask people. Do you think he has made this promise and it is a
hard thing for him to keep? Well, look at me. How could it not be? He is not
looking at you. He is looking at Christ and his finished work that is really,
real. And it is not a hard thing to keep in the same way that for a believer, a
true believer that has been regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit the
commandments of God are not a burden to him. One of the reasons is not just that
he is a new creature. It says that he has a love in him for God. God’s
commandments are not a burden to us. God’s promises are not a burden to him. He
freely makes them because of love. He is freely able to love because of the
cross of Jesus Christ which is a perfect work. So if you are going to understand
prayer you have to believe something. God is willing to do you good. God has
promised to do you good and more than that God rejoices over you to do you good.
Much of our piety… I have to speak in a couple of weeks at a conference on the
denial of self, the practice of cutting things out of your life, of self
sacrifice, things like that. That is the topic they have given me. But when you
address this issue along with prayer and everything else, you have got to
understand something.

Do you realize that most people’s idea of what happened in the
Exodus is based more on the movie Moses or the film The 10
Commandments than it is actually on the Bible? Do you know a great amount of
our views of self denial are based upon an extremely perverted Middle Ages type
of Catholic theology? Do you realize that our ideas of piety and prayer and
everything are based on things that are not scriptural? You would be surprised
how influenced you are by those things, of what it means to be pious, what it
means to deny self. You would be surprised if just if I were to ask you for a
moment— and I would never do this—but for you to actually, physically in your
mind try to imagine what Jesus looked like.

Do you know what is amazing? It will be basically 16th century
Catholic art that was painted by some homosexual that will come up in your
brain. Do you see how powerful that is? You have to throw out all these ideas.
Oh, he is so close to God. Well, why? Have you ever asked that question? God
really uses that guy. Well, why? Why? What has he got that you don’t have? What
has he done that you haven’t done? What is it? All my life… Young preacher,
listen to me. All my young preaching life I would look at a lot of good
preachers and I would think, you know, what is it that they got that… that…
I mean, how did they get that close? How did they… what was it they did? What?
Who? And then some of them will actually portray… Bless God, young men, if you
want to be used like I am being used you need to do this, what I have done. I
love for young men to come and stay with me for about three or four weeks. I
just love it. Go to Peru with me and things like that so that they can learn
what real Christianity is about. You follow me around, buddy. You will know what
it means to walk with God. You will get off that plane. You will think I am the
apostle Paul. Three weeks with me you will be praying for my salvation and you
will walk back to the States totally disappointed. And it is not because I don’t
want to be godly and it is not because I don’t want to be Christ like. The
problem is you are just going to see nothing but a person that God is merciful
to. You would be surprised. I am amazed. I think sometimes I see young men who
think too much of me. I will personally ask them to go to Peru with me and I am
thinking that when they finally discover this is the grace of God, they will be
so free and so happy and, in fact, most of them get disappointed and angry. And
why?

They are not revealing something about me. They are revealing
something about them. They want to earn something. They want to be something so
that the bless God they can tell people why God uses them. I don’t have a clue
why God uses me. Except that he is good and he has been kind and he rejoices
over his people to do his people good. Now, again, a carnal person will take
that and say, “Man, let’s not worry about prayer. Let’s not read. Just live like
hell and God will bless us.” But if you are truly a Christian you are going to
go, “Whoa. I just heard a bell ring of freedom.”

And freedom is part of what it is all about. Free. That song, I
keep going back to it, but I love that song. You do not want me to sing it in
the shower, but I do. I sing because I am happy. I sing because I am free. Now.
We are running out of time and we haven’t even begun to talk about prayer which
is usually something that I do. I want you to go just quickly to Luke 18 verse
one and I am not going to have… I am just going to try to address this first
verse. “Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought
to pray and not to lose heart.” Now there is a tremendous ministry that Satan
has. You know, he is called the accuser and he is the accuser. But there is a
real way in which Satan can be called our advocate. Now, just let me explain
what I am talking about. Or, at least, he seeks to portray himself as our
advocate, our helper. You know, look at… God gives Adam and Eve absolutely an
entire garden. Satan fails to mention that, doesn’t he? Anything you want in
this garden is yours except what? This tree. All right. So Satan comes and says,
“Man.” You know, just rolls his eyes a little bit. “Well, I see you have talked
to deity over there. Man, can you believe that? He won’t let you have this tree.
Man. I would let you have the tree.” Really?

Jesus talks about what kind of Messiah that he was. Satan cared
about him so much, walks over to him through Peter and says, “Now, look, Jesus.
You think. God never asked you to do that and if he did, I mean, what kind of
God is he? All right?” I see this so much in Christians. “Well, I prayed and I
have prayed, but I mean, I just… no answer. I have just lost heart in all of
this.” And someone walks over and goes, “Oh, dear you.” Oh, dear you? Oh, dear
you? You just accused God. You just accused God. I think it was in Anne of
Green Gables or something the lady she was staying with there and she said
something about, “Oh, I am so depressed or desperate,” or something. And the
lady said, “To be that way is to turn your back on God.”

• Luke 18:1

And, of course in the movie they kind of portrayed it as harsh,
but look at what you are… when you lose heart in prayer, I mean, what are you
saying? What are you really saying? “God didn’t answer me. I have just lost
heart. He didn’t answer me when I asked and I have lost heart.” You should never
lose heart because he withholds no good thing from his people. You should never
lose heart. You pray and you keep praying. “How long do I pray, brother Paul?”
Well, let me just give you the answer. This is how long you pray. You pray for
what you desire in your heart until God answers you or until he shows you either
the desire is wrong or it is not the desire’s time. You just keep praying until
he gives you what you seek or until he directs you in another way. But you don’t
lose heart. Why? Because he is the all sovereign God who loves you and cares for
you. If he answers you and gives you what you desire, then it is for your good.
If he withholds an answer for you and makes you tarry before him for 15 years it
is for your good. If he tells you no it is for your good. Whatever he does is
for your good. As a matter of fact in the believer’s life there is nothing that
ever happens to the child of God that is not good. No evil will come upon you or
befall you, no evil, no evil.

You say, “Well, you have got to be kidding me. You sound like
one of these charismatic preachers now.” No, I don’t, because here is the great
difference: Our definition of evil and our definition of good. What is good?
That which most conforms you to the image of Jesus Christ and that which in
eternity will add up to the greatest weight of glory. So what happens? If I am
healthy it is a good thing. With my health I have a good deal of responsibility
to use my health for his glory. If my health is taken away, is it a bad thing?
No. It is a good thing. Why? It leads to greater conformity to everything he
does. There is nothing evil that can befall me. I mean terrorists come in, shoot
me down. What? I go home. “Yeah, but your wife and your children. I mean your
wife is without a husband and your children are without a father.” Really?
Really? What about him being a husband to my wife? What about God being a Father
to my children? If my children are left without a father all the days of their
life, I can honestly say and my wife has told me this over and over, she says,
“It is a good thing.”

But if in God’s sovereign will he desires for you to be here it
is a good thing. If I am given a home it is a good thing. If that home is taken
away it is a good thing. You see, the thing about prayer… When Jesus talks
about the model prayer there in Matthew chapter six. You know, you have to
understand something. Every one of these things and over in Matthew seven where
it says, “Seek, you know, you will find. Knock it will be open.” All these
things, they are all in the context of the person who has set in their mind this
thing. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.”

Prayer can only be accomplished in the life of the believer who
has set for themselves the will of God as being the priority, the advancement of
God’s kingdom as being the priority. Absolutely everything in our life has to do
with that. In this circle we call the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of
God. Can God make me prosperous economically? Yes. Why will he do it? He will do
it only to conform me to the image of Christ and to advance his kingdom. But if
he can conform me to the image of Christ and advance his kingdom and give me a
greater weight of glory in glory, then he will take that away. That is the way
it works. That is the way it works.

The problem is when your desires are set against his, when you
desire something other than your conformity to Christ and the advancement of his
kingdom. If you set those two things in your heart, conformity to Christ, the
advancement of God’s kingdom, the praise of his glory, then your life becomes
like a rock because you sit there and say, “If God gives me the ability to speak
and I can preach, praise God. If an aneurism goes off in my head and I am left
with nothing but a small ability to lift a prayer to God even in silence, praise
God. He has given me a ministry of intercession.” It is all about him. And when
it is no longer about us and it is all about him we are free. We are free. Then
no evil can befall us. And then prayer always makes sense. It always makes
sense, always. Trust in the absolute goodness of God. Now, I wish I… I want so
much to… let me just iterate this. To lose heart has everything to do with
doubting God’s goodness, God’s wisdom, God’s sovereignty. It is to cast
aspersion upon the character of God. This is not an option for the believer.

Now here is the passage in verse two through eight that doesn’t
fit in to anybody’s theology. I mean… and let me tell you something about
fitting theology and making it work. Let me just tell you something. Proper
theology, the proper study of the person and things of God should always be like
this. Look at it as having a suitcase and having too many clothes to put in that
suitcase. You get the suitcase all tucked in on one side where the zipper will
go around. If it is too many clothes, what is going to happen? It is going to go
out on the other side, isn’t it? No matter how perfect you get this corner to
fit, it is not going to fit over here because there is just too many clothes to
go in the suitcase. That is the way your systematic theology ought to be.

• See Matthew 7:7

• See Matthew 6:33

But I want to tell you. If you can get all that stuff tucked in
to a perfect suitcase or your little box and then you can close it, I want you
to know you have manipulated something or left something out in order to do it.
And that is the way these passages are. I believe in the sovereignty of God. I
can tell you with R.C. Sproul there is not a maverick molecule in the universe.
I can say all of that and it is true, true, true. But I can also say, “You have
not because you ask not.” A man one time got very angry with me. He said—because
we were praying for revival. I don’t know why they were praying for revival. We
were praying for revival and I started to weep and cry out to God for revival.
Afterwards he was very angry with me. He said, “Why are you weeping? Why this
emotional display? If God wants to send revival he will send revival.”

And I said, “Then why on earth are asking for it?” You see and
then he sat down with me and he goes, “But that’s not right.” I said, “Listen,
sir. The difference is this. I am a theologian and you are a philosopher.” He
really got mad then. He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Sir, a theologian
sits there and goes, The Bible says this is true. God is one. The Bible says
this is true. There are three persons who are God, individual. They are persons.
They are distinct. Jesus ,the Son, the Father, the Holy Spirit. Now I can, as a
theologian sit there a bit and work with this thing. But always realizing these
are inferences I am going to create.”

The same with prayer. God is absolutely sovereign and you have
not because you ask not. Now putting all that together probably you really…
you should just go ahead and pray and believe these two things rather than
spending your life trying to figure them out. It is just like with the trinity.
All heresy regarding the trinity came from those who sought to deny it and those
who sought to explain it. Just affirm it. There is a sense of the older I get
the less I have time to wrangle about words and concepts that are too big for
me. Like a weaned child I am going to walk beside him and hope in the God of
Israel. If he tells me he is sovereign I stand on that sovereignty like a rock.
If he tells me I have not because I ask not, I ask.

• See James 4:2

Oh, you know, that is why children are a lot happier than
adults. And that is why child likeness, not childishness, but child likeness is
important to walk with God. You spend less time trying to figure him out and
just more time listening to him you would do well. And he says here, he says
here… he makes it… he says, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not
fear God and did not respect man.”15 What is God doing? He is… this is all
about the character of God. He is setting up something for us to display his
character and give us an opportunity to trust in him. He is going to say, “Now.
I am going to tell you about a wicked, immoral being, a loveless, wicked,
immoral man, this judge. Did not fear God, did not respect man. He didn’t like
anybody.” He goes on. “There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to
him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’”16 Now he goes and
makes this hole even deeper. Not only is the judge immoral, wicked and loveless,
but he would be that way to the rich man in the city. How much to a widow that
has absolutely no economic, political, physical power, nothing. She has nothing,
absolutely nothing. I mean he is… get out of here. He’d treat her like a dog.
If you think I am exaggerating you don’t understand this culture. She was
nothing. He goes on. It says, “Give me legal protection from my opponent.”17 I
say, “Get out of here.” But look what it says. For a while he was unwilling; but
afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man,
yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise
by continually coming she will wear me out.’ Now, here is a wicked man who is
loveless and immoral. Here is a woman that has absolutely nothing in her to
motivate him to do something. She has no power, no nothing of worth before him.
Yet because she continually comes to him, she is… he is like, “Oh, my gosh.
Not her. Ok. Fine. I give up. I quit. I will do whatever you want. Just leave me
alone.”

• Luke 18:2

• Luke 18:3

• Luke 18:4-5

Now, that is a grotesque picture of an unjust man. The whole
situation is just ugly and vile. And yet look at what he is saying. And the Lord
said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about
justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over
them?”

Now, again the contrast: this wicked judge who is loveless and
immoral, if he will do these things, what do you think about God who is already,
as we said in Ephesians chapter two and Jeremiah 32, who not only has made a
covenant to do you good, but rejoices over you to do you good? I will never
forget how this played out and God played this out in my own life. It wasn’t
just a coincidence. It was on purpose. I will never forget this. It was one of
the greatest teachings on prayer I ever heard in my life. I was up in… I had
written a discipleship book that was kind of like it was a discipleship book for
Latin America and it just went trough all kinds of things about the Christian
life and very simple and people really liked it. Well, I went up into the
mountains and I had just enough, we had run out of them and I had just enough
for several pastors that I had in mind that I was going to give it away to them.

The first day that I got the conference up in the mountains, all
these just poor pastors, the first day was like this 15, 16 year old boy. He saw
them. And he goes, “Can I have one?” I said, “Get away from me, kid. You bother
me. These are for pastors.” I didn’t really say that, but that was the way I
felt. It was like, “No.” I said, “I can’t.” I said, “These are for pastors.” I
said, “You know, there is a limited number of pastors and I can’t… I just
can’t give you one, I’m sorry.”

The next day… I mean I got up in the morning and I come out of
the hut, you know, wipe the sleep out of my face and I am like… and there he
is right in front of me. “Can I have a workbook?” Every day, every night, every
time at lunch. I thought about maybe I can just take him out back and just beat
the living daylights out of him. I mean he was absolutely driving me out of my
mind. My wife, I came in one day and I am like, “I am going to kill him.” Like
what is going on? “That kid has… look, he is right out there.” And there is
not even a back door to this hut. I can’t get out of this place. Finally the
last day I go to a pastor and I go, “Look, I am really sorry I can’t give you
one of these.”

• Luke 18:6-7

“Why?” “Because I am going to take it over to this kid because I
am either going to kill him or he is going to kill me.”And I gave it to him. He
just drove me absolutely out of my mind, which wasn’t a very far journey. And
then I mean I sat down. I wasn’t thinking about this passage. I wasn’t thinking
about anything and I sat down. I finally got… he was away from me. I sat down
on a log and I am sitting there going, “Oh, thank God. It is over. It is over.”
And God said, “Now, hear what the Lord says.” Now, I can tell you what. I can
start right now if you want. We can spend the next two hours. I can back up. I
can put a suit on. And I can speak with you regarding some very high theology. I
can clean this whole thing up and I can make it look and fit something that
really seems to have a great deal of integrity. The way I have been preaching
this just sounds too vulgar for a good sermon. We can back up and we can do
that. And we can explain this passage away. We can. We can make it look so good
and just explain it away.

