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The Glory of God - In Missions - Paul Washer
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The Book of Malachi. Talking about the glory of God in missions. The Book of Malachi chapter 1 verse 11. For from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles. And in every place incense shall be offered unto My name in a pure offering. For My name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. Now, this is one of the most tremendous statements in the Bible with regard to missions and the sovereignty of God. A tremendous, tremendous statement. Now, this is a bold statement. This is a statement of certainty. This is God declaring something that shall be done.
His name shall be great among the nations. Now, look at the context in which He is saying this. If we look in the first chapter of Malachi, we see the horrible, horrifying, apostate condition of Israel, of the people of God. One time, a little preacher told me one time, he says, you know that God was angry in Malachi. Because after He spoke in Malachi, He didn't talk to anybody for 400 years. He was angry. He was angry with an apostate people. Now, were these people concerned about missions? They weren't even concerned about God.
They could care less about His worship in the temple to the point where God says, someone would come and just shut the doors of the temple. I mean, everything was, let's just close this church down. They were not responding to anything. But in the midst of the apostasy of the people of God, in the midst of their deadness of heart, in the midst of their lack of love or passion, in the midst of pure self-centeredness and God-hatred, God says, I will make My name great among the nations. I hear in missions conferences, I hear men who try to promote evangelism in our churches saying things like this, oh God, He wants to do so much.
He wants to reach the nations. He wants to evangelize our city. He wants to do so many things. But we just won't cooperate as though God were up there moaning and groaning and weeping and wringing His hands saying, I want to do so much, but they are My feet and they will not move. I want to do so much, but they are My hands and they will not serve. That is absolute stupidity. I want you to know something, men can disobey the call of God, but God will get the work done.
I want you to know the plan of the Great Commission, the work of the Great Commission, does not depend on any man or any group of men on the face of the earth. It is not our problem to see it done, God will see it done. It is our privilege to participate. You have been called to participate in the Great Commission. If you do, you will experience great joy. If you do not, you will be the one who loses, but God will raise up a people to do it. You and I cannot stall His work. We cannot stall His work.
We cannot ruin His work because His work is His work and He will see to it. He will. That is the greatest confidence for a missionary. This statement of security is so great because a missionary can take to heart this, if God has called me to a place, if I stay there long enough and I preach true enough, no matter what happens, no matter what my eyes see, sooner or later someone is coming out of this place saved. Because God said out of every tribe, out of every people group, out of every language, He is going to call forth a people. He has ordained it, it will happen. And so what is missions? Missions is a can't lose thing.
Invest your life in missions. And it is the only sure thing going. That is why William Carey, because of his doctrine, William Carey could struggle for years and years in India and never see a convert. That is why in Peru, when I went down there, I participated in a great harvest of souls. Why? I will tell you why. Because of 80 years of missionaries who saw nothing. Men and women of whom I am not worthy to carry their sandals. And then a snotty nose boy goes down with a whole new other group of missionaries from all kinds of different mission organizations. And we see a harvest.
Why? Because of people who labored and labored and labored and did not see a harvest. But they knew this promise to be true. God is going to call forth a people for Himself that He has ordained before the foundation of the world and He will do it. So let's go. Let's go. Let's do missions. Now as I said briefly last night, when I go to mission conferences, I am always hearing people speak about the motivation to missions. And it is always the same thing. We must do missions because people are dying without Christ. My dear friend, that is a motivation for doing missions.
People are dying without Christ, but that is not the chief motivation to doing missions. I think you remember the verse that says whether you eat or drink, it is the glory of God. And I think that you need to see here, look at what God is saying. From the rising of the sun even until the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles. Notice, He does not say from the rising of the sun to its setting, I am going to save Gentiles. That is not the number one thing. He says from the rising of the sun to its setting, I am going to make My name great among them.
What does this mean? I will tell you what it means. It all goes back to the two great commandments and getting them in priority. The first great commandment is the love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in the divine human relationship must be founded upon these two commands. And in these two commands know this, that God has preeminence. Heart cry, our missionary society and our statement of purpose, you will see there that our chief motivation is not the needs of men. Our chief motivation is the glory of God.
And although we should be burdened about the lostness of men, I find it strange that I have never gone to a missions conference, I have never gone to a evangelism conference where it is stated that the great burden on our heart is that God deserves all worship and praise and there are places on the face of the earth where He is not being worshiped and not being praised as He ought to be praised. Our concern is always manward, manward, manward and that is good in a sense, but it has consumed us. We have lost our direction. Let me tell you something. You go out as a new missionary, you are so idealistic.
You think you are going to take your little pulpit and your little tracks and your little portable microphone and you are going to walk into that plaza and you are going to begin to preach. And pretty soon, you know, angels are going to descend, people are going to break forth in the hallelujah chorus and there is going to be massive conversions and then they are all going to lift you up on their shoulders and carry you around the city.
You know what happens? You walk in there and you begin to preach and things seem to be going well and then all of a sudden someone with the face of a demon begins to scream out, heretic, liar, this man is speaking against our religion. And they take you and your tracks and your pulpit and your little microphone and all your little Bibles that you brought and they throw you out in the street cursing your name. My dear friend, it is going to take a lot more than a love for men to pull you back up again and make you walk right back into that plaza and preach again.
