The Greatest Treasure - Part 2 — Paul Washer

Well, good evening. It is a great privilege for me to be here with you tonight, a tremendous, a tremendous privilege, and not simply because you are here, but because of the task at hand, and that is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Glory and Burden of Preaching the Gospel

Preaching is a privilege. It is also a very sad thing. It is a burden. It is an oracle. It is something that the preacher does knowing that he will never be a success in what he is doing, that he will always, always fail because the theme of his message goes beyond the tongue of both men and angels.

Not only can the preacher not communicate the glory of the subject, he cannot even comprehend it. Oftentimes when I look in scripture, especially when I look at apocalyptic languages, we would find in the Old Testament prophets such as Ezekiel or would find in the apocalyptic language of the New Testament, such as the book of Revelation.

We see so many. Metaphors, exaggerated words and and illustrations, and it is almost as if the prophet is seeing something. So beyond his ability to comprehend and so beyond his ability to communicate that it puts him on the very verge of madness.

The person of God and what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Goes so far beyond our comprehension, and if we could comprehend it fully, it would go beyond the power of our hearts, it would it would disintegrate us.

And if we could communicate it clearly to unregenerate hearts, we would only be seen as madmen. You see. In the mind of God, his son is everything. Everything that God has ever done, he has done through his son and he has done for his son.

This is why the judgments of God on the final day will be so terrible. Men will be cast into hell for neglect of the sun. It is a cliche. I think it's been turned into a song that that God loves people more than anything.

Well, it is true that God loves people, but we are not the center of God's universe. We are not the thing which God most esteems. God esteems. And loves his son tonight, we are going to fail even now, I'm on the verge of just being broken, going to fail to take the gospel of Jesus Christ and explain it, to comprehend it.

The Gospel Reduced to a Prayer

It's beyond us, but it's this very thing that we must attempt to do. Because it is only through the preaching of the gospel that men might be saved. In our world today, the gospel of Jesus Christ has been reduced to almost nothing.

Its theological content has been disregarded or misunderstood. It's been shaken to its very core and reduced down to nothing more than four spiritual laws or five things God wants you to know with a prayer at the end.

That is not the gospel of the scriptures. We tell people that they are sinners, but we do not explain what that means. We tell them that Christ has died, but we they know nothing of the glory of his person or the nature of his death.

And instead of calling men to repentance and faith, we lead them to an evangelical creed and we get them to repeat a prayer. And if they've done so, we purposely declare them born again. The whole thing is a travesty.

So that I would submit to you today. But it is not so much that men are so hardened to the gospel. But it's that men are ignorant of the gospel and men are ignorant of the gospel, because so many who are proclaiming the gospel are also ignorant of it.

We need an understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we need the scriptures and we need the spirit of God to give us that understanding. Now, we're going to go to a passage. Which I believe and I've preached so many times, I believe it is one of the greatest passages in all of scripture, it's found in the book of Romans, chapter three begins in verse twenty three.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified as a gift by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, where then is boasting it is excluded by what kind of law of works?

No, but by a law of faith, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Some of the greatest preachers in the history of Christianity, two that I have in mind, Charles Spurgeon and Martin Lloyd-Jones refer to this text as the Acropolis of the Christian faith, that high and fortified city of Christian doctrine, that the words contained here are of greatest importance.

And we truly cannot understand the gospel if we do not grasp the significance of this text. So let's begin. First of all, verse twenty three, for all have sinned immediately, I recognize that you do not understand the meaning of this.

Neither do I, because if you did, you would be trembling. You would be filled with fear. You say, but Brother Paul, all have sinned, all have. Disobeyed, the word means to miss the mark, to fall short, as though a man were practicing archery and he was looking at a bullseye and he draws back the bow and let the arrow fly.

Not only does it not hit the bullseye, it misses the target altogether. That is sin. It is falling short of God's standard, falling short of God's law, falling short of the will of God that he has revealed through the scriptures, but also revealed in the heart of all men, for he has written his law upon the heart of men and all men have disobeyed the revelation that has been given to them, all men.