I am not going to do that. I use the word “vulgar” in the Latin
sense of being common, not high speaking. There is a real sense in which this
parable itself, this story itself, this story itself is vulgar. It sets before
us something that you either have to just go, “Ok, all right. I am going to take
what I have here.” Or you can spend a great deal of time dressing this thing up
and sucking all the power out of it. And I won’t do that. What is he basically
telling us? You pray and don’t lose heart. You storm heaven. You knock on the
door. You lay there. You get on his doorstep and you stay there every day. Now,
this would be rude to do this to such a high king unless such a high king tells
you to do it. He tells you to do it. I don’t understand the passage that well.
But he tells us to do it.

Do you believe? One of the saddest verses in the entire Bible in
my opinion… look in verse seven of 18, Luke 18. I am going to stop, but he
says: Now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and
night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about
justice for them quickly.20

• Luke 18:7-8

I am telling you. You endure. You pray. You don’t lose heart.
You cry out to this good and loving God who is all sovereign and rejoices to do
good over you. You cry out to him. He is going to do something. And then it is
like he stops and goes, “But then again, when I come back will I even find
anybody believing me about this? Is anybody really going to believe it? When the
Son of Man comes, will he find any kind of faith like this on the earth?” You
know, I never see anywhere in Scripture where Jesus marvels over a man’s ability
to espouse correct theology. I never see him stand amazed at someone’s intellect
or someone’s great ability to grasp the major issues of the Christian faith. But
I do see him amazed at someone’s faith and I do see him amazed at other people’s
unbelief. It is not believing that he will give you exactly everything that you
ask of him. It is believing that he will work and do greater things than what
you can ask or think. You see, here is the way it comes down over the long tem,
over the many years of prayer. Here is what you discover. He does not always
give you everything you ask for, but over the long term you quickly recognize
that he always does for you greater than anything you could ever ask or think.
And I am always hearing preachers say that most of you don’t have the answers to
prayer that you are asking for because you don’t continue praying and that is
something of what I have said. But let me listen to you. I mean let me tell you
something very, very important. Listen. It is not that God has not answered many
of your prayers. God has answered more of your prayers that most of you can even
realize. It is just we ask for things and totally forget about it. And then
three or four years down the line he answers it in a far greater way than we
could have ever asked or thought. And we do not praise him. You are not a
people… if you are the people of God I will not tell you, “You don’t have your
prayers answered.” I will tell you, “You have more prayers answered than you
ever imagined.” And that ought to encourage you because look at the pitiful
praying you have done and then look back and see that he has answered those far
beyond anything of your faith. That encourages me. That encourages me.

Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for every facet of who you are, for everything
you are, absolutely everything that you are. Thank you for everything you have
done, everything you are going to do. Thank you for prayers you have answered.
Thank you for prayers that you will answer. Thank you for absolutely everything
in Jesus’ name. Amen.

• See Luke 18:8

Before we read our text, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, I praise you for your kindness, your loving kindness toward us. Your mercies are new every morning. You have taken all our sins and put them as far from you as the East is from the West. You have done great things in your Son who died and rose again from the dead, through your Spirit who makes the dead alive and causes us to call out, “Abba, Father,” to love you, to have a passion for the things that are important to you. Father, we need you, your strength, your grace, your power, your mercy. Apart from your Son we can do nothing. Father, I do not have a handle on you to coerce or manipulate you, but I would ask in the name of your Son and for his glory and honor that you would work among us, that you would instruct your people that they might understand your works and see that they are perfect and in you there is no fault, that they would grow and they would be all that you would have them to be. Father, give us wisdom for it is inherent in you and any wisdom that we have is derived from you. So with faith and hope we ask for wisdom to know your Scriptures and that your truth would be applied to our hearts. Father, help us and we will be helped. Change us and we will be changed. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Before we go to our text I want to summarize a few of the things we have gone through so far this week. First, we started out dealing with the evidences of true conversion. We live in a day and age in Christianity where everyone in America believes they are saved because one time in their life they prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to come into their heart.

We know that men are saved by repentance and faith and whoever does call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But salvation is a supernatural work of God that will always produce fruit. And the evidence, not the cause, but the evidence of salvation is a changed life, a changing life. Jesus made this very clear in Matthew chapter seven when he said, “You shall know them by their fruits.” See Matthew 7:16

Paul was clear when he said, “Test yourselves, examine yourselves to see whether or not you are in the faith.”2 There is no such thing as a continuously carnal Christian. Do Christians sin? Yes, absolutely. But can Christians live in a state of sin without discipline and without being brought back in obedience to their Father? Absolutely not. Are people saved by making a decision? Yes, we must make a decision of the will. We must repent. We must believe. But how do we do that? We do that by the power of God and the work of the Holy Spirit that regenerates the heart and makes us able to repent and believe. For even repentance and faith are gifts from God. They are works of his grace. But we have a problem today. For decades in this country we have heard evangelists tell us about the hour of decision and the need to make our decision. And so most people today are trusting in a decision and the sincerity of their own heart when they made it.

For example, if you ask someone, “Are you a Christian? Are you going to heaven?” most will say, “Yes.” When you ask them why they will say something like, “I made my decision. I prayed my prayer.” They are hoping in a decision, the sincerity of a decision instead of looking unto Christ. How are we saved? Not by simply making a decision or praying a prayer. We are saved by looking unto Christ. We have looked at our self in the light of God’s Word and we realize that we cannot save ourselves, nor can we help God save us. We repent and we mourn because there is nothing in us of virtue and merit that would cause God to accept us before his throne. But we are not left in despair because the same Holy Spirit that convicts us of sin also reveals to us the glory of God in the face of Christ, the salvation of God in Christ. And so we look to Christ and we believe. We trust in Christ. As the old hymn writer said, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.” And we come to make this foundational statement that I am saved for one reason and one reason alone, that Jesus Christ shed his blood for my soul. I hope not in works. I hope not in ethics. I hope not in baptisms or church membership. I hope in Christ alone. And we went on last night and we spoke something of the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ. In America today the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of our blessed God—as Paul said to Timothy—has been reduced down to nothing more than four spiritual laws or five things God wants you to know.

We ask a person if they are a sinner, if they know they are a sinner. If they say, “Yes,” we ask them if they want to go to heaven. If they say, “Yes,” we ask them if they would want to pray a prayer. They pray the prayer. We ask them of their sincerity. They are not sure, but we assure them they are saved.

• See 2 Corinthians 13:5

But, you see, the fact that you need to understand is: You ask a man, “Do you know you are a sinner.” If he says, “Yes,” it means absolutely nothing. The devil knows he is a sinner.

The question is not: Do you know you are a sinner? The question is this: Since you have heard the preaching of the gospel has God so worked in your heart that the sin you once loved you now hate? And the question is not: Do you want to go to heaven? Everyone wants to go to heaven. They just don’t want God to be there when they get there. The question is: The God that you have ignored and lived without and been unconcerned toward—and even the scriptural language is this—the God that you have hated, do you now esteem him, desire him, want to seek him? Has God so worked in your heart that he has become of great worth to you? And then the question is not: Do you want to pray a prayer and ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart?

Do you know there is nowhere in the New Testament where that language is used? Absolutely nowhere. And people say, “Now, wait a minute. What about Revelation chapter three verse 20?” Well, what about it? He is not knocking on the door of a sinner’s heart. He is knocking on the door of a church. And someone says, “Well, I told an evangelist that a long time ago and he said, ‘I know that is not the context, but it works.’” The thing is we are not allowed to use Scripture because it works. We are not called to be pragmatists. We are called to be theologians. We do something not because it works, but because it is true. Men are saved by repenting of their sins and believing the gospel. Can men…are men saved by calling on the name of the Lord? Sure. But there is a great difference between someone calling on the name of the Lord with repentance and faith and someone simply repeating the prayer of an evangelist.

And although as preachers we have the authority to teach the gospel and we have the authority to tell men what the Scriptures say about biblical assurance, we do not have the authority to tell men they are saved. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. And then we went on to talk a bit about the cross. We began with the great declaration against men that all have sinned. Of course, again, that means nothing in a culture that drinks down iniquity like it was water. And so one of the tasks of the preacher is not only to say that mankind has sinned, but explain to them the heinous nature of sin so that the Holy Spirit using the Word of God will convict them of the heinous nature of sin. And it will produce in them something that Joel Olsteen would never want someone to feel, self loathing.

Part of repentance in the Old Testament and New is, “I hate myself. Oh, wretched man that I am who will save me from this body of death?”3 It is coming to grips with the reality of the ugliness of sin and the reality of that ugliness causing us to turn to Christ. You see, sometimes as an illustration I will pull out a pair of keys and I will jingle them in the pulpit. And I ask people. Does that bring you joy? And most say, “Well, of course not.”

And I say, “Well, it doesn’t bring you joy because you are not locked away in a prison. If you were locked away in a prison the sound of keys jingling would bring you at least a spark of joy and hope.” It is the same way. One of the reasons why Christ is not truly precious to men is because preachers are not telling men about their sin, not telling them that they are condemned in it, not telling them that God is holy, God is righteous. In America God looks more like Santa Claus than Yahweh of the Bible, than the God of Scripture. One of the greatest statements that C.S. Lewis ever wrote down, it is found in the Chronicles of Narnia
and it is this. “He is not a tame lion. He is not a domesticated God.

He is God and he is both glorious and terrifying. And you can’t have one without the other.” So all men have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.4 It doesn’t mean that God had a wonderful plan for your life and you failed it. It means this. You were created for one glorious purpose and that is to glorify him. But the Bible says, “Although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks.”5 All have sinned, but men are justified. That is, they are declared legally right before God only one way, through faith in Jesus Christ. But when we say that Jesus Christ saves men or that men can be justified we are confronted with a terrible problem. It is the greatest problem in all the Scripture and it is this. How can a just God forgive wicked men and still be just? You see, that is the greatest problem in Scripture. If God is just he cannot forgive you in the same way that if one of our judges on the earth simply pardoned and let murderers go in the name of love we would have him all thrown off the bench. We would say that he was a wicked man, that he was not just. See, the greatest problem in all of Scripture is if God is just and we are truly wicked as Scripture says, then he cannot forgive us unless, of course, a sacrifice is made and not merely a sacrifice, but a sacrifice of infinite worth. In order to be saved God must become a man. And as a man walk upon this earth as a perfect man. And then, according to the foreordained plan of God, he must go to a tree and on that tree he bears the sin of his people. He carries the curse of them. And on that tree he dies and there is two important aspects of that death. He dies abandoned and forsaken of God. You and I should die forsaken of God, abandoned because of our sin. His face of displeasure turned
against us.

• See Romans 7:24

• See Romans 3:23

• See Romans 1:21

That is the way we should die. But in order to be saved from
that death and that eternal death the Son of God died in our place. As John Gill used to say, “died in our law place, stood in our law place carrying our sin and died forsaken of his own Father.” Never buy into the romantic idea that the Father turned away from his Son on the cross because he simply saw the Son suffering and couldn’t bear to see it. That is not what
Jesus says. Jesus says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God is holy. His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. His holy Son at that moment bore our sin and the Father turned away from him. But that is not all. For God’s justice to be satisfied his judgment had to be poured out. His wrath, his holy hatred against evil had to be exhausted, extinguished and there was only one way. On that tree Jesus Christ, the Son of God, drank the cup of God’s wrath. All the furious, holy, righteous anger, violent wrath of a righteous God that should have fallen upon his people, fell upon his Son.

As Isaiah says, “It pleased the Lord, it pleased Yahweh to crush him, to crush his only Son.” And in crushing him, in pouring out his wrath upon him the justice of God was satisfied, the wrath of God was appeased and now God can forgive the wicked and call them righteous because his Son has died for them all. So many times we will read the story of Isaac and Abraham going up to the mount and Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his only son. You all know the story. The man ties his son to a bundle of sticks, makes an altar. He lays his hand upon the brow of his boy and comes down with the full force of his might with that flint knife to slaughter him. But as the man’s will gave way to the will of God his hand was stayed by God. And you applaud. What a beautiful ending to the story. But you don’t understand. It wasn’t the end of the story. It was the intermission. Hundreds of years later God’s Son is on the altar and God takes the knife out of Abraham’s hand and God lays his hand on his only begotten Son and thrusts the knife down and slaughters him. It pleased the Lord to crush
him.

That is why there is so much more meaning than what you think in John 3:16 when it says, “For God so loved the world…”9 You see someone had to die under the wrath of God. It was God’s Son who did it. It was God’s Son who did it. Having died he made it possible for a just God to declare wicked men righteous and yet still be just. Now God calls upon all men, he commands all men, all people of every place to repent and to believe the gospel. Jesus said it himself, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of
God is at hand. Now repent and believe the gospel.”

• See Matthew 27:46,

• See Mark 15:34

• See Isaiah 53:10

• See John 3:16

• See Mark 1:15

But we have taken that “repent and believe,” as I have said, and we have turned it into a mere intellectual decision, a tiny little ritual that people participate in. And if they participate in it we tell them popishly that they are saved. And that’s wrong, very wrong. You need to understand. The evangelical community in America is very wrong. Now you say, “Now, brother Paul, how can you say that? I mean what arrogance is in you that you would stand up there and say it is wrong?”

Well, again, let me refer back to a principle of hermeneutics, a principle of the science of studying the Bible. We are always to do our theology in the context of the Church. That means that when we interpret the Bible we should take our interpretation and walk through 2000 years of Christian history. If nobody agrees with us we are probably wrong. Well, if you take modern American Christianity and compare it to 2000 years of Christian history you won’t find much in agreement between the two. We have developed our own little instantaneous easy believism American form of Christianity.

“But, brother Paul, you have said we are saved by faith.” Yes, we are saved by faith and not of works, no man can boast,11 but what you need to understand is that the person who is saved by faith is also the person who is born again. Now herein likes the problem. Born again in America…everybody is born again. They give polls on, “Are you born again?” Sixty-five percent of the people in America say they are born again. But explain to me what is born again? What does it mean?

I’ll tell you what it means. It has been reduced down to this. I made a decision. I prayed a prayer. You know, I spent many years of my life in South America where almost everyone in South America believes that they are saved and right with God because when they were infants they were baptized. They are saved. They can be a Mafioso, a mafia person. They can be a thief. They can be absolutely anything but they are saved because one time in their life when they were a child they were baptized. And so they are saved. The priest says so.

Now evangelicals in America mock that and laugh that and say, “That is so wrong, that is not right. Just because someone is baptized as an infant doesn’t make them saved.” But we can’t see that we do absolutely the same thing just because someone prayed a prayer one time for five minutes we tell them they are saved. And even if afterwards they live like the devil all the days of their life, we still assure them that they are saved because one time they prayed a prayer. That is not found in Scripture nor is it found in Christian history.

• See Ephesians 2:9

Are we saved by faith? Yes. Does the God who saves us also keep us? Yes. But what does it mean to be born again? Born again also can mean born from above. And what it is referring to is this. That salvation is more than simply a human decision or an act of the human will. Salvation is a supernatural work of God whereby he regenerates or makes the heart alive. As we are going to see in a moment he takes out a cold dead heart of stone and replaces it with a living heart. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature.”12 That is not poetry. That beautiful statement was made just so that we could write it on some Christian trinket and hang it in our house. It is a truth. If any man, not some men, but if any man truly be Christian he is a new creature because God has radically changed his nature. Being born again or the idea of born again is a supernatural work of the Spirit of God.