It is going to take the glory of God and a passion for that glory. We can say the same here. My dear friend, if you are a pastor, you don't always love those sheep. As a matter of fact, a lot of times you would just as soon have mutton for dinner. Now you can deny that but then you would have to come up here and confess for being a liar. There are sometimes, man gives you no reason to stay. Sometimes I know of pastors who have suffered so much at the hand of unconverted church people that in their hearts they are crying out, I just wish they would all go to hell.
Why do you stay? Why do you stay? Love for man is an inconstant thing because man's return on your love is an inconstant, it is not a constant thing. You stay because the glory of God does not change. You stay because God is always worthy. You stay because not once has God failed you or given you reason to retreat. That is why you stay. The glory of God in missions. The glory of God in missions. Now he says, from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same. Well that just about takes every place on earth, doesn't it? Every place. Oh my dear friend.
I was sitting in a church, I was getting ready to preach in a church in New Hampshire when Saddam Hussein was captured. The church broke forth in applause. There was a sense of, yes it's appropriate, but there was glee. I suppose maybe the applause would have been proper, more proper if someone had announced that Saddam Hussein had been converted. Converted. I don't care who they are. I don't care who they are. I don't care what kind of people group. I don't care the color of the skin. I don't care anything about them. My Lord says He shed His blood for a people from every group. Every group. And mark my words, God will begin to work.
God works most in the most despised groups. Europe. Not much going on in Europe except among the most despised people group in Europe, the gypsies. As a matter of fact, in the very place where the communists of Romania were going to send all the gypsies to exterminate them is now the largest gypsy church in Europe. You don't know this. Not only 6 million Jews, my friend, died in concentration camps. 1. 5 million gypsies were slaughtered in concentration camps. But God has seen fit. Oh, I have sat at the table of many a gypsy. Wild at heart they are. Wild at heart. You'd be uncomfortable with them. You'd be uncomfortable in their worship service. Wild at heart.
Live to the bone. God is doing a work and He says everywhere, everyone, every person you meet is a potential brother or sister in Christ. That man in the bondage of homosexuality is a potential, is a possible brother or sister in Christ. When I go to the mission field, I don't go after the lost. I go after my family. I've got brothers and sisters in there and they don't know about their father. They don't know that before the foundation of the world a decree was made to save men. They don't know that 2,000 years ago blood was shed on a tree for them.
I feel sometimes like God says, Paul, go get my people and bring them home. Oh, if you could see the people I have seen all over this world, to see the proud Messiah, black as ebony, all of them dressed in red and purple. They look like chest pieces on a board, oh, and when they worship and they jump up and down, up and down and cry out to the Lord, that might not fit into your narrow little world, but oh, it fits into God's.
To see the fulani come out of the bush, the bowls of milk on their head and the large cattle that they drive and the painted and tattooed faces and everything and then to hear of conversions among them. To work among the Agua Runa Indians, we were holding a Bible conference. Men so poor that a river rat ran through the conference when we were preaching and the men jumped out of their pews, ran after it, followed it into the water, clubbed it to death and brought it back with joy because there was meat for the conference. And yet God has seen fit to call them and give them an inheritance that cannot be measured.
To be there and see the Russian people that have been so beaten down around a small little table in a kitchen, snow outside three feet deep, huddled around a small piece of pork, bowing their head and worshiping the Christ. To walk with men who have been beaten for the cause of Christ, men who are outcasts for the cause of Christ, men who cut up truck tires and make sandals out of them so that they can walk from hill to hill preaching the gospel in the Andes Mountains. Oh, God is doing the work. God is doing a work in the world. Oh, we look around at America and we see, we see so much, so much bad.
But oh, if you could see what my eyes have seen. This is not a small thing God is doing, not something in a corner. It is not a small work. In every tribe, every nation, every language, God is doing a magnificent thing and if your ears could hear it, they would burn and tingle. This God of ours is fulfilling everything He said in Scripture. He says, I will make My name great. And He will. Do you desire to participate? Do you want to be a part of that? From the rising of the sun, even to the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles.
Do you know what shuddered in the heart of those people when they heard the prophet declare that? They hated the Gentiles. The Gentiles hated them. The Gentiles had hurt them. The Gentiles had persecuted them. The world was divided up in Jews and Gentiles. People of God and dogs. It would be like you watching a nationwide conference of homosexuals gather together and God speaking to you and saying, I will make My name great among them. You would go, I would rather see them judged rather than converted. God says, I will make My name great among them. I will convert them. I will change them. We are like Jonah.
I think sometimes we don't want to see some people saved. You know we talk about caring for people. I have news for you. God cares more about livestock than you care for people. I will tell you that right now. It is true. I have a Bible verse to back it up. Jonah wanted the Nineveh destroyed. God said, no, I have so many people and livestock in that city. Judgment was spared even because of livestock. God cares more about cattle than we care about people. He says, among the Gentiles, among the worst of the worst, among those that not only hate the people of God but hate God.
But then again, have you forgotten the doctrine of depravity or have you ever believed it? You were born a God hater yourself. You were born hating God. And even if you are home schooled, you hate God until you are converted. We need to realize something, those of us who care for our children and want to raise them properly, home schooling, lectures and parental examples will not change their heart. They are God hating. They are radically depraved. No matter if there are manifestations of religion, manifestations of morality, they are still God hating creatures that would just as soon storm the throne of God, knock him off the throne and slaughter him if they could.
