No Greater Truth (Than the Gospel) - Part 2 — Paul Washer

In 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 1 through 4, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 4, we stand and read God's Word. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

The Gospel as the First-Importance Message

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

Let's pray. Father, I pray, Lord, to sustain this preacher in the midst of an impossible task, to preach the gospel of your dear son. Open up the hearts, Lord, that they might receive. In Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated. We studied verse 1 and 2 this morning, and verse 3, for I delivered to you as of first importance. You know, my dear friend, you can go through every supposed Christian TV station in America.

You can surf the channels, surf the nets, look at ministries. You can listen to missionaries preach, and I want to tell you something. Far and wide you will have to travel before you hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And yet Paul says here, for I delivered to you, delivered it as a messenger, as a faithful carrier, as of first importance, there is nothing more important than the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no greater theme to preach.

There is no greater cause to defend than the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as I said this morning, it is not some little truth that you learn at the beginning of your Christian life. It's the great truth you chase down and will chase down throughout all of eternity.

This gospel, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. Paul is making this statement, and why? Because there were so many who claimed that Paul was not that much of an apostle.

And do you want to know why? Because for people who look at things in the flesh, he was born at the wrong time. He wasn't in the inner circle at first. And if church tradition tells us anything, he didn't look like the man that you would want in your pulpit.

Some say, I've heard scholars say that it has been supposed that maybe he was four foot nine, low legged, very large nose and not a hair on his head. We understand from different passages in Scripture, he seems to be a sickly man, not someone you want to build a big church around.

Beware whom you choose to fill this pulpit. Appearances are very deceiving. I preached one message and a lady came to me and said, surely you are a man of God. And I said, surely you are a woman who does not read the Bible.

With one sermon, you'd lay a mantle on a man. Paul would have never been asked here. He had no great speaking ability. But he delivered the message and he was faithful to that. He said, I delivered to you as of first importance.

Faithfulness to the Gospel Amid Opposition

The one thing that I love about Spurgeon is that when the gospel message was crumbling around him by so many preachers that turned their back on the truth of Scripture, he stood there like a beacon. And you say, yes, it had mighty success.

Have you studied his entire life? For in the end, he knew what it was to suffer for the cause of truth. He knew what it was to have everyone turn their back on him. He said basically this, he says, I know that now the message I preach is being eaten by dogs, but one day the truth I preach will be vindicated.

And it was and it was. So what we're looking at here is a man who delivered to the people as of first importance, not seven ways to have a successful life, not 13 ways to balance your checkbook and not 10 steps to self-esteem, but he delivered to them the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is the bomb in Gilead. That is the healing power. That is the strength and the only strength of God revealed in a message preached by men. He says, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died.

Christ's Death, Burial, and Resurrection

For our sins, according to the scriptures. And that he was buried, why does Paul put emphasis there? Why does the spirit put emphasis there? For this reason, there were so many who said Christ did not die, even until today, there are liberal theologians and pseudo scholars who claim that he simply passed out on that tree and came alive in the coolness of the tomb, rolled a who knows how many hundreds of pounds stone out of the way and took off for northern Galilee, never to be seen again.

No, he died. And not only is this a proof of death, his burial, but it is a sign for us that everything death could do, our Christ suffered, but only to strangle death out of death and rise again. He died, he was buried and he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures.

Paul saying this is not a new message I bring to you. This is according to the scriptures. And when he said, according to the scriptures, he was not speaking about the New Testament. And he said, according to the scriptures, he's talking about the old that which had been written hundreds and thousands of years.

It doesn't matter how long it takes for God to fulfill a promise, you can count on this. It will always be fulfilled and always in the most unusual of ways. Now, Christ died. What does that mean? Christ died for our sins.

The Sinfulness of Sin and the Glory of God

What does that mean? I want us to go to Romans, chapter three, and there is several months of preaching in this one text, Romans, chapter three, verse twenty three, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

All have sinned. That doesn't terrify you. It should. As the Puritans would say, you have not sinned against some inferior prince, you have not broken the laws of some some domestic governor, you have not violated the rules of tiny mayor of a small village in a strange place, but you have rebelled against.

The very Lord of Glory.

Man asked me one time, a reporter, he said, why are these meetings? You're always telling the people to be afraid because they ought to be afraid. There are some things, sir, that you should fear the extent of our sin.

How vile is it? How can we know we're a people of unclean lips and we dwell among the people of unclean lips, sin around us? Men drink it down like it was water. It's the common practice of the day. Commercials are based on sin.

Marketing strategies are built upon sin, revel in sin, laugh at sin, love sin. What is it to rebel against God on the day he stood? On that first day of all days, he said, stars, put yourself there and move in this direction until I give you another command.

And they bowed their head and said, yes, sir. He said, planet, put yourself to this spin and dance to my song. They obeyed him with trembling. He said, mountains be lifted up and valleys cast down. See, you will only go this far.

Yes, sir. And then he looks at you and says, come and you go, no, the vileness of sin will never be understood by man, at least in this century. The sinfulness of sin, as the Puritans would say, the lunacy of sin, the insanity of sin, all words used by theologians down through the ages, and they don't even begin to tell us the violence of sin.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It is very common to take this passage today and make it so man centered, fallen short of the glory of God. To many today, that means that God had this marvelous purpose and this marvelous design and this wonderful image of us and that we have fallen short of all the great things we could have been.

That's not what this passage means, because you define a passage, its meaning in the context of the passage, fallen short of the glory of God. What does it mean? Listen to this, for even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God fallen short of the glory means that you were made for God and you only find meaning and you only find life in serving that purpose.

You were not made for any other reason. And to rip yourself out, to dislocate yourself from the purposes of God and try to be something you were never created to be will only leave you in futility. And that's where we see most people today.