You understand that in Genesis chapter one we see that in the creation the Spirit is hovering over. As some would say, I wouldn’t much agree, but hovering over chaos. The Spirit is an instrument there in the creation of the world. But the Spirit is also the instrument in the recreation of a man. And I stand in line with many, many old dead theologians in the next statement I am going to make. And it is this. The salvation of a man demonstrates more of the power of God than the very creation of the universe. You see, the universe was created—as the Latin scholars used to say—ex nihilo which means out of nothing. But when a man is saved he is recreated out of a corrupt mass. It is easier to create out of nothing than it is to take something corrupt and transform it into something or someone that loves God.

So, you see, the lost doctrine in America in the 21st century is this. The doctrine of regeneration, of being born again, of the work of the Spirit of God. Is it not true that if we were to dismiss this little flock here tonight and were to go to every place in this city and talk to every one in this city, most people in this city though at the very moment that we speak to them are living as the devil, would tell us that they are thoroughly Christian. And when we begin to investigate the reason for the hope that is within them, they will tell us that one time in their life in a church or an evangelistic crusade they prayed a prayer. Oh, my dear friend, the evidence that you are saved by faith is not that one time in your life you prayed a prayer, but that he who began a good work in you continues it. You know the term justification. That means the moment a person believes they are declared righteous before God. It is a legal term. But do you understand the term sanctification? It is a work of God making us more and more conformed to the image of his Son. The evidence of justification, that God has declared us right with him, is the continuing work of sanctification that God continues working in us all the days of our life to conform us to the image of Christ.

• See 2 Corinthians 5:17

• See Philippians 1:6

Now, that was our introduction. Let’s go to our text, verse 22 of chapter 36. Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I prove
Myself holy among you in their sight. Now in this first part of our text we find something very, very important, the reason or the motivation behind God’s saving work. Did God save Israel because of some worth or merit that he found in them? No. He specifically states with all clarity that Israel had profaned his name among the nations. There was no cause that he could find in Israel to save them. But he does say this, “For my own name I will save you, for the sake of my own name.”

Why does God save men? That’s a great question. And you say, “Well, it is because God is love.” But then you have just backed up the question. Why does God love men? Because, you see, men are not holy like God is holy. Men are not righteous as God is righteous. Men contradict God in every aspect of his nature. Why does God demonstrate love toward men? There are two reasons. One, God is love. That’s who he is. But, secondly, he does so in order to demonstrate his glory. The world was created as a stage, a theater and God has arranged every thing in this world so that he alone takes center stage and every thing that can be known about him is known through the works he does among men. And in the saving of men something magnificent is made known: mercy and grace and loving kindness. Men are saved not because of themselves, but in spite of themselves. You owe your salvation—if you are indeed saved—you owe your salvation to God.

When this comes up in the book of Deuteronomy, why has God loved Israel, he answers with a tautology, with a taunt. He says, “I have loved you because I loved you.” And what he is saying is this. “Israel, my love for you had nothing to do with you.” It is the same. God did not set his love upon you because of some inherent worth he found in you or some virtue. He loved you because he loved you, not because of you, but in spite of you.

• See Ezekiel 36:22-23

• See Deuteronomy 7:7-8

Now do you see why the true gospel of Jesus Christ is so offensive to a humanistic culture? We are a culture that has sought to tear down every altar to the one true God to set man on top of his own altar. In America today and in most of its Christianity, or so called Christianity, man is the center of all things. God does everything for man. We are humanistic. Considering ourselves to be wise we became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God and began to worship that which is corruptible, men and beasts and
reptiles.

We are humanistic and therefore we hate it when someone starts talking about man as fallen, man as corrupt, man as sinful, man as having no worth, man as needing a Savior, man… Those who are saved are saved not because of them, but in spite of them. We hate it because it tears down man. And we will have no part of it. He says, “Why have I saved you?” He saved you for his own name. I like what R.C. Sproul says. “God saves us from himself for himself and by himself.” You say, “What do you mean, brother Paul?” Well, just listen for a moment. When someone says, “I have been saved.” I always ask them, “From what? From what?” “Well, from sin.” No, sin is an inanimate thing. From what are you saved?

Do you know what the proper theological answer is? If you have been saved, you have been saved from God because God was the one coming after you. God was the one who had a problem with you. God was the one judging you. God was the one, according to Jesus Christ in chapter three of the book of John, God was the one who was pouring wrath down upon your head. So when we are saved we are saved from God. And why are we saved? For God. Not for 40 days of purpose, not for a purpose driven life, not for your best life now were you saved. You were saved for him. And if he wants to exalt you or tear you down, you were saved for him. If he wants to put you in a life of ease and comfort it is for him. If he wants to send you to the most vile place in the world to die there as a martyr, it is for him.

We don’t like that. What about me? It is for him. He saved you for himself. And he saved you by himself. It is not 1% you and 99% God. It is 100% God and if it had been any other thing you would not be saved. You and Jesus don’t have your own thing going. Now. He says that he saves this nation, but now we have got to come to grip with some things, some things that are extremely important in verse 24. What happens? What happens when someone is truly saved?

• See Romans 1:22-23

Throughout Ezekiel we have something magnificent. In different parts of Ezekiel we have these wonderful illustrations of the doctrine of regeneration. What happens when the Spirit of God hovers over a bunch of dry, dead bones and lifts them to life? The doctrine of regeneration, regenerate, reanimate, give life to. And that is what we have here in Ezekiel 36. What happens when someone has truly been made alive, truly been saved, truly been born again? What is the evidence?

Well, first in verse 24: “I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands.” Now here is a something you don’t hear of very often. When God saves a man or a woman or a child or a youth you will begin to see a work of separation in their life. God will begin to separate them from this world. Now when I mean this world I am talking about everything, everything in our culture, everything in our society that contradicts the nature and will of God that stands in opposition to who God is and stands in opposition to his purposes. God begins to separate his newborn child from them. He guards over that child zealously. One of the greatest honors in my life is to be a father. One of the greatest hardships in my life is having to leave my children at times. Oh, I guard over my children. I am careful to discipline them. I will protect them with my life. I will lay it down. How is it that we think such mean and simple thoughts about God? What would you think about me if I let my children, from the moment they were born until they left the house at 18, I let them run wild and do absolutely anything they wanted to do? What would you say about me? That I was a derelict father? Yes, you would. That I was wrong? Yes. That I was not just? Yes. That I did not love even? If you are biblical that is what you would say about me.

Yet how is it that you say that God has a whole bunch of children in the United States of America and yet he lets them run wild and live in sin and follow the devil all the days of their life until he brings them home? The very things you demand from an earthly father you don’t even believe your heavenly Father accomplishes. My dear friend, God zealously guards his children. That is why it says in Hebrews chapter 12 that if you claim to be a child of God and you are with out discipline there is no reality of God disciplining you and training you and teaching you
and leading you and guarding over you zealously, then you are an illegitimate
child. You are a false professor. You have never come to know him. He has never come to know you. You see, God will begin to separate us from the things he hates, from the things that are wrong. He will begin…he doesn’t drag us, but he so works in our heart to change us that
he begins to cause a separation between us and that which is evil inwardly.

• Ezekiel 36:24

• See Hebrews 12:11

The true Christian has a changed heart so they begin to hate the things that God hates and to love the things that God loves. A work of separation. Now, but notice something very important. “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land.”19 Now, a relationship with God is not simply defined by the statement, “Thou shalt not…” God does not separate us from the evil in this world in order just to separate us from the evil that is in this world. That is a pretty pitiful existence. You are caught out there in limbo with nothing. You have been separated from this world, but that is all. That is not what God does. God begins to work in our heart to separate us from sin, to separate us from that which defiles in order to gather us to him and to bring us into the land of his will. He brings us out of the world in order to bring us to him. Someone who simply separates themselves from the world is basically a legalist, taking pride in their moral purity and their separation. Let me put it this way. As I said earlier, I think, this week. When I married my wife my relationship with my wife changed. But also my relationship with every other woman on the face of the earth changed. The moment I said, “I do,” to her I said, “I don’t” to every other woman on the face of the earth.

It is the same way with separation. We say, “I don’t,” to the world in order to say, “I do,” to God, you see. Very important, very important. Now so when God saves a man or a woman or a child or a youth, one of the things that you are going to begin to see is that their life changes with regard to their relationship to the world. Now let me ask you a question. Is that a reality in your life? I am not talking about perfection. But since you have claimed to come to know Christ can you see God working in your life, in the attitudes of your heart, exposing sin, leading you farther and father away from the things that displease him, bringing you to himself to love him, to cherish him, to have a relationship with him? Can you see that in your life? Because, my dear friend, if you claim to know Christ and that Christ knows you and you are still a lover of the world and there is no work of separation, no growth in godliness, or, as the author of Hebrews says, no holiness without which no one will see the Lord,20 you have got a problem. Is there a reality of God working in your life?

Sometimes I will ask people this. “Do you feel sometimes like you are a prisoner, that everybody else is just running free and can do almost anything they want to do and the moment you step out of the box just God comes?” I mean it is like you are a prisoner, but you recognize it is good. That is because you are a child. You are a child of God. And he zealously watches over his children.

• See Ezekiel 36:24

• See Hebrews 12:14

Let me share with you something. It says “Jacob I loved and Esau I hated.”21 Now, in Hebrew “hated” there means hated. If it meant something else they would have wrote something else in English. It does. It means, “Jacob I loved, Esau my wrath, my displeasure, my anger abided upon him.”22 That is exactly what it means. Now, if you sit under preaching that tries to take that term and make it say something other than hatred, you are sitting under a perfect example of watered down American preaching. But it says, “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.”23 But when you study both of their lives you find something absolutely amazing. God blessed Jacob. God blessed Esau. He fulfilled every promise he ever made to Esau and to Abraham about Esau. He did. As a matter of fact when Jacob came back into the Promised Land Esau was so blessed he didn’t need anything that Jacob offered him. So how is it that God demonstrated his love toward Jacob and his hatred toward Esau?

Well, there is only one difference between the two men. God let Esau do absolutely anything he wanted to do and God beat the living daylights out of Jacob. Look at it. Do we see one time where God is disciplining Esau? But we see in Jacob’s life that God is literally every day putting the rod upon him so that when he comes back into the land he is limping, but he is God’s man. He is God’s child.

Do you see God coming to you, to keep you, to discipline you, to train you? Now, when I say discipline realize this, that discipline in the believer’s life is never punitive. Once a person is in Christ God never again comes to them as a judge. Even when he judges them he does not come to them as a judge, but as a father. When he disciplines them he comes to them as a father. A human illustration would be this. At the moment I am disciplining one of my boys. At that very moment I still love them so much I would die a thousand deaths for them. I do not discipline them as a judge, but as a father.

Now so he says, “What is going to be one of the evidences when a person is truly born again?” It is going to be this. God is going to do a work of separation in their life and a work of gathering them unto him. Now verse 25. He says, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be
clean.” My, my. Look at that. “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be
clean.” So much for the thing that God really wants to work in your life but he just can’t do it because you won’t cooperate.

• See Romans 9:13

• See Ezekiel 36:25

I remember when I was a little boy I lived on the farm. You can tell farm boys, just get close to them. You know exactly if they are a farm boy or not because they have got dirt in every crevice of their body. And I would have dirt in my neck, dirt on elbows, behind the knees, everywhere, dirt, dirt, be playing out all day in the dirt. Farm boy. And my mom, I would come in, I would say…she would say, “Take a bath.” One day I realized, I was about nine years old and I realized I’m a man. I don’t need to take a bath. So mom said, “Take a bath.”
I said, “No, I don’t think so.” This was back when it was legal to kill your children. My mom looked at me and she said this. “You will take a bath.” And that’s all she had to say. That’s all she had to say. Isn’t it amazing? My mother has more sovereign authority over me than your god. I am so tired of hearing evangelical Americans say, “God wants to do so much, but he just can’t because you won’t cooperate.” Just look at the text for a minute. Just look. Verse 24. “I will take you from the
nations.” Look at that. He doesn’t say, “I hope to, I want to, gee, I hope everyone cooperates.” He says, “I am going to do a work of salvation and this is how it is going to happen. “I will take you from the nations. I will bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and all your idols. I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove your heart of stone. I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you. I will cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to observe my ordinances.”

Now what do you see there? Do you believe in the inspiration of Scripture? What do you see there? You see a God who says, “For my own glory I am going to do a work of salvation with an impossible people and the work I begin, I will finish. I will do everything I plan on doing.” And that is why they call him Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the absolute sovereign. That pagan king Nebuchadnezzar knows more than most preachers today in America because he says he does whatever he wants to do in the heavens and on the earth and he lifts up his hand and no man can hold it down. He holds
his hand on the desk and not one man can pry it up.

He will do it. And why will he do it? I’ll tell you why. His reputation is riding upon it. Do you remember when he brought the Israelites out of Egypt? And he tested Moses on that fatal day when Israel committed its greatest crime against God. God tested Moses and said, “Moses, get out of the way. I am going to kill them all and I will make a people
out of you.”

• See Ezekiel 36:24

• See Daniel 4:35

And Moses said, “No, Lord, because your enemies will say that although you were strong enough to bring them out of the land of bondage, you were not able to bring them into
their own land.” And that is what most preachers are teaching today. God is strong enough to save you and get you to heaven, but he isn’t strong enough to change you. He can’t finish the job. But the name of God…he is demonstrating his power every time he saves a man. He will finish or perfect the work that he begins. That is why Paul said with such confidence, “confident of this very think that he who begins a good work in you will finish it.”
So he says here in 36. “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be
clean.”

Going back to my mother. So I get in the bathtub. You know, farm boys can swim in ponds. They can play in the rain all day, but something happens when they get in the shower. Water is dangerous for some reason. I have never understood it, but I always felt that I was afraid of that stuff coming out of the shower. And so I would get a little bit of water and dab it on me, jump out, grab a white towel and turn it into a black towel. And everything was going just fine until my mother walked in the door. My mother worked on a farm. She had hands rougher than a man. She put a washcloth between her hand and our body because her hands were so calloused and rough. When my mother got through cleaning me it looked like the shekinah glory of God was coming forth from my body.
And what did she say? “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be
clean.” God says to his children, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you
will be clean.” “I’ll make sure of it.” Isn’t it amazing? You have an average congregation on an average Sunday and most of them live in sin without any thought of God throughout the entire week, but a remnant of that group, it is as though God guards every moment of their life. When they watch something off colored, God convicts them of sin. When they say things they shouldn’t say God convicts them of sin. When they walk in a way that they should not walk, God makes it known to them. He is before them and behind them and beside them and above them and below them. Why does he treat one group of children one way and another group of children the other? It is because the one group doesn’t belong to him and the other does.

• See Numbers 14:12

• See Numbers 14:13-16

• See Philippians 1:6

• See Ezekiel 36:25

You say, “Well, I never heard of such a thing.” Then you need to change churches. And he says, “I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.”34 Now this is not a warning. This is a promise. This is a wonderful promise. And before I go into the thing about regeneration let me just say this to the Christian, some of you young guys. Sometimes we get to the point where there is a besetting sin in our life and we struggle with it and struggle with it and we come to believe, “Well, this is just the way it is going to be. This is just one area in my life I am never going to get victory over.”