That's the way they feel in their heart of hearts whether they know it or not until they be regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's one of our problems in evangelism today. We don't understand how wicked people are. But He said, great among the Gentiles and in every place, every place. You know what this tells me? This tells me the Middle East is not off limits to me. This tells me that God is going to get glory for Himself there. He already is. When the regime in Iraq fell, Christians started coming forward who had been hiding, who had been chased, who had been hunted.
When the communists came through and the Maoists came through and kicked out all the missionaries out of China, they said they would eliminate the church. And even the missionaries left with dread and despair thinking all our work is done. But now that the bamboo curtain has lifted just a little, we understand there's more Christians there than any other place on the face of the earth. Why? This is God's doing. This is God's doing. God will make His name great. Do you want to participate? An incense shall be offered unto My name. This is a rebuke to us. Now, some of you maybe get mad at this, but don't ever come around me and say, God saved us to serve.
Because I'll get mad. It's like me telling my little boy, your mother gave birth to you to serve. Now, my little boy's got to learn service, but that's not the statement that should be told him. We willingly accept to be servants of the Most High God, but because He saved us for sonship, and He saved us to worship Him. He's not served by hands. Or have you forgotten the book of Acts? He needs nothing and is not served by human hands. God is going to call forth a people to worship Him, and out of that worship and out of that sonship they will gladly serve. This is not just semantics, my friend.
There are so many people who think that they're just saved to serve. They're saved to be sons who worship, and out of that worship comes glorious and joyful service. There's a big difference. One is slavery, the other is sonship. In every place incense shall be offered unto My name. He's talking about praise. What is the end of missions? Praise to God. More praise to God. What are you going to do? I'm going to go to that country. Why? Because we need some praise for God. Our goal is to lead men to worship. The end. Preaching is not. Preaching is not the end. Preaching is the means. To what? Worship. Worship. Worship.
And he says, for My name shall be great among the heathen. The Bible is filled, especially if you want examples of this, go to the book of Proverbs, also poetic literature, with what we call Hebrew parallelisms. Hebrew parallelisms are very, very important. When you and I want to emphasize something in literature, we either underline it or we'll put it in bold letters. If we're speaking, we'll raise our voice. For a Jew to emphasize something is to create a Hebrew parallelism, a repetition. I'll just make one up for you. The wicked shall not live in the land, the wicked shall be destroyed. I've said the same thing twice.
I've changed it just a little bit in the second phrase to add emphasis or either define what I'm saying in the first phrase. But the idea is this, repetition is used. Verily, verily, I say unto you. When it talks about God, it says He is holy, holy, holy. There's the repetition. And here He repeats Himself again, for My name shall be great among the heathen, says the Lord of hosts. Who says this? The Lord of hosts, the one who can make it happen. Now do you want to participate? You say, well, how do we participate in the Great Commission? Well, let me give you a few simple things.
The Great Commission, every Christian on the face of the earth is to be equally dedicated and devoted to the Great Commission. Period. Every Christian on the face of the earth, if you're called to be a pastor, no matter what you're called to be, song director, doesn't matter, deacon, teach in your local church, whatever it is, every Christian is under the command of the Great Commission. And everyone is to live as dedicated for the Great Commission as the missionary in Zimbabwe. It's just that there's two different manifestations of that devotion. There's two different callings within that same devotion. And what are they? They're going to make missions very simple for you right now.
You are either called to go down in the well or you are called to hold the rope for those who go down. Now which one are you doing? Not which one is your church doing. Which one are you doing? Sir, right now, actively, what are you actively involved in doing in the Great Commission? Have you gone down in the well? Obviously not. You're here. You're not a foreign missionary. You're here. You haven't gone down in the well. So if you haven't gone down in the well, then the other side of that is you're called to hold the rope for those who have gone down. Are you doing that? Yes. Okay, let me see your hands.
When you hold a rope long enough, there's going to be scars on your hands. What's it cost you to hold that rope? What's it cost you? Show me where you have held the rope. What have you lost? What have you given away? What has it cost you? You can either deal with this now or deal with this later before the throne of God. I would recommend you deal with this now. And I do not say church. I say individual. Why? There are churches that are very mission minded churches. But the problem is, is when a person becomes a member of that church, might even be converted, and he believes that the work of the church is also his.
When what it might be, it might be the work of a few select individuals who are devoted to missions in the church, and really he's not doing anything. Just because your church is doing something doesn't mean you're doing something. Just because your denomination is doing something doesn't mean you're doing something. Just because some mission board you're identified with is doing something doesn't mean you're doing something.
What are you personally doing to hold the rope for the people who have gone down in the well? Are you praying specifically for people who have gone down? Do you even know, do you have any lists of names? Anybody you're identified with, are you praying for the people who have gone down in the well? Are you giving? Are you giving? And by the way, just because it has nothing to do with my mission organization, if you want a really good missionary to support, Brother Allie Good here has the most wonderful daughter I've just about ever met. And she's working in Peru, and if you want to bless somebody, bless her and her husband.
Why can I say that? Because I'm up here, that's why I can say that. Because she's worthy. She's gone, and she lives in a place I don't know any other American would live in, or any other American missionary would live in. And they're about ready to have another child, hint, hint. I thought you didn't raise money, Brother Paul, not for my organization, this has to do with her. I'm always telling people, give to missions, just not mine. What are you doing? Do you realize? Do you realize that three men who work, let's say three men who work in a factory, those three men could make a covenant together to put a dollar a day in a bucket.