The Gravity of Sin Against God

Now, as I clearly explain this to you, you are still not afraid. And here's the reason why. It is one thing to sin against another man. It is a very dangerous thing to sin against the leader of a people.

But it is a terrifying thing to sin against God, the Puritans used to say it this way, when you sin, you have not sinned against some mayor of a tiny province or village, but you have sinned against the Lord of glory.

You have trespassed and declared war upon the one who is altogether good and altogether deserving of all honor, worship and obedience. You have done a terrifying thing. I want you to think of this for a moment.

In the days of creation, God lifts up his voice and he commands stars that could swallow up. Many times our son, he commands those stars to put themselves in different places in his creation and they all bow down and worship him.

He commands planets to fix their orbits and to stay their course until he gives them another word and they all cry out, amen. So be it. He tells the mountains to be lifted up. He tells valleys to be cast down and they fall trembling before him.

He looks at the sea, the mighty sea. He looks at its great waves and he commands them, you will come to this border and you will not trespass it. And the sea bows down and worships. He lifts his finger in glory and seraphim and cherubim, angelic creatures that their mere presence would disintegrate the universe.

They fall down and worship. And then he looks at you and says, come and you go, no. I will not. Now you can see why on the day of judgment. If you are without Christ, the last thing you will hear when you take your first step into hell is all of creation standing to its feet.

And applauding God, worshiping God, because he has rid the earth of you today, preachers only if if they do speak of sin, they speak of sin in general terms, they mix the preaching of the word of God with psychology, they tone down the blade, they want you to make make you feel good about yourself.

I do not want you to feel good about yourself. I want you to be saved. From what you are and what you have done, sometimes people will say to me, why do you speak so much about sin? It's because I want you to love God.

Say, well, how will speaking much about sin cause us to love God? Have you never read when Jesus, defending the woman, said this, she's washed my feet with her tears, she loved much. Because she has been forgiven much, many do not love God much because they do not realize how much he has forgiven them and they do not realize how much he has forgiven them because no one has told them the truth about their sin.

All I want you to know about sin, because only in the light of sin can the gospel appear to be glorious today, this afternoon, if you by chance looked up at the sky, you would have noticed something. There were no stars.

My question would be, where did they all go? It's some cosmic giant come by with a great big basket and throw them all in his basket and walk to the other side of the earth. The stars were there, but you couldn't see their glory and you could not see their glory because their glory is only revealed amidst the pitch black darkness of night.

In the same way, men do not appreciate the cross of Christ because its glory is only truly revealed when we see the darkness of man, that it is an amazing thing if Christ had died for good men, it would have been an equally amazing thing if he had laid down his life for righteous men.

But Christ died when we were sinners, when all of creation would have stood to its feet and demanded our condemnation, when every holy being in heaven would have nodded its head to our eternal death. Christ died for the wicked.

Our sin is dark, darker than any preacher can proclaim. The deeds we have done are coarse and evil and vile. Now, this may seem unusual in light of modern day preaching that I would spend so much time on this matter, but I can assure you that I'm thoroughly biblical.

We do not have a systematic theology in the Bible, but we do have the book of Romans, which I suppose would be the closest thing to a systematic theology. And isn't it interesting that in the 16 chapters of the book of Romans, the first three chapters are basically dedicated to the sin of man and Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, using all his intellectual might to do one thing to show men their sin and to bring all men under condemnation.

To demonstrate that no man can rightly be saved, that all men deserve eternal condemnation and there is nothing man can do to save himself. Isn't it interesting that Paul spends so much time on this theme before he begins to explain the salvation of God in Christ?

Why is that the preaching of sin is necessary that men might begin to see through their pride and the veil of their hypocrisy, their own evil. And their need of a merciful God's. If I walked up to you today, any one of you and I offered you a bologna sandwich, none of you would fall to the ground weeping and kiss my hands.