That is not true. God says he is going to cleanse you from all your filthiness and all your idols. It is not talking about perfection in the Christian life or a Christian is sinless, but what it is saying is he will work in such a way through the course of your life that you will gain greater and greater victory over the things that once beset you. Now, I want to say something here. “I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from
all your idols.” I would have to say that if I were to take one verse out of Scripture that I think most describes my 25 year pilgrimage of walking with God it would be this. One of the greatest evidences that gives me assurance that I have come to know him is I have seen this in my life. Not that I stand before you without any idols or without any filthiness, no. But over 25 years I can see God disciplining to work these things out of my life.

I always kid people. I say, “You know, there is more metal in me than a Tonka truck.” Both my hips have been replaced. My wrist is all full of metal. I hurt right now. My wrist right now is broken. The problem is my broken wrist doesn’t feel any different than my one that is not broke. God has beaten my body and no, TV preacher, it wasn’t the devil. It was God being very faithful to do whatever must be done to conform a stubborn sheep to the image of his Son. And I would kiss the rod that worketh to change me more than the blessings of this world that might cause my heart to betray my God. When my little boys can’t sleep sometimes I will sing them a song from old Keith Green. “My sons, I am weak and I am trembling for the Lord I am always remembering, oh, what a strong shepherd holds you in his arms. He will break you and make you his own.” Years ago there was a song that was very popular. It was the song, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I, but Christ who lives within me.”36 I was preaching several years ago and I happened to mention that I sang that song many times in moments of pain and distress when I was working in Peru during the war and working in the jungles and all alone and hurting and would sing that song. And I said that that night not knowing that that the author of the song was sitting in the congregation and about ready to sing.

• See Galatians 2:20

And do you know what I notice about that man? He looked like stained glass window. Something about his character and his personality…do you know how a stained glass window is made? You take all this glass and you lay it on a table and you get a hammer and you just beat it to pieces. You have got all these fragmented pieces of glass and then the master, the artist comes and begins to put them all back together and it creates the most beautiful illuminating window. But the cracks remain, the lines remain. And that is what he looked like. God had beaten him and broken him. But by doing that he made something through which the glory of God would shine. Oh, my dear friend, you can have your prosperity and your TV preachers that promote it. You can have your health, your wealth, your wisdom and every thing else. Take it. The goal of Christianity is conformity to the image of Jesus Christ, to be like him, to be like him. And God will use every manner of thing to do that.

I think it was Samuel Chadwick, I am not sure, but I think it was Samuel Chadwick, he was walking out one day down a country lane trying to think about what the Lord would want him to preach. And he comes to a blacksmith’s shop and he sees this giant monster of a man with this huge mallet pounding upon an anvil, a piece of metal upon an anvil. And he sees standing right beside this monster of a man, this tiny framed man with a suit on standing there pointing at different things. So he walks over and he says, you know, to the man dressed finely, “What are you even doing here? This monster of a man is doing all the work.”

And the finally dressed man looked at Samuel Chadwick and said, “I am the blacksmith. I am the artist. This man beating with this mallet, this monster railing against this anvil knows nothing. He hits only where I tell him to hit. He hits only as hard or as soft as I tell him to hit. He thinks he is destroying a piece of metal. I am creating a work of art. Thus, you have the relationship between the devil and God in the believer’s life. The devil will stand there and beat thinking he is destroying you. But in the sovereignty, absolute sovereignty of God he can only hit exactly where God says to hit and he can only hit as hard as God tells him. That’s a wonderful thing. That’s a wonderful thing.
So he says, “I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your
idols.” Is that a reality in your life? Can you see God doing that? Isn’t it amazing? Have you ever said this? “Man, some people can just lie and cheat and commit murder. They can do anything and nothing happens to them. I tell one whit lie and the whole world falls apart on top of me.” If that is true you need to praise God. You need to praise God.

• See Ezekiel 36:25

Now, how does he do this? How does he make us clean? How does he cause us to follow him? Does he wrap a leather whip around our necks and drag us? What does he do? No. He changes us. And that is what we have here. It says, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will
remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Now, the word “flesh” especially in the Greek New Testament always refers to that fallen or mostly refers to that fallen aspect of the Christian, that unredeemed part that we really can’t put our finger on, but it is there. That is the flesh. But in this case that is not what he is talking about. He is talking about the difference between something inanimate and something animate.

If I have…take the largest man in Las Vegas and make a stone statue out of him I can prick him, I can prod him, I can kick him, I can punch him and he is not going to do any thing. Why? It is inanimate. It is not alive. It is stone. But you take the largest man, strongest man in Las Vegas and put him up here on the platform and if he will let me get him under the tender part of his arm with my two fingers and pinch and twist with all my might I am surely going to evoke a response. It is the difference between animate living or an inanimate dead. Now, understand this. If you can understand this it will solve a lot of problems for you. The Bible teaches that men are born spiritually dead. You understand that. Now dead is dead, not mostly dead, dead, dead with a capital D dead.

Now that presents a problem. If men are spiritual dead how can they ever come to God? How can they ever come to Christ? How can they even hear his voice if they are dead? Let me give you an example. There is a dead man laying on this platform and I walk over to him and I said, “Look. There is a hospital quite near and if you will just get up and follow me over there they will put these things on you full of electricity and they will hit your heart with them and you will come back to life. Come on.”

He doesn’t move. I look at him and I say, “What’s the matter? Do you want to be dead for the rest of your life? Get up.” Now I could stand there all day. What is going to happen? Absolutely nothing. Why? He is dead. Now let’s use Lazarus as an example, a very good example. There is a problem there when Jesus tells Lazarus to come forth. And what is that problem? He is dead. You say, “Yeah, but Jesus can make him alive.”

• See Ezekiel 36:26

No, understand. He said, “Lazarus, come forth.”39 If Lazarus is dead he can’t hear him. Did you ever think about that? If Lazarus is dead when Jesus says come forth he is talking to a dead man. Dead men don’t hear. So when Jesus said, “Lazarus, come
forth,” he also at the same time had to impart life to Lazarus so he could hear and come forth. And that is what we don’t understand in evangelism today. We can preach all day long, but unless the Spirit of God gives them life they are not going to hear and they are not going to come forth. It is a supernatural work of God and you can’t manipulate it even though you sing 438 stanzas of Just as I am. God must do something supernatural. Let me give you another illustration. And I know it is late, but, hey, you came to hear preaching. So let’s just continue. And don’t worry about me. I’m not tired. I want you to think about something here. The way preachers preach. Let’s say that I had a curtain here and behind it was standing Jesus. There are preachers that say today, “All we need to do is preach Jesus. Tell people about Jesus and if people see Jesus when we are preaching they are going to come to him.”

Well, that would be true except one problem. The audience you are preaching to is blind. Lost men are blind. That’s what the Bible says, spiritually blind. So we could pull back the curtain with our preaching and show the audience Jesus, but if the audience is blind they are not going to see anything no matter how far we pull back the curtain. Do you see that? And you say, “You are right, brother Paul. That was silly of me. I should not be so superficial. In order for men to come to Christ we need to preach Jesus. We need to reveal Jesus to them in our preaching, but the Spirit of God must come and give them sight so that with that sight they can see Jesus and if they see Jesus, they will come to him.” No, they won’t because there is a problem, an ontological problem, the problem of their nature. If you show this beautiful, righteous, holy, Jesus and you open up the eyes of sinful, wicked men, when those sinful wicked men look at the perfect holy Christ they will hate him. They will not come to him. They will run from him. You see, you have to understand ontology. You have to understand the idea of nature. Wicked men hate righteousness. So if you have a bunch of lost people without Christ, born dead, born in sin, born in corruption and you give them sight and you show them Jesus, the Jesus they see they are going to hate him more than they ever have. That’s why Paul says in the book of Romans chapter seven that the more you press the law upon an unconverted man, the more he kicks against it because he hates it. That is why Paul

• See John 11:43

says in Romans that it is in ungodliness, in unrighteousness that men suppress the truth they know about God.41 Men are evil. God is holy. Evil men hate God and the more they know about him the more they hate. So for a man to truly come to know Christ what must happen? We must preach Christ. The Spirit of God must give them sight. But not only that, the Spirit of God must take out their heart of stone and put in its place a heart of flesh. He must take out that dead spiritual mass, that dead, defiled nature and replace it with a new heart, a new nature, recreated in the image of God. So what happens when someone is born again? This is what happens. Christ is presented. But that God hating, Christ hating, sin loving heart of theirs that would reject Christ by the work of the Spirit of God it is so called taken out and in its place is put a new heart, a new nature, recreated in the image of God in true righteousness and true holiness and with that new heart and that new sight they look upon Christ, they see him as altogether lovely and they are irresistibly drawn to him. You present a beautiful Christ to a wicked heart and they will hate him. You present a beautiful Christ to a new heart, recreated in the image of God through the work of the Holy Spirit and they can have nothing but Christ. They must have Christ.

Now let’s go on. “I will put My Spirit within you.” Look at that. God comes to dwell within a man. And yet he remains unchanged? The heavens themselves cannot contain him, that Spirit hovered over chaos and created a universe and yet he can dwell within the heart of a man and the man not be affected in the least. No. That’s not true. Then why do we say these things? It is the only way we can explain having large churches full of carnal, wicked people. That’s why.
“I will put My Spirit within you and cause you…” That word can be “make you.” “No, God can’t make you do anything. “ No, God can make you do absolutely anything he wants. “Well, God can’t violate my will.” God can do anything. God is going to violate a lot of people’s will on the day he throws them in hell. Don’t you see? God violates…he thwarts the wills of kings. He stops angels in their tracks. He is God. Do you see what we have done in America? We have created this god who is subservient to the wills of wicked men.

• See Romans 1:18

• See Ezekiel 36:27

No. Not at all. Not at all. He says, “I will put My Spirit within [them] and cause [them] to walk in My statutes.” But, again, we must be careful here because he doesn’t cause them by force. He causes they to walk because he has put his Spirit within them and he has given them a new heart. Now, let me explain it to you this way. Let me use an example. It may help you. Let’s say that I become the pastor of a church. I am brand new in town and someone tells me that there is this guy over there in the trailer, right over there from the church and he hasn’t been in church in five years and I need to go over and talk to him.

So I go over and talk to him and we are in Alabama, ok? So…where everybody is polite to the preacher. So I go…I am in Alabama and I walk up to the trailer. He sees me coming, throws that door open and says, “Well, come on in, preacher.” So I go on in. He says, “You want some tea?” I say, “Well, I think…I would love to have some tea.” And then after we would talk a little bit we would get serious and I would say, “I am the new preacher here and they tell me you haven’t been in church in five years.” “You’re right, preacher. I haven’t been to church in five years. I need to start going to church. I just need to do the right thing. I need to start going to church, ok?” “They tell me you have been…you are pretty much the wild man with the ladies.” “Yeah, you’re right again, preacher. You’re right. I am and I just need to stop it. I just need to stop it and I need to do the right thing. I just need to be faithful to my wife. I just need to do the right thing.” And then I said, “And they tell me you are pretty much the drinker.” “Oh, yeah. I drink. I drink just…I drink. There you can look in the fridge, preacher. I won’t lie to you. I need to stop it. I just need to stop doing that stuff and I just need to do the right thing.” So, you think, “Wow. Brought him back to Christ. Praise God.”

No, you know what you have just seen? A lost man. That’s what you have seen. Because you know what he is saying? “You’re right, preacher. I need to stop doing all the wicked things I love and start doing all the righteous things I hate so that I can go to heaven.” My dear friend, when God saves a man he changes his nature. He becomes a new creature. He wants to do righteousness. He hates wickedness and when he does fall into wickedness it tears him apart because he is a new creature. A Christian is not somebody who stays away from all the wicked things he loves and clings to all the righteous things he hates so that he can go to heaven. The fear of the Christian is not going to hell. The fear of the Christian is being separated from Christ. It is a new creature. We give an example from Charles Spurgeon. Let’s say that we had a pig in the back there, a hog, a swine, whatever you want to call it. It is back there in the back doors. And then I put here the finest meal that can be bought in Las Vegas and I put here over on the other side a barrel of slop and I tell you, “Loosen and let him go. Let the hog go.”

Where is the hog going? Now, most of you don’t look like farm people, but you probably can figure out where the hog is going. It is going straight to the bucket of slop. Why? Because it is a pig. That’s what pigs do. He does what he is. He loves what he is by nature. He has the nature of a pig and pig natures do pig things. But let’s say he runs down here as he does and what is he going to do? He is going to stick his head in that bucket. He is going to be eating slop. He is going to be wiggling his tail. He is going to be so happy. But let’s say in one moment I have the power to reach forth and change that pig into a man. What is he going to do? He is going to throw his head back out of that bucket. The thing that he delighted in he is going to be disgusted with. The thing that he was gobbling down and that felt whole in his belly is now going to nauseate him and he is going to throw it up. He is going to writhe with disgust and then he is going to turn around and look at you and be ashamed. I just described your conversion. I just described you.

“You didn’t describe me.” Then you are not a Christian. Men are born in sin. The Bible says men are love sin. Job said they drink down iniquity
like it was water. But when God changes a man, when he saves a man, he changes his nature from a sin loving nature to a sin hating nature, from a God hating nature to a God loving nature. That is what happens in conversion.

• See Job 15:16

Now you understand why I preach in a lot of churches once. Now, but here I want you to
think of this. I am not the prophet or the son of a prophet. Everything I say I must look into Church history. Does anyone else say the same thing? Just about everyone else until you get to America in the middle of the 20th century where man all of a sudden started becoming better and God started becoming smaller and salvation not that big a deal. Never forget. I was in Peru. I was missing worship in my own language and someone sent me a cassette and I looked on it and it said, “Amazing Grace.” And I thought, “Whoa. Great.” I put it in my little cassette player, turned it on, listened to the first verse, stopped the cassette player, grabbed the tape, threw it in the trash can because this is what it says. “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a man like me…” I thought to myself, “I think when it started out it was a worm like me and then it went to a wretch like me.” Or maybe I have those two reversed. I don’t know. So we have gone from a worm to a wretch to a man. We have improved.

There is only one problem. Men don’t need to be saved. Wretches do. And if you are not a wretch you have no need of grace. Oh, my dear friend, it feels like an uphill battle sometimes. We live in a world where preachers smile and have nice hair and talk to you about your best life now, who don’t want you to be sad and want you to be filled with self esteem. And they are lying to you.

They are not going to talk about sin because they don’t want anyone to feel bad. That’s what Jesus talked about. They tell you that they don’t preach on hell because they just want to preach the words of Jesus. Do you know this? Any many who tells you that is either ignorant of Scripture or he is a liar. Do you want to know why? If it were not for the teachings of Jesus we would know almost nothing about hell. You find almost nothing about hell in the Old Testament, just glimpses. You find almost nothing about hell in the writings of the apostles, just glimpses. Almost everything we know about hell comes from the teachings of Jesus who taught more about hell and sin than he did heaven.

Be careful about the Christianity that you embrace because it might not be Christianity at all. There will come a time, doesn’t Scripture tell us, where they will amass teachers who
will tickle their ears? What does that mean? To tickle someone’s ears is to make someone feel good. And how do you make men feel good? You make them feel good about themselves, but not tell them the truth. Christianity is about life and death. It is about heaven and hell, salvation and damnation.
Choose you this day whom you will serve. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?49 You cannot be my disciple unless you hate your mother and
your father.