Each one of those men, a dollar a day, and have enough money to support an indigenous missionary on a foreign field. We can do so much, because little is so much when it's brought together and united. It's unbelievable. You take your candy bar money and put men on the field. Our blessed missionaries, find out what their needs are. What are you doing? You see, I'm not saying this to condemn you, I'm saying this because I want to impart joy to you. There is nothing that brings more joy.
There's a church down here, some of you might know him, Lake Park, Georgia, south of Valdosta, Carlton Allen, he was a fundamentalist Baptist missionary down in Peru, now he's back here. He has a little church of about a hundred people. There's not a doctor or a lawyer among them. All blue collar workers down there in south Georgia near Stockton or somewhere. They give like a hundred and twenty, one year, a hundred and forty thousand dollars to missions.
I said, Carlton, how do you do this? I'm out preaching churches of three thousand people, how do you do this? He said, well, Brother Paul, I figured out a long time ago, I take care of missionaries, God take care of my church. He said, by the way, Brother Paul, my church is not in debt. Does that sound like a Georgian? Sort of? Okay. What I'm trying to tell you is there is this, you know, missions isn't a drudgery, missions isn't something, oh, we've got to do, I want to, my life has been so filled with joy.
And the people who get involved directly in the Great Commission, especially those who get involved in giving, giving, giving, do you realize you can clean out your garage of stuff you never use and sell it at a yard sale and put a man on the field for six months? See, we always think Satan puts it into our mind that, well, you know, I can only do this much and that's not anything, so why even try? And you don't realize, you don't realize the power of what one person can do and what a couple of people together can do. It's just not enough to have missionaries hanging on the wall.
I praise God that you've got, I walk in here and I see missionaries. Praise God, praise the Lord. And in your church, you know, if you've got that, that's wonderful, but it goes down to not the church as a whole, but the individual, getting to the individual and saying, individual Christian, what are you doing? What are you giving? What does it cost you? Oh, my dear friend, I've met missionaries on the field, not many of them. I know some missionaries on the field that are, oh, wow, they're worth their weight in gold. I've known some older missionaries on the field that a young new missionary would start and be working in his area.
He'd get some mad, he'd, you know, try to go against the young man, try to stop him, try to do all the, you know, just he's coming into my territory and everything else. I'm thinking, what an old fool. Man, when someone comes into my territory, and not because I'm humble, because I'm ambitious, I'm smart, I'm shrewd as a serpent. Here's a new kid comes in on the block. He's got a thousand times more energy than me. I've got 22 years of being worn out. This kid's going to work. This kid's going to do some stuff. I want in on his action. I want interest in what he's doing.
I'm going to help him, because if I help him, and I help him a lot, and I invest in him as much as I can, then it's kind of like, well, I hate to say it, it's kind of like Amway, whatever he sells, I get part of it. I'm building a spiritual pyramid. But don't you see, it's like these young men. I was out there in the back, they want to talk about hunting, and they want to talk about big guns and all kinds of things. I'm sure going to do it. Why? Because now they're sitting here listening to me, because they know I care about them, because I believe that one day God will use you.
You see, everything in your life, the Bible says you give a cup of cold water to a disciple. You'll not lose your reward. Man, you ought to be standing out in this church with bottles of water like this, handing them out to people. Look at what's been given to you. Nothing done in his name will be lost. You cannot out bless God. You cannot be more concerned for him than he is concerned for you. You honor him. You honor his son. He'll honor you. He'll honor you. He'll honor you. Get involved in missions. Go down in the well. Or find a way to hold the rope for someone going down. And just do it.
Just do it. Just do it. Now, let me say quickly this. Another thing that breaks my heart, and this is what I spend, I go to church, this is all I do, what I'm about to tell you now. Evangelism in the United States and missions in America and missions in the world is impudent because of the gospel we are not preaching. Let me tell you something. I might have shared this earlier, but I'm going to share it again. And get ready. You can call yourself a fundamentalist and be as liberal as a German higher critic.
And I want to tell you something, I listen to a lot of fundamentalist preaching, a lot of conservative preaching, a lot of reform preaching, and a lot of just flat out Baptist and evangelical preaching of men who would fight you to the core about how they believe the Bible and they slap it around and say this is the word of God. But when you listen to them preach the gospel and give an invitation, you realize they're just as liberal as a man who studies higher criticism in Germany. We have taken the powerful, almighty gospel of God and reduced it down to nothing more than repeating a superstitious prayer. And that's not biblical. It's not.
Let me give you an example of one evangelist. First of all, they learn all sorts of ways to manipulate people to come forward. Then they get them forward. One evangelist, he told this man, sir, do you want to go to heaven? How many people have ever said no, I'd rather go to hell? That's not the question. Do you want to go to heaven, sir? Well, yeah. Well, then pray to the Lord and ask Jesus to come into your heart. Then he does the Revelation 3 prayer. And that's not biblical. It's not. Let me give you an example of one evangelist. First of all, they learn all sorts of ways to manipulate people to come forward.
Then they get them forward. And that's not biblical. First of all, they learn all sorts of ways to manipulate people to come forward. Then they get them forward. And that's not biblical. It's not. Then he does the Revelation 320 thing, which by the way is taking that passage out of context. And the guy says, well, I don't know how to do that. I mean, I don't feel comfortable. And then the evangelist says, well then, I'll tell you what, I'll pray and you repeat after me. The guy goes out loud. Well, you don't have to do it out loud. I mean, you can do it silently. Just you and God. Well, I don't know.