None of you would be so appreciative that you would you would cry out to me countless thank yous, thank yous, thank yous. Why? Because your bellies are full. But I can assure you, I've served in many places in the third world where if you gave a man a bologna sandwich, he would do just the very thing I described.

He would kiss your hands. He would wipe your feet with tears. Out of need, so many people say they want to learn to appreciate the cross, Christians say they want to grow in their love for Jesus Christ.

I assure you, there's only one way for this to be done. First of all, you must recognize your need. To come to Christ, you must recognize the greatness of your need and the vileness of your sin to love Christ as a Christian, you must come into a greater and greater understanding of the very thing from which he has saved you.

Sin prior to the flood. God says that every thought of a man's heart. Is evil. Although the flood washed away most men, it washed nothing from the heart of man, because soon as the men begin to spread across the earth, we see the same thing that the heart of a man is evil.

You know, I've shared this many times, but a reporter came up to me one time after I read that verse in Genesis chapter six and he says, I don't agree with your interpretation. And I said, sir, it wasn't my interpretation.

I just read the text. And he said, well, I still don't agree, I said to him something that I'm going to say to you now, if I could pull out your heart, if I could take every thought that you have ever thought and I could put it on a DVD and I could show it here tonight in front of everyone in this auditorium, you would run out of this building and you would not show your face here again because you have thought things so evil you would not share them with your closest friend.

And if your closest friend knew some of your thoughts, you've thought about him or her. They would no longer be your closest friend. You see, sin is not some anomaly, it's not just some mistake, it comes forth from the fact that man is a fallen creature and that man has become twisted and dislocated and man needs a savior.

It is what we are. It's not simply what we do for this reason. And in Isaiah, he says, all our good works are like filthy rags before God. If I were to bring a leper in here tonight, I mean, a leper with the worst sort of leprosy, you would smell him before you came into this auditorium.

And when you saw him standing here on the platform, you would be amazed. You would be nauseated. He is nothing but rotting flesh and pus and blood. But let's say that all of you good people want to get together.

So you go out somewhere in Edmonton and you find the finest silk that can be found and you're going to make this man presentable. So you wrap him from head to toe in the finest, purest silk and you stand back to look at your creation.

He may appear beautiful, but only for a moment, because in time, the corruption of the man himself is going to bleed through the cloth and the cloth is going to become as vile as the man. That is why good works cannot save you, because even our best works before God are unrighteous deeds.

Created for the Glory of God

Now, he says all have sinned and then he goes on and he says and fallen short or fall short of the glory of God. Modern day interpretation of the Bible, which seems to center around man being the center of all things, would interpret this passage this way.

God created you for a glorious purpose and you have fallen short of that glorious purpose and God wants to save you so that he can restore his glorious purpose in you. That's true, but it's not the main idea.

The main idea is this God created you for his glory, not yours. He created you for his purpose. You see, you were made for God to give yourself wholly and completely to him. And when you do not do that, you become disfigured and dislocated and you become confused and you cannot find meaning or purpose or anything else.

You weren't created for some special purpose just given to you. You were created for him. You can play a fine song on a guitar, but you can't shoot an arrow out of it. You can shoot a heavy arrow out of a good bow, but you can't play music on it.

By the very nature of things, different things are created for different purposes, and if you use them outside of their purposes, they are to no avail. They do not function. You want to know why mankind does not function.

You want to know why mankind is so messed up. You want to know why this entire globe is about to bust at its seams and fall apart, disintegrate itself, die in a whimper. It's because men are not living for the very reason they were created, which is the glory of God, the good pleasure of God's to serve the God who made them and sustains them.

But since we have turned away from that high calling, professing ourselves to be wise, we have become fools, men who give themselves to trinkets and hobbies and entertainments, to buying clothes to impress people they don't even like, to striving to gain the world, knowing that in just a few short minutes they're going to die, to stand in front of mirrors as youth revel in their beauty, only to realize that in a few short years their beauty will be gone and their strength will be taken from them.