• See Amos 7:14

• See 2 Timothy 4:3

• See Joshua 24:15

“Lord, don’t you know they were offended when you said that? That’s why they are
leaving.” “Do you want to go, too?” he said. Oh, my dear friend, I have greater respect for an Atheist—or claims to be an Atheist because there is really no such thing. All men believe in God. They are just lying about it when they tell you they don’t. But I have more respect for a man who disavows and disowns Christianity entirely than someone who will take Christianity and morph it into something useful for carnal men.

If you disagree with me tonight you have that right and I won’t be angry with you. But I will challenge you to come up with Scripture, with Scripture and talk to me. I’ll talk to you all night. Tell me these things are not so. Tell me it is another way. Show me. You know, preaching…we are going to end right here. Preaching is dangerous. You see, it is dangerous for me. If I don’t preach according to Scripture then the book of James tells me that on the Day of Judgment I will undergo greater condemnation for claiming for myself the title of teacher. So preaching is dangerous for me. But preaching can be dangerous for you. How? If what I am teaching is not true then the preaching is not dangerous. You are not bound by it. If what I say is not conformed to Scripture then you can go out of here and you are totally free. Don’t think another moment about it. But if what I say is true, then now the danger is on your side because you will be held accountable for the truth you have learned. That’s preaching. That’spreaching.

Now I have been giving an invitation now for about an hour or more so we don’t need to give another one. I will tell you this. If you are concerned about your heart, your life, concerned about heaven and hell and you need to talk to someone, I’ll talk to you all night, all night. So that’s the invitation. That’s the invitation. And don’t be discouraged, church. Whether we preach to 60 people or 6000 doesn’t
matter. God, where two or more are gathered, he is there. Let me give you just a word of encouragement. Several years ago in Peru, many, many years ago I was pastoring [?] the Church of the Savior in the district of Lima called Baranco. And it was the World Cup. Now for Americans that doesn’t mean a whole lot, but for everyone outside of America that is the biggest deal going, the World Cup. I mean life stops in Latin America when the World Cup is on.

• See Matthew 16:26; Mark 8:36

• See Luke 14:26

• See Matthew 15:12

• See John 6:67

• See Matthew 18:20

Well, the World Cup was in full swing and I was going up the stairs of the church to the roof. We do a lot on the roof in Peru because there’s…well, there’s no air conditioning and the roof is a lot cooler. And as I was going up there on that roof to get something because we were closing down the church. It was time to leave. It was about nine o’clock at night, a little Indian woman about the…I mean she was no more than five feet tall named Delia…while I was coming back down actually she started coming up the stairs and she had a bottle of…a Coke bottle that was empty, a plastic one…well, it was empty of Coke, but it was full of water. She was going up the stairs and I was coming down and I said, “Delia, you know, [?] we are going to shut the church. We need to leave.” She goes, “Oh, I’m staying.”

I said, “What?” she said, “I’m staying. God’s told me to pray.” She went up on that roof for seven days and she fasted and prayed. Do you know what’s amazing? Literally billions of people are watching the world cup, but God was watching one tiny, uneducated Indian woman on the top of a roof crying out to him. All throughout this city right now people are praising the gods of gold and silver and fame and lust and entertainment. That is a god in this country, maybe the biggest. As Leonard Ravenhill used to say, “On the tombstone of this country it will be written, ‘They entertained themselves to death.’” God doesn’t care about any of that. His eyes are on a few people that belong to him gathered in his name. As he told the Church in Asia Minor, “I know where you dwell,
the very throne of Satan, but you have held on to the faith,” you see. So as Jesus would say, “Little flock, don’t be frightened and don’t be dismayed.” He said these things would happen.

Let’s pray.

Father, help us. Strengthen us. Lead us. Father, if there is someone here that doesn’t know you, that they might know you is our prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.

• See Revelation 2:13

• See Luke 12:32

“I’m going to tell you about the meaning of the Cross.”

And I was surprised that he spent a lot of time talking about the Cross of Jesus Christ, but did not put the emphasis on where the emphasis was do. And did not truly explained the meaning of the cross. And he did something that is so common today. Let me give you just a little bit of background. As you know I have said this before: Wisdom was not born with any one nor it will die with anyone. Now If I stand up here today and I say that the church at large is basically missing the point about the gospel of Jesus Christ you can look at me and say:

“Who are you? Are you Billy Graham? Are you this guy or that guy? How or What gives you the right to stand here and say: ‘The church at large is missing the point’ ?”

Well, here’s the point. History gives me that right. You see, one of the things that you have to understand is this. There is a difference between a theologian and a pop-theologian. Did you ever hear of pop music? Its the music that is Popular, music that is given to the the populists, it’s a music for the day, kind of it just jumps up. It doesn’t last very long and one of the reasons is that it is pretty superficial. You know like …..Sonny and Cher

“I would die for you, I will even climb a mountain for you!”

I never could figure out how climbing a mountain was more than dying for someone. But pop music is very superficial. Also there is what we called pop-theology, which is very superficial. Theology is the study of God and there is a lot of what we call pop-theologians on the radio. They are not truly trained theologians, they just have a following. They haven’t give themselves to study, they give themselves more to preaching. And their preaching deals more with illustrations, and stories, and antidotes, and cute little sayings, but as far as the theology, NO!

Now whenever someone comes to you and says like I said this morning:

“The church by large has missed the point with regard to the Cross” the first thing that you have to ask then, is this: “Why do you say that?”. The answer better be this: “Not only because I have found these things in the Bible but because history backs me up.” You see, If you say for example:

“I believe a certain thing”.

If you stick Beny Hinn here and me right here and if you can pull both of us apart and if you ask Beny Hinn why he believes that all the stuff he does and the facts that he makes millions of dollars and he will only stay in five star hotels and all this different things. If you ask him why he does that he will tell you:

“Because that is what the Bible teaches.” And if you ask me, I will say: “He is completely wrong!” And if you ask me why, I will say, “Because this is what the Bible teaches”. Now the question is, both of us are using the Bible as our authority, so who is right? You know that is the big question, who is right? Well there are two things that you need to look at. One of them is called context, and the other is called history.

First of all I want you to understand something. If the Bible says, or if I make a statement the barn is red, it means the barn is red. I’m so tired of speaking on university campuses and hearing students say:

“Oh, that’s just your interpretation.” And I say: “Well here interpret it grammatically, not according to the Spirit, not according to the, just grammatically. Like you would in an English class. What is it saying grammatically?” That’s the first one. The second point is this. We have 2000 years of Christian history. Ok? 2000 years of Christian’s writing. Thousands of, no millions of books.

Now, if I teach something on the Cross and you compare what I teach to 2000 years of Christian history, and you don’t find it anywhere in 2000 years of Christian history, then you’ve got to decide who is right? 2000 years of Christians theologians and writers or Paul Washer? Well obviously 2000 years of Christian history and teachers are right. Whenever someone teaches you something one of the good things to do is to compare what they are saying to 2000 years of Christian history. If nobody agrees with them, they are probably wrong, aren’t they? And if we as Americans come up with some new theology, or a new way of doing Christianity, yet it disagrees with 2000 years worth of Christians form all over the world, who’s probably wrong? We are! You see , and so that’s why I say today, that on the teaching of the Cross most of the people are completely missing the point.

And here is, when we hear a teaching on the Cross, and when someone preaches about the suffering of Jesus, what is it that you usually hear about? Physical suffering, right? Isn’t that what? And I mean the preacher,- and we need to talk about physical suffering.- But I mean the preacher will talk about physical suffering, and what will happen? Then he will start crying, and everybody in the congregation starts crying. He talks about how the nails went through a certain part of the wrist, because that was the only thing that would hold up a man. And how the nail went through both the feet in a certain place. And then in order to keep alive the person would have to push upon the nail in order to take a breath. Because when you died of crucification you died of suffocation. They’ll talk about the spear in the side, they’ll talk about the crown of thorns on the head, they’ll talk about all these different things, the beating with the whip, how he drug his cross and the blood is flowing down and everything else and then they’ll tell you:

“By this we are saved”.

Now , that draws you to a certain conclusion. How is it that the physical sufferings of Jesus, caused by men, somehow paid for our sins? It doesn’t work out theologically. Are we actually .. are our sins paid for because the Romans and Jews rejected Jesus? Are our sins are paid for because they whipped him and beat him?

I was in German mennonite camp, a bible camp, in northern, actually in the mountains, the Alps in Romania. And I walked to their theological, they had a theological library, and I walked in there and I saw a thing on the Cross of Christ. So I pull it out and praise the Lord, it was not in German. The only book in there I think that was not in German. And I started looking through it, and this is what the man said: “God sent His son who lived a perfect life…” Now this is a theologian … “God sent His son who lived a perfect life and then according to the plan of God, men rejected him, they beat Him, they crucified Him, they mocked Him, they put crown of thorns on his head, they stuck a spear in his side, and all these different things. And God looked at that suffering, that Jesus suffered, at the hands of men and He considered that to be payment for all our sins against Him.

Now, a lot of people say: “Well yeah, that sounds good!” Actually, historically that’s a heresy! The deepest form of heresy. I mean you could be wrong about a lot of things, but if you are wrong about the Cross, you are in trouble. Now here’s what I want you to do. I want you to put 2 things together. How is it, what happened on that Cross that would cause God to forgive us of our sins? Now, the first question though is this. Why does the Son of God, God in the flesh, why is it necessary that He die? Why can’t God just forgive everybody? Have you ever thought about that? Why can’t He just – I mean, we are called to forgive people aren’t we? If you sin against me, I’m called to forgive you. I’m not called to require a sacrifice or anything. I’m just told to forgive you. So why can’t God simply forgive? That’s the first question you need to answer. And I will show you a verse. I want us to go to Proverbs. I am going to condense about a week worth of lectures into 1 thing, so I just want to go to 1 text. Go to Proverbs 17:15. Now look what it says:

“He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike, are an abomination to the Lord.”

Now let us just consider this one phrase: “He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord”. Now we are in a big problem. Most of the songs we sing today are gonna be about God justifying the wicked. That’s what we sing about all the time. “Man , God justifies us, even though we were sinners. God declared us to be right.” That’s what the justification means. God declared you to be right before Him. And you praise God for that. But there’s a a big problem here. Do you see what it is? God says that anyone who declares the wicked to be right, when they are not right, they are an abomination before Him. So if God declared you to be right when you were not right, it’s an abomination. He has made Himself an abomination. If God forgives the wicked, He Himself becomes an abomination. In a same way if a judge forgives a murderer and lets him go, he’s no longer a Just Judge. It’s so amazing to me how so many people – I speak at the university, the students are just furious because I say that God throws men in Hell. They are furious when I say that. But do you know what bothers Heaven? Heaven has a problem with what God has done. Heaven’s problem is this. If God is a just God He cannot forgive. He must punish the wicked. That is the thing of the whole Bible. Have you ever wondered why God got all the animals die in the Old Testament? It’s a symbol, and a type. But the whole point is that if the sinner sins, he must die. He must die. And if God justifies someone who is wicked, and if he declares a wicked person to be innocent, then God is an abomination. God has become wicked. Now we are beginning to see why it was necessary for God – the Son to die. God can not simply forgive. The law, the righteous law, demands that the sinner die. Demands it! You just can’t push that away. You just can’t say ok, well we are going to let them slide this time. If God does that He is unjust, He is wrong, He is sinful, He becomes just like the devil and the devil’s accusations against Him now are correct. Can you imagine devil’s standing before God?

“Hey God, remember when we sinned against you? You were just then, weren’t You? You cast us all out of Heaven, Yeah, where’s your justice now God? Huh?, where is it? These men, this ball of dirt sins against you, you let him go. Guess what God, you become like me. Congratulations!”

You see the problem? That’s the problem. Now the only way that God can forgive sinful men is if God who made the law and God who demands satisfaction, if He Himself comes down and pays the penalty. That’s why the doctrine of the Jehovah-witnesses is so blasphemous. Look what they are saying. They are saying that when the world fell God created, created, an innocent being, the Son, He created Him. And than took this innocent being independent from God and put Him on a Cross, to die, to fix the problem. See that’s not what happened, the Son of God is not a created being, He is God. You see, the only way the law of God can be satisfied is by God. And you can use this against the Jehovah-witnesses. If Jesus is not God, than everybody is going to Hell, because what is done on that Cross is not enough. God made the law, God has to satisfy it. It has to be God. If Jehovah-witness comes to the door and says that Jesus wasn’t God, just sit down and just start weeping. He’ll say: “Why are you crying for?”

“We are all going to Hell.”

“Why?”

“Because only God can satisfy God’s law. Only He can pay the price. And if Jesus is not God then we are going to Hell. Me and you, and the rest of us.”

But you see, God in order to forgive the wicked, and still be Just, He must die in the wicked’s place. Thats the only way He can forgive is to die in the place of the wicked.Now here’s comes the important point. How does He die? What is it about the death of the Son of God that leads to our forgiveness? How does His death satisfy the law? Now, here is something I want you to understand. When someone says they have been saved,- now I’d never do this to a young Christian or, but if they are a seminary students or something they are going to get this, if they say

“I’ve been saved”

And I go “From what? From what have you been saved?” People usually say “Sin!” ” Nope! … Nope!”

They say: “What you mean “Nope”?” “Sin wasn’t after you. Sin wasn’t gonna throw you in Hell. You have sinned, but the sin caused something else. Sin isn’t going to throw you in Hell! Sin is not even a person! It’s not a living being that’s going to judge you, and grab you and throw you in Hell. From what have you been saved? This is going to really rock your boat. I’ll tell you from what you have been saved. From what you have been saved is not ‘What,’ it is ‘Who.’ You have been saved from God ! You see here’s what you need to understand. God is the judge of all the Universe. You have sinned, since you have sinned and made yourself an enemy of God before the just judge, when you stand before Him, He will throw you in Hell!” Now I hear a lot of people say: “God doesn’t throw anybody in Hell.”

Well that’s really nice if you write it on the back of a Christian T-shirt, sing it in a contemporary Christian song, but it is not in the Bible. Jesus said: “You do not be afraid of man who can kill your body, but be afraid of God who can kill your body and throw you in Hell.” You see? Again this God of ours is not very politically correct. He is not a tamed lion. People, have you ever heard this statement, we see it in Romans 5, We also see it in Romans 1: “enemy of God,” and “hater of God.” Have you ever heard that word “enemy of God?” Do you know what the problem is? Contemporary Christianity interprets it differently from the historical Christianity. You will hear preachers say:

“When the Bible says that we were an enemy of God , it means that WE were an enemy against God, that WE were rebellion against God, that WE were against God. But it doesn’t mean that God was against us, that God was our enemy.”

And than they will usually say something like this: “It’s like you are holding a gun against God, and God wants you to put that gun down, and then you’ll be friends.” That’s not true! All throughout historical Christianity when it says “enemies of God,” you know what it really means? Not only were you God’s enemy, holding your gun on Him, God was your enemy holding His gun on You. You put your gun down, fine! He still has His gun on you. You are criminal, you broke the law, you deserve to die, you can put your gun down to surrender if you want, but you are still going to hell. Because not only you are his enemy, but He is yours. God says things in the Bible like: “I will hate them.” “I will come against them.” “I will fight against them.” “I’ll raise up a standard.” Again this God of 21st century Christianity is a lot a different from the biblical one, and a lot different than one that has been preached throughout 2000 years of Christian history. So you see, not only were you making yourself an enemy against God, God was your enemy. And then one from whom you need to be saved is God because He is coming, remember what Amos has said: “Be prepared to meet thy God.” Remember what Revelation says and talks about: “He is coming and the captains and the great man of the world will cry out for the rocks to fall upon them to hide them from the wrath of the lamb.” He is not coming back with his hand like going: “Oh, I just want to save you but now you have to go to hell.” No! He is coming back, it says: “sword of the Spirit.”