Well, I'll tell you what, I'll pray the prayer to God. And if that's what you want to say to God, then squeeze my hand. Behold the power of conversion. Our evangelism in fundamentalist churches, southern Baptist churches, and some Reformed churches is nothing more than a six flags over Jesus. You might not like what I'm saying, but if you stand toe to toe with me theologically, you will not be able to prove me wrong. And the silly little proud evangelist in his white shoes goes down to the next church and brags about how a hundred people got saved in your church, but none of them show up on Sunday.
And the whole charade just keeps going on and on and on and on, and it sickens me. And why does it sicken me? Because my Lord is worthy of a greater gospel than what is being preached. And I just want to run through a few things with you. Please let me, allow me. Some of the problems in our evangelism, first of all, we're not talking about sin. Not only are we not talking about sin on the mission field and in America, not only are we not talking about sin, I don't believe, most preachers believe, in the depravity of men.
My dear friend, if a man is depraved, if a man is born God-hating, if a man is born spiritually dead, as the Bible says, no spiritual gymnastics that you can throw at him, no clown suits, party hats, or pizza parties, are going to be able to pull him out of that grave. All our use of mechanisms and gimmicks and Wall Street stuff is not going to save anybody. The only one who can save that man is God by His power, and that power is unleashed when a man stands up and simply preaches the gospel. It is the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation.
The gospel! Martin Lloyd-Jones was speaking, and I wish I had, a friend just gave it to me, and I wasn't able to get the full quote, but he was speaking with another man who was a great secular scholar who had supposedly been converted. And this great secular scholar who had supposedly been converted gets up and basically preaches this. He says, basically what I hear in every church in America. Now, I am a scholar. There are many scholars out there who do not know Christ, do not believe in Christ. In order to reach these men, we need to have men who are also scholars, who can speak to them on their level and reach them for Christ.
Sound familiar? You hear that in your own churches. Martin Lloyd-Jones gets up and says, most certainly not. As a matter of fact, the way I read the Bible, a great scholar is more likely to be converted by a farmer preaching a simple gospel than by another scholar. He says, John Wesley was a scholar's scholar with Oxford education and preached to miners and farmers and the poor, and they were converted. Dwight L.
Moody could not even speak English well for an American, and yet goes to England and much of the hierarchy, the aristocrats and the rich and the educated were converted under his ministry, because the power is in the gospel and God will do everything in his power, and he has power to confuse the wisdom of the wise. Do you want a powerful gospel? Then strip away all the gimmicks. Strip away all the demographic studies that tell you just how you're supposed to approach a certain person, because they're from a certain class. Someone asked me one time, how do you preach the gospel to Agua Unas? I said, I don't preach the gospel to Agua Unas.
I preach the gospel to men and they're all the same. It is a rare bone. Give me a man. He might not be cultured. He might not be pretty. He might be a loose cannon, but he stands there with the attitude, I am a sheep as though led to the slaughter. I have no help but God. I will preach this simple message of sin, of the holiness of God, of repentance unto God and faith in Christ. I will preach this and I'll not depend on another thing. Sin must preach on sin and teach about the depravity of God, and we must work in the pulpit in order to literally capture men.
That's what Paul does in the first three chapters of Romans. He is just working and weaving a net and finally captures men and gets them to the point where every man on the face of the earth, his mouth is shut before a holy God. It's not good enough to preach on hell and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Instead of preaching on hell, you need to preach on the law. Everybody believes in hell, it's just no one believes they're going there. That's the purpose of the law. You use the law of God, you teach them about the holiness of God so that sinners tremble.
You work to proclaim God as God in all His glory, in all of His holiness, and work, strive, study to be able to demonstrate the sinfulness of man and the sinfulness of sin. If you just say man's a sinner, everyone will laugh. We use sin to sell truck tires nowadays. We're a people of unclean lips and we dwell among a people of unclean lips. We drink down iniquity like it was water. We even just mention sin, everyone's going to laugh. But you begin with Scripture to show the sinfulness of sin and the radical depravity of men and cut off every hope from them except the mercy of God. And then you preach to them the Christ.
I have come to the conclusion that most preachers in America have no clue as to how the death of Christ saves men. I've come to that conclusion, especially after the movie The Passion. You know what? I'm going to tell you something. I didn't go see the movie, but I don't have a problem, I don't have near as much problem with the movie as I do Baptist preachers who preach a gospel if not as distorted, more distorted than what you would probably see in The Passion.
A guy wrote me a while back and he says, what do you think about it, you got a problem with The Passion? I said, I haven't seen it, haven't studied it, don't know much about it. I can tell you this, I pretty much guarantee I have more a problem with the men preaching in pulpits than I do with Mel Gibson. What am I to expect from him? What am I to expect from him? Let me give you an example. I was in a Germanic Brethren Seminary in Europe and looking around the library, I pulled forth a volume on the cross of Christ. And I began to look through it.
After you have studied for a long time, you can pretty much go to a book any place and pretty much figure out where this guy is coming from. This is what was taught on the cross of Christ. He said this, God gave His only begotten Son and God's Son went to the cross. And God looked down at that cross and saw the pain inflicted upon Jesus Christ by the hands of men and counted that as payment for our sin. That is heresy. The problem is when I speak the same thing in Southern Baptist Churches, Fundamentalist Churches, Evangelical Churches around America, no one can see what the heresy is. Object heresy.