We are a pitiful race because we are dislocated, we are broken, we are misdirected, we are confused. God has made us for himself and we will find no peace until we find peace in him. Augustine, a very wise man who lived a long time ago, God has set eternity in the heart of men, that is why a man, that is why you, let's not talk about other men, let's talk about you.

You see something that you like and you're assured that if you buy it or if you obtain it, it's going to give you peace, it's going to make you happy, it's going to fulfill you, maybe a relationship, any kind of thing.

You go after it with all your might and no sooner do you have it than you feel incomplete and you want something else. Why? Eternity has been placed in your heart. Your heart has an infinite hole. There's nothing in this world that is infinite, all of it is finite, all of it comes to an end sooner or later, it does not go on and on and on.

You can take this whole world, put it inside your heart, declare ownership of everything and you will still be empty because only God can fill the heart that he has made. Only God. No one else. That is why men are called very frequently in the scriptures fools because they seek after those things that cannot fill.

They chase after things that are not eternal. And they die with a handful of toys. Man's days are like grass is the flower of the field. So he flourishes and the wind passes over him. He is no more. And the place therein acknowledges him no more.

Justification by Faith and the New Birth

This is life. Without God, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But now we go to verse twenty four and Paul is going to speak of the Christian. Now, I have to be very careful here because I think North America is Christian, right?

Canada is Christian. The United States is Christian. And what I have to explain to you is neither is Christian. The majority who call themselves Christian are not Christian. And if there is a minority in Canada and the United States of America, it is the true Christian community.

Paul is not speaking to carnal men who go to church every once in a while and profess Christ and live just like the world. Paul is speaking to Christians, people who have believed in Christ that have been regenerated by the spirit of God, people whose affections have been changed so that they desire God and desire righteousness.

This is what he says about Christians after saying that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He says this Christians being justified. Now, what does it mean to be justified? Does it mean that the moment a person believes God, that God makes them into a perfectly righteous being who no longer sins or that he infuses them with some great strength or grace or power and enables them to live a perfect life before him?

Absolutely not. Justification is a forensic term or a legal term. What does it mean? It means the moment a person believes God. Remember what it says about Abraham? Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

Abraham believed God and he was justified. When a person believes God, the Bible says they are justified. It means that God looks down from his throne and legally declares them to be right with him. And not only that.

Now, listen, this is a very important point. When a person believes God, God looks down at that person and legally declares them to be right with him and he treats them. That's a very important word. He treats them as someone who is perfectly right with him now, he says here being justified.

Here's something that you need to understand if I'm ever teaching in a university, which is very doubtful, but if I ever am and I'm teaching a class on comparative religions, the different religions of the world, I assure you, you should take my class because you can reduce all the religions of the world down to two religions, a religion of grace and a religion of works.

There's something interesting about most religions in the world, almost all of them. Do you realize that almost all the religions of the world recognize that there is a God? But they also recognize that they're not right with him.

Isn't that amazing? And all the religions of the world are trying to figure out the goal of that religion is how can I be right with God that ought to tell us something? The conscience of all men is constantly screaming at them, telling them they are not right, they are not right, they are not right.

But now we have all these religions are seeking to answer the question, how can a man be right with God? You go to the the the Muslim, you say, sir, if you died right now, where would you go? He said, I go to paradise.

Why? Well, I've read the Koran. I love the Koran. I've made the pilgrimages. I've given alms to the poor. I pray every day. I am a righteous man. I have done what I need to do. I am a righteous man. Basically saying through his works, I have earned entrance into paradise.

Then you go to the the Jewish man and you say, if you died right now, where would you go? He may say, I would go to heaven. Why would you go to heaven? I love the Torah. I love the law of God. And I, I seek to obey the law of God.

I am a righteous man. My deeds are true. They are good again, almost as if I've earned it. I've earned entrance. I've done good things. I could just carry on with other religions, but I'll stop there because the whole idea is I've done enough.

I've been good enough. But then you get to Christianity. Now, true Christianity, not the Western necessarily evangelicalism that we have today. True Christian. And you say, sir, if you died right now, where would you go?