I mean everything else is going on here. He is coming back and He is gonna fight somebody. Because He is mad! Now, the problem that you have to see. There is punishment. We have broken God’s law, so now we deserve to be punished. From where does that punishment come? Ask yourself that question. From where does that punishment come?

We have grown up under preaching that tells us, well if you sin, you know some bad thing happens to you, that’s not God that’s just the consequences of sin just like the law of gravity, you jump off the roof you gonna get hurt, you sin you gonna get hurt. It is not God’s doing that’s just the way that the things are. That’s not true. God talks about coming and judgment all the time against people’s sin. He does, just read the Bible. All the time! “I will come against you,” ” I will set my face against you.”

OK? So we realize that we have been saved from God and his punishment. So how is that punishment to be done away with? When Jesus the Son of God was dying on the cross it is not the spears of Romans, or the crowns of thorns, or the nails in His hands that save you. It is not that that pays for the crime. The suffering that the man heaped upon Jesus, God does not look at it and say “OK, good enough!”

That’s not what paid for your sin! What paid for your sin? Look in Isaiah 53. This is what paid for your sin: Isaiah 53:10 “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him.” Now, you’ve all read 53 and you’ve heard gazillions of sermons on the radio and everything about Isaiah 53. But isn’t it funny that when you hear sermons on Isaiah 53 it is always verses 3, 4, 5 and 6 talking about the sufferings heaped upon Christ by men. But very rarely do you hear Isaiah 53:10 “It pleased the Lord”. Who’s the Lord? The word here is not Adonai, its Yahweh, or as some of you may pronounce it Jehovah. I mean its God. “It pleased God to…”what? “crush Him.” This is the Messiah.

“It pleased the Lord to crush Him.”

This word crush, it refers to like… The best illustration I can give you is, imagine… Do you know what a mill stone is? A mill stone is what they used to have was a big stone, usually about this big, round, may be about that tall, I mean a huge stone. And then they placed another stone on top of that, that actually rotated. OK? It turned. And what you would do as you can imagine you put grain, corn and everything, in between those two stones and when they may their way through there, that stone would ground them to powder. That’s the terminology being used here. That is what it refers to. It pleased God the Father to crush His own Son and to ground Him into powder.

Now another illustration would be this. Imagine you are standing at the foot of a dam, that’s a thousand miles high and a thousand miles wide. And you are standing right there at the foot of this thing and it is filled with water. And in 1 second the wall is pulled out away. What do you thing it is gonna happen to you? It means its over. Your body is never gonna be found. Or imagine you are walking one day, and a star 6 thousand times larger that the sun crashes the Earth right on your head. What we are talking about here? How is it that that cross saves you? It’s because on the cross all the sin that God hates…. You know have you heard someone says the love of God is so great that you cannot describe it and that if you were to even get a glimpse of how great it is it will drive you mad. It is so great that it will literally drive you mad. And the only way you’ve ever gonna be able to know more of the love of God is if God supernaturally strengthens you and glorifies your body because standing in His presence and to know His love would be too much joy for you that you will explode. I mean you just want be able to handle it you’ll go mad. Well, In the same way God hatred is so great it goes beyond description. And that if you were to even catch a glimpse of it it will drive you mad. It would be like a little wax figure this tall that has a nuclear bomb explode 3 inches away from it.

You have no idea. The sin that evokes God’s hatred, and I mean that word ‘hatred’, OK? God hates! The sin that evokes God’s hatred was placed on His son. Now, you take all of the sins of God’s people, from the first man ever saved on the face of the earth, to the last person ever saved on the face of the earth. All of God’s people, all of their sin, is placed on the Son. All of God’s justice, just punishment, but also all of Gods just hatred, His just loathing, everything that should be poured out on these sinful creatures throughout eternity, God throws down on His only begotten Son. Crushes Him under the weight of His own justice. You say: “Brother Paul could you kill your son for me?” “I’m sorry.”

You can argue theologically whether I should or I shouldn’t – I couldn’t. And I’m evil. The Bible says if you being evil can give good gifts to your children, if you being evil can love your children … Now here’s God, perfect love manifested towards a perfect son, who never did anything but bless His Father and crushes Him under the weight of His holy hatred. When those preachers, you know the cup, you know, Jesus says let this cup pass from me and they say: “Yes, going to the cross He didn’t want to go the cross”

No! they are wrong, and yes they are right they just don’t know what they are saying. Listen to me, there have been martyrs who have gone, followers of Jesus Christ who have been burned as a steak and while they were burning they have lifted their hands and praise the Lord. Ok? Now let me ask you that question. Do you think they are greater than our Lord Jesus? There have been Christians… I have a picture in my office I keep it right in front of my desk, a huge picture of all these Christians crucified in a Roman theater, and they have been burned after they have been crucified, and lions have been set free on others. I keep that in front of me all the time to remind myself that this is still happening today. And there were many of those who were crucified and sang out with joy as they were pounding the nails . Do you thing that they are greater than Jesus? Do you think Jesus would actually cower, and fret, and cry under a punishment that even some of His followers were able to endure with joy? Do you think Jesus is weaker than them?

What you need to understand is Jesus wasn’t thinking when He was in that garden “Save me from this hour.” “Let this cup pass from me.” He wasn’t thinking about the nails in His hands, He wasn’t thinking about a wooden cross, He wasn’t thinking about a spear in his side, or Romans, or anything else. What He was thinking about is this: “Father, I have never been out of your bosom. I have always been in the most perfect, wonderful, beautiful relationship with You. I have all throughout the eternity.”

God did not created this world because He needed something, because God was always content with His son. You take everybody in this world and throw them straight into the Hell God will still be happy because He’s got His Son. I don’t want to offend your humanism, but that’s just the way it is. God’s perfectly happy. He did this, He created us, not because of His need but because of the overflow of His abundance. And here His son is separated from Him.

I remember after my little boy was born and I had a monitor up there in his room and I was outside and had the other monitor just right within the door … working up on a ladder, probably about 15 feet in the air, and nailing some things…. and he cried … I didn’t even think, I threw the hammer and leaped. I went right off the ladder. I hit the ground running . I was a new father, but I still do the same thing today. I mean, hit the ground running.

If we being evil could love our children, and here is the Son, thinking: “I’m gonna be ripped out of the heart of the Father, the Father is gonna to turn His face away from me.” Now you may think: “Oh yes, he turned His face away because he didn’t want to see His son suffering.”

No, you’ve got it all wrong. He turned his face away because His Son had become detestable! His son had become sin. All of you who are fathers and those who are mothers know. I mean, your kid after gets to a certain age he does something and its: “Is dad looking, is mom looking?” I mean he can’t do anything unless mom and dad is looking. I can worshiping he grabs my face and goes like this. The Father turns his face away and says: “No!”. He became the abominable thing, an abomination. You and I are an abomination before God in order for us to be forgiven God has to die as an abomination in our place. You and I deserve to be crushed under God’s wrath. In order for God to save us and forgive us He was crashed under His own wrath.

That’s what the Cross is! That’s what it means! And now you can to see why if you have ever had a heavenly vision of truly what happened on that Cross it will affect you for the rest of your life. You’ll become a prisoner to that thing. You won’t be able to get away from it. Let me give you an idea. I used that illustration. I love to use it because of its shock value of it, because it makes the people so mad. A kid said one time: “Well when I go to hell…” He was taking joy in the fact that if he went into Hell, at least there will be people on the outside who would be suffering because they loved him so much, and knew he was going to hell. You know that mentality? “Well I will hurt myself, and it will hurt everybody else who loves me?”

I noticed this tendency in him, and I said… “Young man let me just give you an idea what is gonna happen on the day that you stand before God”. He said: “OK, I’m not afraid” I said: “You will be!” I said: “This is what’s gonna happen. The moment you stand before God everything that your parents loved about you, it wasn’t you, did you know that? It was the common grace of God on you. That’s what caused them to love you. Now, at the moment He declares your judgment, that grace is gonna be pulled off of you. And what your parents are going to see is a seething monster that would make a Hitler looked like a choir boy. And do you wanna know something?” I said “when you take your first step into hell, the last thing you are going to hear is all of creation, along with your parents, standing up and applauding and worshiping God, because God has rid the earth of you. So don’t think that anybody is gonna be mourning up here in heaven and some how you gonna have vengeance on at least somebody as you suffer there in hell. You will find no satisfaction there!”

He said: “That’s horrible!”

I said: “More horrible than you can ever imagine, repent and believe. Flee from the wrath to come.” I was speaking at the university last week and some students were in invisible protest against me. They came in, sat down on the front rows, cross their arms, pull their hats all down, and pretended to be sleeping And this was their big protest, I guess. I just walked over to the corner and I said:

“Listen… listen.” and I began to tell them about Hell. And I said, “Now I want you, I will give each of you a quarter so you can go home, go back to your room and call your mom and tell her that all of you are going to hell. And she needs to prey for your soul.” You see sometimes in the universities, do you know the biggest argument they use against me? They’ll say:

“A loving Jesus would never send anyone to hell.”

Do you want to know something? If it were not for the loving Jesus we wouldn’t even have the doctrine of Hell. Do you know that? You look in the Old Testament you can hardly find, it is there, but it’s hardly any passages in the whole Old Testament about Hell. You look in the writings of Paul there is almost nothing about Hell. Really! Do you know where everything that we know about Hell, do you know where it comes from? From Jesus! Really!

Almost everything we know about Hell comes from Him. The loving Jesus who died to save men spoke more about Hell than everybody else in the entire Bible put together. Why? I think that there is one reason. This is just my opinion. Hell is so horrible that man can not even comprehend it. So the only one who can truly comprehend how horrible hell is, is God Himself. And only God is able to communicate the horrible nature of hell in any way. So remember now when you hear about Jesus dying for you, you know now, that it is more than some whips. Those whips were nothing. I don’t wanna depreciate His physical suffering but, folks, the cross is about the son of God being crushed by his own Father. And when he cried out:

“It is finished!” that meant PAID IN FULL! Do you know why God can never pour out his wrath on you, if you are Christian? He can never, never pour out his wrath on you. Never! His judgment his wrath, He can never pour it out on you. Never! It is impossible! He can’t do it! He can only act toward you now with the greatest of love, the same love with which He loved His dearly begotten son, is the love He loves you. He cannot love you with anything less. Do you wanna know why He cannot poured His wrath out on you? I’ll tell you why. Because His son drank it. It doesn’t exist anymore. It is gone! He drank it.

There is nothing left for you. There is no more punishment for you if you are a Christian. But if you are not a Christian. Oh, dear friend you don’t even wanna know, you don’t even wanna know what awaits you.

Lets pray.

Father, we thank You for this day. We ask Lord, your blessing and your help. And Dear God help us to appreciate what You have done for us in giving your son, not an angel did You gave us, not gold, not a piece of the throne that You throw away, but You gave us your only begotten son. And for that we will worship You throughout all eternity. That we have an older brother, and He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters because He has died for us. He’s taken away our sin, and He’s given us his own righteousness.

In Jesus Name. AMEN

“I’m going to tell you about the meaning of the Cross.”

And I was surprised that he spent a lot of time talking about the Cross of Jesus Christ, but did not put the emphasis on where the emphasis was do. And did not truly explained the meaning of the cross. And he did something that is so common today. Let me give you just a little bit of background. As you know I have said this before: Wisdom was not born with any one nor it will die with anyone. Now If I stand up here today and I say that the church at large is basically missing the point about the gospel of Jesus Christ you can look at me and say:

“Who are you? Are you Billy Graham? Are you this guy or that guy? How or What gives you the right to stand here and say: ‘The church at large is missing the point’ ?”

Well, here’s the point. History gives me that right. You see, one of the things that you have to understand is this. There is a difference between a theologian and a pop-theologian. Did you ever hear of pop music? Its the music that is Popular, music that is given to the the populists, it’s a music for the day, kind of it just jumps up. It doesn’t last very long and one of the reasons is that it is pretty superficial. You know like …..Sonny and Cher

“I would die for you, I will even climb a mountain for you!”

I never could figure out how climbing a mountain was more than dying for someone. But pop music is very superficial. Also there is what we called pop-theology, which is very superficial. Theology is the study of God and there is a lot of what we call pop-theologians on the radio. They are not truly trained theologians, they just have a following. They haven’t give themselves to study, they give themselves more to preaching. And their preaching deals more with illustrations, and stories, and antidotes, and cute little sayings, but as far as the theology, NO!

Now whenever someone comes to you and says like I said this morning:

“The church by large has missed the point with regard to the Cross” the first thing that you have to ask then, is this: “Why do you say that?”. The answer better be this: “Not only because I have found these things in the Bible but because history backs me up.” You see, If you say for example:

“I believe a certain thing”.

If you stick Beny Hinn here and me right here and if you can pull both of us apart and if you ask Beny Hinn why he believes that all the stuff he does and the facts that he makes millions of dollars and he will only stay in five star hotels and all this different things. If you ask him why he does that he will tell you:

“Because that is what the Bible teaches.” And if you ask me, I will say: “He is completely wrong!” And if you ask me why, I will say, “Because this is what the Bible teaches”. Now the question is, both of us are using the Bible as our authority, so who is right? You know that is the big question, who is right? Well there are two things that you need to look at. One of them is called context, and the other is called history.

First of all I want you to understand something. If the Bible says, or if I make a statement the barn is red, it means the barn is red. I’m so tired of speaking on university campuses and hearing students say:

“Oh, that’s just your interpretation.” And I say: “Well here interpret it grammatically, not according to the Spirit, not according to the, just grammatically. Like you would in an English class. What is it saying grammatically?” That’s the first one. The second point is this. We have 2000 years of Christian history. Ok? 2000 years of Christian’s writing. Thousands of, no millions of books.

Now, if I teach something on the Cross and you compare what I teach to 2000 years of Christian history, and you don’t find it anywhere in 2000 years of Christian history, then you’ve got to decide who is right? 2000 years of Christians theologians and writers or Paul Washer? Well obviously 2000 years of Christian history and teachers are right. Whenever someone teaches you something one of the good things to do is to compare what they are saying to 2000 years of Christian history. If nobody agrees with them, they are probably wrong, aren’t they? And if we as Americans come up with some new theology, or a new way of doing Christianity, yet it disagrees with 2000 years worth of Christians form all over the world, who’s probably wrong? We are! You see , and so that’s why I say today, that on the teaching of the Cross most of the people are completely missing the point.

And here is, when we hear a teaching on the Cross, and when someone preaches about the suffering of Jesus, what is it that you usually hear about? Physical suffering, right? Isn’t that what? And I mean the preacher,- and we need to talk about physical suffering.- But I mean the preacher will talk about physical suffering, and what will happen? Then he will start crying, and everybody in the congregation starts crying. He talks about how the nails went through a certain part of the wrist, because that was the only thing that would hold up a man. And how the nail went through both the feet in a certain place. And then in order to keep alive the person would have to push upon the nail in order to take a breath. Because when you died of crucification you died of suffocation. They’ll talk about the spear in the side, they’ll talk about the crown of thorns on the head, they’ll talk about all these different things, the beating with the whip, how he drug his cross and the blood is flowing down and everything else and then they’ll tell you:

“By this we are saved”.