My dear friend, if I could spend five hours on this, I would. I would beat it into your mind if I could give you one truth, it was this. If you are saved, you are not saved because the Romans and Jews rejected Jesus. You are not saved because they put a crown of thorns on His head. You are not saved because they put nails in His hands and nailed Him to a tree. You are not saved because they took a lance and put it through His heart. You are saved because when He was on that tree, He bore your guilt, your sin and was crushed under the holy just hatred of His own Father.
It pleased Yahweh God to crush His only begotten Son. I hear preachers after the Passion was on, all these big name preachers getting on the radio saying, now we are going to have a study on the Passion, I am going to show you the real meaning. Not one of them taught that. And if you do believe it, you probably assume too much from your own people. You probably think they understand it. My dear friend, it is not what men did to Jesus on that tree, it is what His own Father did to Him on that tree. Let me show you. Let me just listen for a moment. I want to show you something.
I am going to show you the greatest problem, the greatest problem in the entire Bible. Just listen. He that justifieth the wicked and He that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord. That is the greatest problem in the whole Bible. Now let me just cut a few phrases out and put two together. He that justifieth the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. You say, how is that a problem? I will tell you how it is a problem. When we came in here today, what were we singing about? God justified the wicked. But the Bible says that before God, if anyone justifies the wicked, he is an abomination.
Has God become an abomination to His own self? The greatest problem in the Bible. You cannot, if God is just, God cannot forgive you. You see, we have no concept of justice. We haven't read Rex Lex or Locke or anything. We have lost our ideas of justice. What you need to understand, if God is just, He cannot forgive the guilty.
What if you go home and someone has killed your entire family, and you walk in the front door and you see the murderer standing there with your last child in his hands and throws the child to the ground and runs out the back door, and you run out the front door, and you knock the man to the ground, and you carry the man to the police, and the police carries that man to the judge, and he stands before a judge in our legal system in America today, and the judge says, I'm a loving judge. I forgive you. Go home. What are you going to think about that judge? I'll tell you what you're going to do.
You're going to scream, I demand justice. You're going to write the newspaper. You're going to get a hold of the channel that televises here in your city. You're going to write your congressman. You're going to say that there is a judge sitting on the bench far more wicked than the very criminals he allows to go free. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? You see, this is the problem, and in our evangelism, no one's saying it, even in our churches. The greatest problem, the whole Bible is about this. The whole sacrificial system, everything in Scripture hinges upon this one point. If God is just, He cannot forgive. He cannot pass over sin.
We talk about Satan as the accuser of the brethren. He's more the accuser of God. You know that, don't you? Just imagine this, Satan fell. And what happened? Perfect justice. Man falls. What happens? Mercy. There's a whole lot of room in there for Satan to accuse God. What happened to you, God? Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Remember, we fell? All this thing about your justice? This bag of dirt here falls? What's happened, God? Has God changed? Where's your justice? It's the whole point of Romans chapter 3. That's the whole point. Let me show you something just really quick. Just go to Romans chapter 3 and look what it says.
Verse 25 of chapter 3, speaking of Christ, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. Now, why did God send forth His Son to be a propitiation? To declare His righteousness, to declare the righteousness of God. Christ died in order to declare, demonstrate, prove that God was righteous. Now, why is it necessary? Why is it necessary for God to give a cosmic demonstration to prove that He is righteous? Why? This is why. For the remissions of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. What's that mean? God, you didn't kill Adam. God, Abraham, making new friends, are you, God? I mean, he was a liar, put his own wife in jeopardy.
He didn't believe you either. And you call him a friend? Oh, Noah? He got drunk. His son was a pervert. Your people? You forgave him? And David, a man after your own heart, man, you had fellowship with him. He was a murderer. How could God deliver Noah? How could a holy God call Abraham friend? How could a just God and holy God call David a son? Because 2,000 years ago, the Son of God shed His blood for all of them. God cannot simply forgive sin. A propitiation must be given. In ancient Spanish, in Castellano, we use the word propicio. And let me give you an example of how it works.
Let's say that I am a slave in Valladolid, España in 1514. And the punishment for a slave in Valladolid, if he is stealing, is death. And I am a slave. And I am stealing. And the amo, the master, comes in and he catches me with several other men. They catch me stealing. I know I am going to die. And so they grab me by the neck and they are dragging me off to the gallows. But as they are dragging me, I fall down on my knees and I said, Sed propicio a mi amo. Be propitious to me. The word means be merciful to me.
But you know what I am really asking? I am really asking this. Master, break the law on my behalf. The law, justice, demands that I die. And when I say, do not kill me, I am saying, do not do what the law demands. Do not do what justice requires of thee. God cannot simply forgive. He must satisfy justice. Now, a lot of guys will say this, in order to forgive you, God had to satisfy the just demands of the law.
Now, there is a sense that it is true, but be careful, because when you say it that way, you almost make it look like there is a law above God that he has to satisfy in order to save you. That is not true, because the law is simply a manifestation of God's own righteousness. God has to satisfy the justice within himself. And how can that be done? God, not an angel, not a demagogue, not something in between, God Himself, the only one who has the right to condemn, is the only one that can die. God becomes a man. He takes upon Himself human flesh, very God, very man.