And he says, I would go to heaven. And you say, well, why? And he begins to share with you something you did not expect. He says. In sin did my mother conceive me and in sin was I born and like all the wicked, I went astray from the womb.

Like all I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, there is no command I have not violated either in thought or in deed. And you say, well, sir, I don't understand. I mean, I understand these other men.

They're going to heaven because they say God owes it to them. They've earned it. They deserve it. They have worked for it. And so you're telling me you're going to heaven, even though you deserve the very opposite.

How can that be? And the Christian says. It is because I am going to heaven based upon. The virtue and the merits of another. Jesus Christ, my Lord. In this, you can see that the Christian is actually the only man who can claim heaven without boasting.

But the Christian is the only man who can claim heaven while at the same time humiliating himself. Because he declares, I have no personal merit, I have no power of virtue, I have nothing to even crack the door or turn the handle to heaven.

If I am judged based upon my own deeds, surely I should be cast into hell. But God, in his mercy, sent his son who lived the perfect life. I could not live and he died the perfect death. I could not die.

And I am going because he alone has paid my ransom. That is the difference between Christianity and every other religion of the world. Now, some of you might say, aha, well, then that explains it. All these Christians running around saying they believe in Jesus and living like devils.

No, that does not explain it. Yes, we go to heaven only by faith and faith alone, not our own works, lest any man should boast. But here's what you should understand. Those who believe have also been regenerated, made alive by the spirit of God.

God has taken out their heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh that will respond positively to divine stimuli. They have become new creatures in Christ. Old things pass away. Behold, all things is new.

Their very nature has been changed and therefore their affections are changed. And because their affections are changed and made righteous, they now desire righteous things and they do not live like before.

So any person coming to you saying they are thoroughly Christian and live like devils, they are devils. They are. Jesus said you will know them by their fruit. Peter said, make your calling and election sure.

Paul said, examine yourself, test yourself to see if you are in the faith. We are saved by faith, but those who believe have been regenerated by the spirit of God. And bring forth fruit of their repentance and faith, but nevertheless, salvation is by through faith being justified.

Now, look what it says here being justified as a gift by his grace. This is almost redundant. Grace has the meaning of gift. So why is Paul iterating and reiterating? Why is he repeating himself here?

It's almost as though he is saying we're declared right with God, not by our own virtue and merit, but by a gift, by a gift, by a gift, by a gift, by a gift. Why? Because this is one of the hardest things to pound into the heart and head of a man, a man full of pride who will basically say this.

If I cannot earn it on my own, then send me to hell. I'll take no gift. That's why it is only the humble who say, I have no way. I have nothing earned. I can gain nothing from God. Please give me that gift.

It's amazing here that the word gift is translated from a Greek word that's used in another place that gives us some idea of its meaning. In the book of John, we are told that they hated him without a cause, that the people hated Christ, even though he never, never gave them a cause to hate him.

Christ never gave anyone a cause to turn against him, to mistreat him, and most certainly not to crucify him. They hated him, though he did not give them a cause. That's the same word used here. And what it means is God declared us to be right with him, even though we never gave him a cause to do it.

The only thing we ever gave God a cause to do is condemn us to our constant rebellion, our constant human centeredness, our neglect of God and so many other crimes, unspeakable that I do not have time to mention them, though you give me a hundred thousand years.

God has justified us, even though we gave him no cause. The one who gave him cause is Jesus Christ. So he says, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed as a propitiation, who God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

Now, these two words I want you to fix yourself upon, redemption and propitiation. Possibly other than the names of God, the word propitiation is the most important word in the entire Bible. If you do not understand propitiation, you cannot understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Divine Dilemma: How Can God Justify the Wicked?

But before we get to redemption and propitiation, I need to point something out to you. We have a theological and philosophical problem here. As a matter of fact, what we have presented before us in verses 23 and 24 is the greatest problem in the entire Bible.