Now , that draws you to a certain conclusion. How is it that the physical sufferings of Jesus, caused by men, somehow paid for our sins? It doesn’t work out theologically. Are we actually .. are our sins paid for because the Romans and Jews rejected Jesus? Are our sins are paid for because they whipped him and beat him?

I was in German mennonite camp, a bible camp, in northern, actually in the mountains, the Alps in Romania. And I walked to their theological, they had a theological library, and I walked in there and I saw a thing on the Cross of Christ. So I pull it out and praise the Lord, it was not in German. The only book in there I think that was not in German. And I started looking through it, and this is what the man said: “God sent His son who lived a perfect life…” Now this is a theologian … “God sent His son who lived a perfect life and then according to the plan of God, men rejected him, they beat Him, they crucified Him, they mocked Him, they put crown of thorns on his head, they stuck a spear in his side, and all these different things. And God looked at that suffering, that Jesus suffered, at the hands of men and He considered that to be payment for all our sins against Him.

Now, a lot of people say: “Well yeah, that sounds good!” Actually, historically that’s a heresy! The deepest form of heresy. I mean you could be wrong about a lot of things, but if you are wrong about the Cross, you are in trouble. Now here’s what I want you to do. I want you to put 2 things together. How is it, what happened on that Cross that would cause God to forgive us of our sins? Now, the first question though is this. Why does the Son of God, God in the flesh, why is it necessary that He die? Why can’t God just forgive everybody? Have you ever thought about that? Why can’t He just – I mean, we are called to forgive people aren’t we? If you sin against me, I’m called to forgive you. I’m not called to require a sacrifice or anything. I’m just told to forgive you. So why can’t God simply forgive? That’s the first question you need to answer. And I will show you a verse. I want us to go to Proverbs. I am going to condense about a week worth of lectures into 1 thing, so I just want to go to 1 text. Go to Proverbs 17:15. Now look what it says:

“He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike, are an abomination to the Lord.”

Now let us just consider this one phrase: “He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord”. Now we are in a big problem. Most of the songs we sing today are gonna be about God justifying the wicked. That’s what we sing about all the time. “Man , God justifies us, even though we were sinners. God declared us to be right.” That’s what the justification means. God declared you to be right before Him. And you praise God for that. But there’s a a big problem here. Do you see what it is? God says that anyone who declares the wicked to be right, when they are not right, they are an abomination before Him. So if God declared you to be right when you were not right, it’s an abomination. He has made Himself an abomination. If God forgives the wicked, He Himself becomes an abomination. In a same way if a judge forgives a murderer and lets him go, he’s no longer a Just Judge. It’s so amazing to me how so many people – I speak at the university, the students are just furious because I say that God throws men in Hell. They are furious when I say that. But do you know what bothers Heaven? Heaven has a problem with what God has done. Heaven’s problem is this. If God is a just God He cannot forgive. He must punish the wicked. That is the thing of the whole Bible. Have you ever wondered why God got all the animals die in the Old Testament? It’s a symbol, and a type. But the whole point is that if the sinner sins, he must die. He must die. And if God justifies someone who is wicked, and if he declares a wicked person to be innocent, then God is an abomination. God has become wicked. Now we are beginning to see why it was necessary for God – the Son to die. God can not simply forgive. The law, the righteous law, demands that the sinner die. Demands it! You just can’t push that away. You just can’t say ok, well we are going to let them slide this time. If God does that He is unjust, He is wrong, He is sinful, He becomes just like the devil and the devil’s accusations against Him now are correct. Can you imagine devil’s standing before God?

“Hey God, remember when we sinned against you? You were just then, weren’t You? You cast us all out of Heaven, Yeah, where’s your justice now God? Huh?, where is it? These men, this ball of dirt sins against you, you let him go. Guess what God, you become like me. Congratulations!”

You see the problem? That’s the problem. Now the only way that God can forgive sinful men is if God who made the law and God who demands satisfaction, if He Himself comes down and pays the penalty. That’s why the doctrine of the Jehovah-witnesses is so blasphemous. Look what they are saying. They are saying that when the world fell God created, created, an innocent being, the Son, He created Him. And than took this innocent being independent from God and put Him on a Cross, to die, to fix the problem. See that’s not what happened, the Son of God is not a created being, He is God. You see, the only way the law of God can be satisfied is by God. And you can use this against the Jehovah-witnesses. If Jesus is not God, than everybody is going to Hell, because what is done on that Cross is not enough. God made the law, God has to satisfy it. It has to be God. If Jehovah-witness comes to the door and says that Jesus wasn’t God, just sit down and just start weeping. He’ll say: “Why are you crying for?”

“We are all going to Hell.”

“Why?”

“Because only God can satisfy God’s law. Only He can pay the price. And if Jesus is not God then we are going to Hell. Me and you, and the rest of us.”

But you see, God in order to forgive the wicked, and still be Just, He must die in the wicked’s place. Thats the only way He can forgive is to die in the place of the wicked.Now here’s comes the important point. How does He die? What is it about the death of the Son of God that leads to our forgiveness? How does His death satisfy the law? Now, here is something I want you to understand. When someone says they have been saved,- now I’d never do this to a young Christian or, but if they are a seminary students or something they are going to get this, if they say

“I’ve been saved”

And I go “From what? From what have you been saved?” People usually say “Sin!” ” Nope! … Nope!”

They say: “What you mean “Nope”?” “Sin wasn’t after you. Sin wasn’t gonna throw you in Hell. You have sinned, but the sin caused something else. Sin isn’t going to throw you in Hell! Sin is not even a person! It’s not a living being that’s going to judge you, and grab you and throw you in Hell. From what have you been saved? This is going to really rock your boat. I’ll tell you from what you have been saved. From what you have been saved is not ‘What,’ it is ‘Who.’ You have been saved from God ! You see here’s what you need to understand. God is the judge of all the Universe. You have sinned, since you have sinned and made yourself an enemy of God before the just judge, when you stand before Him, He will throw you in Hell!” Now I hear a lot of people say: “God doesn’t throw anybody in Hell.”

Well that’s really nice if you write it on the back of a Christian T-shirt, sing it in a contemporary Christian song, but it is not in the Bible. Jesus said: “You do not be afraid of man who can kill your body, but be afraid of God who can kill your body and throw you in Hell.” You see? Again this God of ours is not very politically correct. He is not a tamed lion. People, have you ever heard this statement, we see it in Romans 5, We also see it in Romans 1: “enemy of God,” and “hater of God.” Have you ever heard that word “enemy of God?” Do you know what the problem is? Contemporary Christianity interprets it differently from the historical Christianity. You will hear preachers say:

“When the Bible says that we were an enemy of God , it means that WE were an enemy against God, that WE were rebellion against God, that WE were against God. But it doesn’t mean that God was against us, that God was our enemy.”

And than they will usually say something like this: “It’s like you are holding a gun against God, and God wants you to put that gun down, and then you’ll be friends.” That’s not true! All throughout historical Christianity when it says “enemies of God,” you know what it really means? Not only were you God’s enemy, holding your gun on Him, God was your enemy holding His gun on You. You put your gun down, fine! He still has His gun on you. You are criminal, you broke the law, you deserve to die, you can put your gun down to surrender if you want, but you are still going to hell. Because not only you are his enemy, but He is yours. God says things in the Bible like: “I will hate them.” “I will come against them.” “I will fight against them.” “I’ll raise up a standard.” Again this God of 21st century Christianity is a lot a different from the biblical one, and a lot different than one that has been preached throughout 2000 years of Christian history. So you see, not only were you making yourself an enemy against God, God was your enemy. And then one from whom you need to be saved is God because He is coming, remember what Amos has said: “Be prepared to meet thy God.” Remember what Revelation says and talks about: “He is coming and the captains and the great man of the world will cry out for the rocks to fall upon them to hide them from the wrath of the lamb.” He is not coming back with his hand like going: “Oh, I just want to save you but now you have to go to hell.” No! He is coming back, it says: “sword of the Spirit.”

I mean everything else is going on here. He is coming back and He is gonna fight somebody. Because He is mad! Now, the problem that you have to see. There is punishment. We have broken God’s law, so now we deserve to be punished. From where does that punishment come? Ask yourself that question. From where does that punishment come?

We have grown up under preaching that tells us, well if you sin, you know some bad thing happens to you, that’s not God that’s just the consequences of sin just like the law of gravity, you jump off the roof you gonna get hurt, you sin you gonna get hurt. It is not God’s doing that’s just the way that the things are. That’s not true. God talks about coming and judgment all the time against people’s sin. He does, just read the Bible. All the time! “I will come against you,” ” I will set my face against you.”

OK? So we realize that we have been saved from God and his punishment. So how is that punishment to be done away with? When Jesus the Son of God was dying on the cross it is not the spears of Romans, or the crowns of thorns, or the nails in His hands that save you. It is not that that pays for the crime. The suffering that the man heaped upon Jesus, God does not look at it and say “OK, good enough!”

That’s not what paid for your sin! What paid for your sin? Look in Isaiah 53. This is what paid for your sin: Isaiah 53:10 “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him.” Now, you’ve all read 53 and you’ve heard gazillions of sermons on the radio and everything about Isaiah 53. But isn’t it funny that when you hear sermons on Isaiah 53 it is always verses 3, 4, 5 and 6 talking about the sufferings heaped upon Christ by men. But very rarely do you hear Isaiah 53:10 “It pleased the Lord”. Who’s the Lord? The word here is not Adonai, its Yahweh, or as some of you may pronounce it Jehovah. I mean its God. “It pleased God to…”what? “crush Him.” This is the Messiah.

“It pleased the Lord to crush Him.”

This word crush, it refers to like… The best illustration I can give you is, imagine… Do you know what a mill stone is? A mill stone is what they used to have was a big stone, usually about this big, round, may be about that tall, I mean a huge stone. And then they placed another stone on top of that, that actually rotated. OK? It turned. And what you would do as you can imagine you put grain, corn and everything, in between those two stones and when they may their way through there, that stone would ground them to powder. That’s the terminology being used here. That is what it refers to. It pleased God the Father to crush His own Son and to ground Him into powder.

Now another illustration would be this. Imagine you are standing at the foot of a dam, that’s a thousand miles high and a thousand miles wide. And you are standing right there at the foot of this thing and it is filled with water. And in 1 second the wall is pulled out away. What do you thing it is gonna happen to you? It means its over. Your body is never gonna be found. Or imagine you are walking one day, and a star 6 thousand times larger that the sun crashes the Earth right on your head. What we are talking about here? How is it that that cross saves you? It’s because on the cross all the sin that God hates…. You know have you heard someone says the love of God is so great that you cannot describe it and that if you were to even get a glimpse of how great it is it will drive you mad. It is so great that it will literally drive you mad. And the only way you’ve ever gonna be able to know more of the love of God is if God supernaturally strengthens you and glorifies your body because standing in His presence and to know His love would be too much joy for you that you will explode. I mean you just want be able to handle it you’ll go mad. Well, In the same way God hatred is so great it goes beyond description. And that if you were to even catch a glimpse of it it will drive you mad. It would be like a little wax figure this tall that has a nuclear bomb explode 3 inches away from it.

You have no idea. The sin that evokes God’s hatred, and I mean that word ‘hatred’, OK? God hates! The sin that evokes God’s hatred was placed on His son. Now, you take all of the sins of God’s people, from the first man ever saved on the face of the earth, to the last person ever saved on the face of the earth. All of God’s people, all of their sin, is placed on the Son. All of God’s justice, just punishment, but also all of Gods just hatred, His just loathing, everything that should be poured out on these sinful creatures throughout eternity, God throws down on His only begotten Son. Crushes Him under the weight of His own justice. You say: “Brother Paul could you kill your son for me?” “I’m sorry.”

You can argue theologically whether I should or I shouldn’t – I couldn’t. And I’m evil. The Bible says if you being evil can give good gifts to your children, if you being evil can love your children … Now here’s God, perfect love manifested towards a perfect son, who never did anything but bless His Father and crushes Him under the weight of His holy hatred. When those preachers, you know the cup, you know, Jesus says let this cup pass from me and they say: “Yes, going to the cross He didn’t want to go the cross”

No! they are wrong, and yes they are right they just don’t know what they are saying. Listen to me, there have been martyrs who have gone, followers of Jesus Christ who have been burned as a steak and while they were burning they have lifted their hands and praise the Lord. Ok? Now let me ask you that question. Do you think they are greater than our Lord Jesus? There have been Christians… I have a picture in my office I keep it right in front of my desk, a huge picture of all these Christians crucified in a Roman theater, and they have been burned after they have been crucified, and lions have been set free on others. I keep that in front of me all the time to remind myself that this is still happening today. And there were many of those who were crucified and sang out with joy as they were pounding the nails . Do you thing that they are greater than Jesus? Do you think Jesus would actually cower, and fret, and cry under a punishment that even some of His followers were able to endure with joy? Do you think Jesus is weaker than them?

What you need to understand is Jesus wasn’t thinking when He was in that garden “Save me from this hour.” “Let this cup pass from me.” He wasn’t thinking about the nails in His hands, He wasn’t thinking about a wooden cross, He wasn’t thinking about a spear in his side, or Romans, or anything else. What He was thinking about is this: “Father, I have never been out of your bosom. I have always been in the most perfect, wonderful, beautiful relationship with You. I have all throughout the eternity.”

God did not created this world because He needed something, because God was always content with His son. You take everybody in this world and throw them straight into the Hell God will still be happy because He’s got His Son. I don’t want to offend your humanism, but that’s just the way it is. God’s perfectly happy. He did this, He created us, not because of His need but because of the overflow of His abundance. And here His son is separated from Him.

I remember after my little boy was born and I had a monitor up there in his room and I was outside and had the other monitor just right within the door … working up on a ladder, probably about 15 feet in the air, and nailing some things…. and he cried … I didn’t even think, I threw the hammer and leaped. I went right off the ladder. I hit the ground running . I was a new father, but I still do the same thing today. I mean, hit the ground running.

If we being evil could love our children, and here is the Son, thinking: “I’m gonna be ripped out of the heart of the Father, the Father is gonna to turn His face away from me.” Now you may think: “Oh yes, he turned His face away because he didn’t want to see His son suffering.”

No, you’ve got it all wrong. He turned his face away because His Son had become detestable! His son had become sin. All of you who are fathers and those who are mothers know. I mean, your kid after gets to a certain age he does something and its: “Is dad looking, is mom looking?” I mean he can’t do anything unless mom and dad is looking. I can worshiping he grabs my face and goes like this. The Father turns his face away and says: “No!”. He became the abominable thing, an abomination. You and I are an abomination before God in order for us to be forgiven God has to die as an abomination in our place. You and I deserve to be crushed under God’s wrath. In order for God to save us and forgive us He was crashed under His own wrath.

That’s what the Cross is! That’s what it means! And now you can to see why if you have ever had a heavenly vision of truly what happened on that Cross it will affect you for the rest of your life. You’ll become a prisoner to that thing. You won’t be able to get away from it. Let me give you an idea. I used that illustration. I love to use it because of its shock value of it, because it makes the people so mad. A kid said one time: “Well when I go to hell…” He was taking joy in the fact that if he went into Hell, at least there will be people on the outside who would be suffering because they loved him so much, and knew he was going to hell. You know that mentality? “Well I will hurt myself, and it will hurt everybody else who loves me?”