Now, why did He have to be a man, the sacrifice? The sacrifice had to be a man. Man has sin, man must die. The blood of bulls and goats can't take away the sins of men. A man must die. A son of Adam must perish. But not only must it be a son of Adam, it must be the judge of all the earth. It must be God. There are several things that if you think about it, why had to be God? It had to be perfect, this sacrifice. It had to be sinless, this sacrifice. Another thing that you need to understand is this.
Who else but God could withstand the wrath of God? The wrath of God would crush the mightiest archangel. Another thing that you need to think about, a life must be laid down. Who has a life to lay down? You? From where does your life come? From God. An archangel in heaven is going to lay down his life, from where does his life come? Does he have authority to lay down life? It's not even his life. There's only one who possesses life, there's only one with authority to lay it down and take it back up again. But most importantly, I love this because in universities some pseudo-smart, some agnostic. I always ask this question to agnostics.
When they say, I'm an agnostic, I say, I have a question. Why do you use the Greek word there instead of the Latin word when you call yourself agnostic? They say, well, what do you mean? I say, well, the Greek word for unknowing person, a, I don't know, and gnostic, agnostic means knowledge, I don't know. How come you use the Greek form and not the Latin form? He says, well, what's the Latin form? Ignoramus.
But they'll always stand up and they'll always go, how can one man die for a multitude of men, and how can one man suffering a short period of time save men from an eternity of punishment? Oh, I love it when they ask that question because I can answer this way. I can say, because that one man on that tree was worth more than all the others put together. And when we speak of a perfect sacrifice, my friend, we're not just speaking of sinlessness, we're speaking of value. Take every galaxy, every mountain, every molehill, every cricket, every clown, every man, every star.
Put everything that's ever been in a scale, put Jesus on the other side of the scale, and He outweighs them all. And when He went to that tree, when He went to that tree, He bore upon Himself the guilt and shame of our sin. Now, and He was crushed through the wrath of God. But let me share with you something. Have you ever heard this? Cursed is every man who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law so as to perform them. Cursed is every man. You are under a curse. You're not trembling because you don't know what that means. Let me give you an idea of what that means.
When a man is under a curse, it means that he is so vile, so loathsome, before the holy creatures of heaven and before God Himself, that the last thing that sinner will hear when he takes his first step into hell is all of creation standing to its feet and applauding God because God has rid the earth of him. That passage, I heard an evangelist say, God will wipe all the tears from their eyes. And I said, well, what's the tears from? Well, that's from them seeing all their family and friends going into hell. That's absurd. Men are vile. Men are depraved.
And the last thing they will hear when they take their first step into hell is applause and worship unto the God who judged them. Then it says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. What does that mean? I'll join with Calvin here and just shut my mouth. Now, go to the garden for a moment. Let this cup pass for me. Let this cup pass for me. Let this cup pass for me. This Easter, I heard so many preachers say, this demonstrates the movie The Passion. This demonstrates the pain of the cross and the physical suffering of Jesus. My goodness. Jesus is not above His own servants.
How many Puritans went to a burning cross saying, play the man, and singing hymns while they died? How many were crucified in Roman Coliseums while they were singing Jesus is Lord? Even Origen, who I don't agree with theologically, his mother had to hide his clothes one day because he knew the Roman soldiers were coming, and he wanted to run outside and be martyred for the sake of Christ, joyfully. So she hid all his clothes and he had to go out naked, so he hid in the house.
We've got all these followers of Christ who boldly go to crosses and die, but our great captain of salvation, our great leader, is in a garden trembling to the point such fear and anguish that blood is coming from his pores. Anybody have a problem with that? I'll never forget, I was in a reformed, a Renaissance school for children. And I'll never forget, from kindergarten all the way up to the twelfth grade, and I said, what was in the cup? And this little girl, eight years old, raised her hand, and she stood beside her desk like this and she said, Sir, the wrath of God was in the cup. That's what made the Christ tremble.
The holy hatred of God against wicked men. Let me fill you in on something. You know the cute little statement that sounds so pretty? God loves the sinner and hates the sin? It's heresy. I'd just like to fill you in on that. You know, when you start building your theology on cliches and things written on the back of Christian t-shirts, you're in trouble. God hates the sin and loves the sinner. The Bible says God hates all those who do wrong. You say, well, what about John 3, 16? Well, it's inspired, but what about Psalms 5? It's inspired too. God hates the workers of iniquity. It doesn't say He hates iniquity. It says He hates the workers of iniquity.
What does it mean? Just what Jesus said about the wrath of God abiding on men that did not believe Him. The wrath of God abides upon the unconverted, and if they die in that state, they will experience eternal wrath in hell. And don't think, my friend, that hell is hell because God's not there. That's a very popular teaching. Hell is hell because God's not there. No, hell is hell because God is there. His wrath is there. His face is set against them throughout all eternity. Don't think in hell you're going to escape God. You see, we have such a pathetic idea of forensics, of what is legal, of justice. We do not understand.
You say, why is hell eternal? Sins were committed against an infinitely, infinitely holy God. Not only that, but never forget this, my dear friend. There's no repentance in hell. The punishment continues because the rebellion continues. C. S. Lewis said something one time I think is very, very true, in a sense. Just listen. He said the door to hell is locked from the inside. The point that he was trying to make was not that God was willing to let anybody out. The point that he was making was no one wanted out. Men so hate God they would rather suffer hell than step outside and bow their knee to Him.