It's what the Bible is all about. It is what scripture is all about. And if you do not understand this point again, you do not understand the Bible. You do not understand the gospel. We have before us in these two verses the greatest of all dilemmas.

I refer to them as a divine dilemma. An almost unsolvable or seemingly insolvable problem. You say, well, what's the problem? Here's the problem. If God. Is just, he cannot forgive you if God is good.

He cannot forgive you. The greatest philosophical theological problem in all the Bible is this. How can a just God forgive wicked men and still be just? Go with me, hold your place in Romans and go with me to Proverbs chapter 17, verse 15.

Here we have a great illustration of this seemingly unsolvable problem. Listen to 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, an abomination in the scriptures, that's probably the hardest word in all the scriptures. To be an abomination is to be a curse. It is to be the most vile, twisted, horrid, putrid thing imaginable before God.

And here's the problem. He who justifies the wicked is an abomination before God, but Proverbs three, I mean, Romans three. Look what it says, verse 23, for all have sinned, all are wicked. Verse 24, but God justified them.

You see the problem? In one part of scripture, it says he who justifies the wicked is an abomination before God. And then we get to the New Testament and God says he has justified the wicked. You see, folks, here's what you need to understand.

Sometimes when I'm speaking in a regular, a rather secular setting and I mention even the idea of eternal judgment or hell, people will tell me, well, I'm just I'm just appalled that you would even say something like that, that you would even suggest that God would send someone to hell.

Well, heaven has a similar problem. They're appalled also. But for another reason, when when all the holy angelic beings in heaven see God cast a man in hell. It's of course. That's what should happen.

The man is wicked, he is vile, he has hurt himself, he's hurt others, he's neglected God, he's hated God, he's fought against God. Put him out. The problem heaven has is when God takes a sinner and doesn't throw him in hell.

But he takes that sinner and declares him to be right. That's when the angels are going, we're appalled. I mean, is not God just? I mean, how can a just God do something like this? Can he just look over sin?

Can the holy one look upon evil? You know, it's very hard for us to understand this problem because we live in a culture that knows nothing of justice. If a guy kills many, many people in a store or a restaurant, we explain it away.

We say that, well, he needs counseling or we have no idea of justice. We have no idea of right and wrong. We have become a people like Nineveh that does not know the right hand from their left hand. But the greatest problem, I assure you, in all of Scripture is this, if God is a just God and yes, he befriends and pardons the wicked.

How can he be just? Let me give you a rather hard illustration that may help you. Let's say that we're dismissed tonight and you go to your home. And when you walk through the door, you find that your family has been slaughtered and you see the murderer standing over your family, squeezing the life out of your last sibling or child.

And you run across the broken bodies and you grab the man and you throw him to the ground and you tie him up. You call the police and the police come and haul him away. A few months later, he's presented before the judge and the judge looks down on this man and he says this.

I am a gracious judge and compassionate and slow to anger and full of mercy. Therefore, I pardon you and I cover your crimes. You are free. What would be your response? I can tell you what your response would be.

You would be calling the newspaper, you would be writing petitions to the government, you would be on talk shows. Telling the entire world or trying to tell the whole world that there's a judge in Edmondson that is more vile than the criminals that he sets free because a judge should do justice and equity and fairness.

He cannot simply pass over crimes and let criminals run free. So you demand that in your society and you grant that privilege to judges. But you say God is wrong for exercising the same justice. He is the judge of all the earth.

So the great question in all the scripture and what the gospel is all about is this. How can God, as Paul says in Romans three, be just and at the same time justifier of wicked men? How can he do that?

How can he? The scriptures tell us there's one way. One way that has been ordained by God. Without further explanation, Christ. Verse 24, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood.

How can God justify the wicked? Because Christ, through his blood, has redeemed them. Now, redemption is a word that refers to the paying of a price to set free a slave or a captive or a criminal, a price is paid to satisfy justice so that that criminal may be set free.

Now, the payment, as you are aware, if you know anything about the New Testament, was the blood of God's own son. But now the question is, to whom was the payment made? Who demanded the payment? It's amazing.