I noticed this tendency in him, and I said… “Young man let me just give you an idea what is gonna happen on the day that you stand before God”. He said: “OK, I’m not afraid” I said: “You will be!” I said: “This is what’s gonna happen. The moment you stand before God everything that your parents loved about you, it wasn’t you, did you know that? It was the common grace of God on you. That’s what caused them to love you. Now, at the moment He declares your judgment, that grace is gonna be pulled off of you. And what your parents are going to see is a seething monster that would make a Hitler looked like a choir boy. And do you wanna know something?” I said “when you take your first step into hell, the last thing you are going to hear is all of creation, along with your parents, standing up and applauding and worshiping God, because God has rid the earth of you. So don’t think that anybody is gonna be mourning up here in heaven and some how you gonna have vengeance on at least somebody as you suffer there in hell. You will find no satisfaction there!”

He said: “That’s horrible!”

I said: “More horrible than you can ever imagine, repent and believe. Flee from the wrath to come.” I was speaking at the university last week and some students were in invisible protest against me. They came in, sat down on the front rows, cross their arms, pull their hats all down, and pretended to be sleeping And this was their big protest, I guess. I just walked over to the corner and I said:

“Listen… listen.” and I began to tell them about Hell. And I said, “Now I want you, I will give each of you a quarter so you can go home, go back to your room and call your mom and tell her that all of you are going to hell. And she needs to prey for your soul.” You see sometimes in the universities, do you know the biggest argument they use against me? They’ll say:

“A loving Jesus would never send anyone to hell.”

Do you want to know something? If it were not for the loving Jesus we wouldn’t even have the doctrine of Hell. Do you know that? You look in the Old Testament you can hardly find, it is there, but it’s hardly any passages in the whole Old Testament about Hell. You look in the writings of Paul there is almost nothing about Hell. Really! Do you know where everything that we know about Hell, do you know where it comes from? From Jesus! Really!

Almost everything we know about Hell comes from Him. The loving Jesus who died to save men spoke more about Hell than everybody else in the entire Bible put together. Why? I think that there is one reason. This is just my opinion. Hell is so horrible that man can not even comprehend it. So the only one who can truly comprehend how horrible hell is, is God Himself. And only God is able to communicate the horrible nature of hell in any way. So remember now when you hear about Jesus dying for you, you know now, that it is more than some whips. Those whips were nothing. I don’t wanna depreciate His physical suffering but, folks, the cross is about the son of God being crushed by his own Father. And when he cried out:

“It is finished!” that meant PAID IN FULL! Do you know why God can never pour out his wrath on you, if you are Christian? He can never, never pour out his wrath on you. Never! His judgment his wrath, He can never pour it out on you. Never! It is impossible! He can’t do it! He can only act toward you now with the greatest of love, the same love with which He loved His dearly begotten son, is the love He loves you. He cannot love you with anything less. Do you wanna know why He cannot poured His wrath out on you? I’ll tell you why. Because His son drank it. It doesn’t exist anymore. It is gone! He drank it.

There is nothing left for you. There is no more punishment for you if you are a Christian. But if you are not a Christian. Oh, dear friend you don’t even wanna know, you don’t even wanna know what awaits you.

Lets pray.

Father, we thank You for this day. We ask Lord, your blessing and your help. And Dear God help us to appreciate what You have done for us in giving your son, not an angel did You gave us, not gold, not a piece of the throne that You throw away, but You gave us your only begotten son. And for that we will worship You throughout all eternity. That we have an older brother, and He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters because He has died for us. He’s taken away our sin, and He’s given us his own righteousness.

In Jesus Name. AMEN

” How do you know that you believe to believe? 70% Americans claim to be Christians, but barely 5% Americans are going to Heaven! “

What Must I Do To Really Be Saved?

This is the most important question that anyone could ever ask.

The simple fact is that everyone will die one day. None of us know how much time we have left on this earth. Regardless if you believe in heaven or hell, on judgment day you will stand before a righteous and holy God that will stand in judgment of you. You may not agree with this or even believe it but please read on to get the full explanation.

In the beginning God created a perfect world. There was no death or sickness because there was no sin in His perfect creation. God created man and woman to inhabit the earth, Garden of Eden, and gave them dominion over all things. When Adam and Eve were in the garden they walked and talked with God. They were in perfect relationship with Him. However, they disobeyed God (sinned) and they were cast out of the garden and their penalty was death. As a result of their sin all humanity would never be in perfect relationship with God. This was not just a blame it all on Adam and Eve event…we have sinned as well. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23). You may think…I don’t feel like I have sinned. Let me explain further. God brought forth Ten Commandments that were moral laws and humankind was told to live within these laws. The Ten Commandments are:

1. You shall have no other God before me.
2. You shall not bow down to any graven image.
3. You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.
4. Remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
5. Honor your mother and father.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not lie.
10. You shall not covet.

Here is the news….we have broken all of these commandments. You may say, “I have never killed anyone or committed adultery”. Jesus said that if you have hated your brother then you have committed murder in your heart. He also said that if you look upon a woman to lust after her then you are guilty of committing adultery in your heart. Jesus clarified the law by making it a matter of the conscience rather than only of deed.

The simple fact is that if you have ever lied, God sees you as a liar. If you have ever stolen anything (regardless of value) God sees you as a thief. If you have ever looked upon anyone in lust then God sees you as an adulterer. On Judgment Day you will be found guilty in the sight of a Righteous, Holy, and Just God and he is fair and just in sending you to hell.

You may think that you will be able to beg for forgiveness on that day. Let’s apply what we know about justice to this idea. Suppose you are brought before a judge in a court of law and you are guilty of raping and murdering someone. The evidence against you is rock solid. Somehow you were caught on video tape committing the act and on top of that there is DNA evidence to substantiate the charge. You are guilty. What if you beg the judge for forgiveness? Maybe you could say, “Judge I know I raped and murdered that person but that was a long time ago. Since then I have become a very good person and I donate time and money to charitable causes”. Will the judge let you go? No, he will not let you go because he is a just judge and the law must be satisfied. You do the crime, you serve the time. God, the Holy Creator of the universe is infinitely more Just and fair than an earthly judge. Because He is fair and just He must punish sin. Not only must He…He will. God’s punishment is Hell.

Right now you may be thinking…..I have no hope. Let me give you the Good News. 2000 years ago God sent His Son, Jesus, who lived a perfect and sinless life, to be a sacrifice for you and me. Jesus was the propitiation, the satisfaction if you will, for our sins. Jesus died on across and the wrath of God was unleashed upon Him. Jesus died a brutal, shameful, and humiliating death. Three days later Jesus defeated death and rose from the dead and ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father. If you Repent of your sins and Trust in Jesus as your Savior you will not see the wrath of God on Judgment Day. You are free from the Judgment only if you repent and trust because Jesus’ sacrifice delivered you from the law of sin and death. You will have eternal life with God! God will forgive you of your sin and you will become born again. God will place new desires in your heart. You will become a new creation in Christ.

God sacrificed His Son in order to restore the relationship that mankind destroyed with God. You hear all sorts of talk today about God’s “purpose” for your life……I have just told you God’s purpose and wonderful plan for your life. Repent and trust in Jesus today. You do not know how much time you have left on this earth. The latest statistics report that 150,000 people die every day. What if today is your last day?

If you are not sure exactly how to repent and trust read Psalm 51 and use that as your model. You can also refer to the “Repentance” tab on the left side of this page for more information.

More information: repentandtrust.org

” How do you know that you believe to believe? 70% Americans claim to be Christians, but barely 5% Americans are going to Heaven! “

What Must I Do To Really Be Saved?

This is the most important question that anyone could ever ask.

The simple fact is that everyone will die one day. None of us know how much time we have left on this earth. Regardless if you believe in heaven or hell, on judgment day you will stand before a righteous and holy God that will stand in judgment of you. You may not agree with this or even believe it but please read on to get the full explanation.

In the beginning God created a perfect world. There was no death or sickness because there was no sin in His perfect creation. God created man and woman to inhabit the earth, Garden of Eden, and gave them dominion over all things. When Adam and Eve were in the garden they walked and talked with God. They were in perfect relationship with Him. However, they disobeyed God (sinned) and they were cast out of the garden and their penalty was death. As a result of their sin all humanity would never be in perfect relationship with God. This was not just a blame it all on Adam and Eve event…we have sinned as well. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23). You may think…I don’t feel like I have sinned. Let me explain further. God brought forth Ten Commandments that were moral laws and humankind was told to live within these laws. The Ten Commandments are:

1. You shall have no other God before me.
2. You shall not bow down to any graven image.
3. You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.
4. Remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
5. Honor your mother and father.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not lie.
10. You shall not covet.

Here is the news….we have broken all of these commandments. You may say, “I have never killed anyone or committed adultery”. Jesus said that if you have hated your brother then you have committed murder in your heart. He also said that if you look upon a woman to lust after her then you are guilty of committing adultery in your heart. Jesus clarified the law by making it a matter of the conscience rather than only of deed.

The simple fact is that if you have ever lied, God sees you as a liar. If you have ever stolen anything (regardless of value) God sees you as a thief. If you have ever looked upon anyone in lust then God sees you as an adulterer. On Judgment Day you will be found guilty in the sight of a Righteous, Holy, and Just God and he is fair and just in sending you to hell.

You may think that you will be able to beg for forgiveness on that day. Let’s apply what we know about justice to this idea. Suppose you are brought before a judge in a court of law and you are guilty of raping and murdering someone. The evidence against you is rock solid. Somehow you were caught on video tape committing the act and on top of that there is DNA evidence to substantiate the charge. You are guilty. What if you beg the judge for forgiveness? Maybe you could say, “Judge I know I raped and murdered that person but that was a long time ago. Since then I have become a very good person and I donate time and money to charitable causes”. Will the judge let you go? No, he will not let you go because he is a just judge and the law must be satisfied. You do the crime, you serve the time. God, the Holy Creator of the universe is infinitely more Just and fair than an earthly judge. Because He is fair and just He must punish sin. Not only must He…He will. God’s punishment is Hell.

Right now you may be thinking…..I have no hope. Let me give you the Good News. 2000 years ago God sent His Son, Jesus, who lived a perfect and sinless life, to be a sacrifice for you and me. Jesus was the propitiation, the satisfaction if you will, for our sins. Jesus died on across and the wrath of God was unleashed upon Him. Jesus died a brutal, shameful, and humiliating death. Three days later Jesus defeated death and rose from the dead and ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father. If you Repent of your sins and Trust in Jesus as your Savior you will not see the wrath of God on Judgment Day. You are free from the Judgment only if you repent and trust because Jesus’ sacrifice delivered you from the law of sin and death. You will have eternal life with God! God will forgive you of your sin and you will become born again. God will place new desires in your heart. You will become a new creation in Christ.

God sacrificed His Son in order to restore the relationship that mankind destroyed with God. You hear all sorts of talk today about God’s “purpose” for your life……I have just told you God’s purpose and wonderful plan for your life. Repent and trust in Jesus today. You do not know how much time you have left on this earth. The latest statistics report that 150,000 people die every day. What if today is your last day?

If you are not sure exactly how to repent and trust read Psalm 51 and use that as your model. You can also refer to the “Repentance” tab on the left side of this page for more information.

More information: repentandtrust.org

” The Realest Audio Sermon You Will Ever Hear! You Don’t Want to Miss This One. All Christians will want to hear this. The Truth of Biblical Salvation put on the table. Many will be astonished! “

What Must I Do To Really Be Saved?

This is the most important question that anyone could ever ask.

The simple fact is that everyone will die one day. None of us know how much time we have left on this earth. Regardless if you believe in heaven or hell, on judgment day you will stand before a righteous and holy God that will stand in judgment of you. You may not agree with this or even believe it but please read on to get the full explanation.

In the beginning God created a perfect world. There was no death or sickness because there was no sin in His perfect creation. God created man and woman to inhabit the earth, Garden of Eden, and gave them dominion over all things. When Adam and Eve were in the garden they walked and talked with God. They were in perfect relationship with Him. However, they disobeyed God (sinned) and they were cast out of the garden and their penalty was death. As a result of their sin all humanity would never be in perfect relationship with God. This was not just a blame it all on Adam and Eve event…we have sinned as well. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23). You may think…I don’t feel like I have sinned. Let me explain further. God brought forth Ten Commandments that were moral laws and humankind was told to live within these laws. The Ten Commandments are:

1. You shall have no other God before me.
2. You shall not bow down to any graven image.
3. You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.
4. Remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
5. Honor your mother and father.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not lie.
10. You shall not covet.

Here is the news….we have broken all of these commandments. You may say, “I have never killed anyone or committed adultery”. Jesus said that if you have hated your brother then you have committed murder in your heart. He also said that if you look upon a woman to lust after her then you are guilty of committing adultery in your heart. Jesus clarified the law by making it a matter of the conscience rather than only of deed.

The simple fact is that if you have ever lied, God sees you as a liar. If you have ever stolen anything (regardless of value) God sees you as a thief. If you have ever looked upon anyone in lust then God sees you as an adulterer. On Judgment Day you will be found guilty in the sight of a Righteous, Holy, and Just God and he is fair and just in sending you to hell.

You may think that you will be able to beg for forgiveness on that day. Let’s apply what we know about justice to this idea. Suppose you are brought before a judge in a court of law and you are guilty of raping and murdering someone. The evidence against you is rock solid. Somehow you were caught on video tape committing the act and on top of that there is DNA evidence to substantiate the charge. You are guilty. What if you beg the judge for forgiveness? Maybe you could say, “Judge I know I raped and murdered that person but that was a long time ago. Since then I have become a very good person and I donate time and money to charitable causes”. Will the judge let you go? No, he will not let you go because he is a just judge and the law must be satisfied. You do the crime, you serve the time. God, the Holy Creator of the universe is infinitely more Just and fair than an earthly judge. Because He is fair and just He must punish sin. Not only must He…He will. God’s punishment is Hell.

Right now you may be thinking…..I have no hope. Let me give you the Good News. 2000 years ago God sent His Son, Jesus, who lived a perfect and sinless life, to be a sacrifice for you and me. Jesus was the propitiation, the satisfaction if you will, for our sins. Jesus died on across and the wrath of God was unleashed upon Him. Jesus died a brutal, shameful, and humiliating death. Three days later Jesus defeated death and rose from the dead and ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father. If you Repent of your sins and Trust in Jesus as your Savior you will not see the wrath of God on Judgment Day. You are free from the Judgment only if you repent and trust because Jesus’ sacrifice delivered you from the law of sin and death. You will have eternal life with God! God will forgive you of your sin and you will become born again. God will place new desires in your heart. You will become a new creation in Christ.

God sacrificed His Son in order to restore the relationship that mankind destroyed with God. You hear all sorts of talk today about God’s “purpose” for your life……I have just told you God’s purpose and wonderful plan for your life. Repent and trust in Jesus today. You do not know how much time you have left on this earth. The latest statistics report that 150,000 people die every day. What if today is your last day?

If you are not sure exactly how to repent and trust read Psalm 51 and use that as your model. You can also refer to the “Repentance” tab on the left side of this page for more information.

More information: repentandtrust.org