You have no idea how depraved men are. Do you believe the Bible? I don't know. When men look as good as men do, when some of your preachers preach about them, I doubt very seriously whether you believe the Bible. And when you can save men by little gimmicks, I know you don't believe the Bible. It takes the power of the Gospel. He died. He took upon our sins. And then the father looked down from heaven and he saw his son he loved so much, suffering so much, that he couldn't look at him and he just had to turn away. Where do you get this stuff? That's not what Jesus said.
Jesus said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? His theological problem was not that the Jews and Romans had forsaken him. His theological problem was when he was on the cross, God the Father forsook his own son. He turned away from him. Why? He bore our guilt and the curse. You know those little tracks? You know, man's over here, he's a sinner, and God's over here, he's holy, and there's this big separation between the two? Well, that big separation between the two fell upon the Christ. And all the wrath of Almighty God, God's holy hatred. I stood up and one time someone said, God's love. He doesn't hate.
I said, God is love, therefore he must hate. They said, what do you mean? I said, how many of you here love children? They raised their hand. I said, then you must hate abortion. How many of you love the Jews? They raised their hand. Then you must hate the Holocaust. If you tell me you're neutral about the Holocaust, you don't love Jews. God truly loves all that is excellent, perfect, holy, all that conforms to His nature, His attributes, His character. He must come with the same exceeding hatred against all that contradicts Him. You see, He is the standard for morality. Why is it right? Because God said it was. And all the wrath of God.
It pleased the Lord, it says in Isaiah 53. It pleased Yahweh to crush Him, to grind His Son, as though He were a grain of wheat between two hundred thousand pound millstones. The wrath of God ground His Son to powder. You want to know how much God hates sin? Young men, take this with you. You know how much God hates sin? When God's only beloved, only begotten Son bore our sin, God crushed Him. Sinner, what do you think He'll do to you? He died. In Psalms 22, Jesus, when He says, Lord, Lord, my God, my God, why have You forsaken me? He's taking all those men back to Psalms 22.
And in Psalms 22, what's going on? There's a righteous man, the Messiah, he's crying out, but he hears nothing. He comes with an argument before God. There's never been a time in the history of the people of Israel that a righteous man's ever called out to you, and you've turned away. But I call to you by day and night, and you do not listen. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? And then He answers His own question. You are the Holy One of Israel, but I am a worm. Christ became the worm. He became the serpent lifted up in the wilderness.
He became the scapegoat, and all the wrath of God fell down upon Him, and He was crushed. He lifted up the cup of God's wrath. He took it from the hand of God. He drank it down, and when He turned it over, not one drop fell out. He paid it all for His people. And He rose again from the dead and ascended at the right hand of God. Now, please, this means more to me than anything. If you have to leave, just leave. I want to show you something. The patriarchs of the first five centuries, sometimes they got a little too Greeky, but they said a lot of things that were really something.
They were influenced by Platonic philosophy too much, but they held on to something about the ascension of the Christ that is just a marvelous thing. See, Christ is God, but Christ is also, I don't just say man, He is the man. He is the man for us. First of all, when you talk about Christ's death, Christ died for God. Before you say He died for men, you have to say He died for God. Before you can say He died to justify men, there is a real sense in which you must say He died to justify God. You say, why does God need to be justified? Remember what we talked about? That His mercy needed some explaining.
How can God being just be at the same time merciful? When Christ died on that tree, He died for God, and He justified or vindicated God. He proved once and for all God is just, and God could love those sinful men from the beginning of time until the end, because Christ died for His people. So He vindicated God, but when God raised Christ from the dead, God vindicated Him and raised Him from the dead. And He was raised from the dead in the same way that He went there. God, yes, but man, and not just man, the man, the man for us.
He will always be that second Adam, that greater than Adam, that man who stands, that umpire who lays one hand on God and one hand on us, that man for us up in heaven. Now, Christ ascends according to the early patriarchs. Christ ascends. And, let me just read something to you. Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in His holy place, he that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully? Any of you qualify? No one. No one qualifies. No man qualifies.
But then, one day in heaven, one day, the inside of glory, the inside of heaven, the abode of angels heard these words. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. And all of a sudden from the inside, what was that? We heard the voice of a man. No man has ever approached these gates. No man would ever dare lay his hand to the latch of these doors. Who dares call out to these gates to be open? And the answer comes back. It says this.
They cry out from heaven, Who is this King of glory? And the answer is, the Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. And those gates were thrown open wide. And they are stood for Christ. And every angel, every creature in heaven fell down. He is worthy, He is worthy, He is worthy. And to see Him walk up to the throne of His Father as the man, the Christ for us. Maybe we heard the same, maybe they heard the same thing we heard on that tree. The Father looks down at the Son.
Is it finished? Father, it's finished indeed. Then sit down at My right hand. Until I make every enemy in heaven and on earth your footstool. All glory, all honor, all praise. Everything that is, ever was and will be. The sinner and the mightiest saint thrown down at His feet in worship. For at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. As R. C. Sproul says, some will bow in gratitude. And some will bow because their kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. But they will all bow. Let's pray. Father, this is the glory of God in missions.
Jesus Christ crucified and raised ye from the dead. And ascended to the right hand of God. And ye coming again, Lord. Come even now, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Prince of Peace, come and reign. Set your feet on that mountain top again. Take control, rightful Lord. Prince of Peace, come and reign forevermore. Amen. .
S K R Y B O T
Skrybot. 2023, Transkrypcje video z YouTube
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