And even most people identify themselves, Christianity. Have you ever noticed we are the wealthiest, most protected group of Christians in the history of Christianity, and yet you go into a Christian bookstore and half the books there are written about how empty we are.

And why is that? We are empty for the same reason. Jesus Christ was never empty. He had food to eat that we know not of. His food was to do the will of his father who sent him fallen short. I was born in the country.

I do things like someone in the country. I'm a hunter. I make my own bows that I shoot with. You can you can take down an elk with a bow I make, but you can't play a song on it. It makes for a great hunting weapon.

It's a terrible, terrible instrument for music. But it wasn't made for that, was it? And to try to play music on one of my bows, you would just be frustrated. You would end just pitifully. Well, you weren't created for doing many of the things you're doing.

You weren't created for being many of the things you're being. You were created for him, for him and only for him. Everything for him. I'll have fallen short of the glory of God now in verse 24, being justified.

Justification by Grace Through Faith

This is the thing of every religion being justified, what does it mean? How can someone be declared right before God? Isn't it amazing that every religion in the world ask this question? How can a man be declared right before God that automatically tells us that every man in the world has a guilty conscience?

We know something's wrong. We can put it out of the back of our minds. We can do everything to stomp it out. But it is there. We know we are not right. And we know that somehow we have to be made right.

That's what this means. Being justified, speaking about believers, they are justified. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that believers are righteous? No. To say a man is righteous is to say that man is sinless, that man is perfect.

There's not a righteous man in that sense in this room. But when the Bible talks about righteousness or justification, it is talking about forensic justification, legal justification. God has declared you to be right legally in the courts of God, in the mind of God.

You, if you are a believer, you have been declared right with him. That's what it means. It's a legal declaration. I desire to be righteous. I desire to be holy. But I'm not. I still sin. I still have wayward thoughts.

I still have need of brokenness and repentance. I hunger and thirst for righteousness, but I'm not completely satisfied, but I am declared righteous before God. This is being justified as a gift by his grace.

Now, this is redundant. He's saying being justified basically as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift. Now, why is that? I'll tell you why men hate grace. What is grace a merited favor? Men hate it.

You think, hold on, why would anybody hate grace? I'll tell you why. To receive grace is to acknowledge need, to acknowledge need is to humble yourself before God. That's one thing men do not want to do.

If you were to open the doors of hell at this very moment and promise every man there a free trip out of hell forever, if only they will bow their knee to God, they would slam the door in your face and stay in there.

That's how much men hate God. We don't like grace. That is why if you do, I tell students sometimes I say, you probably would enjoy a class with me in comparative religions. And they say, why? I say, because there's only two religions in the whole world.

There's a religion of works and a religion of grace. And that is it. I was back there this morning, as some of you know, witnessing for an hour and a half to a couple who walked into this church, a Hindu couple, and it was simply a battle between works and grace, them being made right with God through their own virtue and merit and me being right with God through the virtue and merit of another, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Now, what he says here is being justified as a gift. Now, this is the same word. Have you read in scripture where it says they hated him without a cause? Did Jesus Christ ever give anyone a cause to hate him?

No. Well, in the same way, you gave God no cause to declare you right. Sometimes when when people will be singing, there's certain songs that are written. And, you know, it's basically this question. I just can't figure out why God would save someone like me.

I feel like a school kid in the back of the church going, oh, pick me, I'll tell you. I know exactly why he saved you, for his own glory and because he is loved. And it had absolutely nothing to do with you, because the only thing you could ever motivate a holy, just God to do would be to condemn you eternally.

So it says being justified as a gift by his grace, amazing thing. Through the redemption, there are certain words in the Bible, you talk about loving God's word, there are certain words in the Bible that only ought to come off of your lips.

With a bit of trembling. This is one of them. Now, I'm going to speak humanly for a moment, I'm going to give you a human illustration, apply human things to God. This is not a theological treatise. I'm just using this part for emphasis.

What do you suppose run if we spoke of God in human terms, what do you think would run through the mind of God? Every time he heard this word, the son of God, his son, his only begotten son. Bearing the guilt of his people.

Redemption Through Christ's Blood

Crucified over a garbage dump outside of Israel, outside of Jerusalem and crushed under the fierce fury of God's holy hatred. Against the sins of men, you see, words might not mean much to our culture, but they should.

Especially when their words about him on my computer, I have a thing that goes across my screen, a screensaver. And it's a quote from Bernard, every conversation that does not have Christ as its theme is absurd.

You say, should this be so consuming? It should be all consuming. Everything you do with your eat or drink or the most menial of tasks, you do it all for the glory of him. And he bears that right on you by creation and by redemption, not only has he made you, he has bought you and not with silver or gold, not with vain things of our fathers, not with sacrifices, not with the blood of bulls and goats, but he has purchased us the blood of his only begotten son.

Redemption, it means more than deliverance, a liberal theologian will tell you it means deliverance, but it means deliverance through the payment of a price, the satisfaction must be given. Now, this is redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, you've ever read the first 14 verses of Ephesians, you realize that every time Paul makes a great and glorious statement, he comes back by saying in Christ, in Christ, in him, in the beloved, in Christ, in Christ.

Why is that you have nothing outside of Christ? Nothing, and in him. You have everything he goes on and he says in verse twenty five, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation. The cross was not plan B.

Propitiation and the Justice of God

It wasn't an accident, and I'll go so far to say the cross was not so much necessary because of the fall, but it was necessary to have a fall so that there would be a cross because only through the cross of Jesus Christ is the glory of God revealed in such a way that it astounds angels.

The cross is not a focal point in history. It is history. It's everything. Absolutely everything, and it was the will of God, God decreed it, God predestined it, God elected it. It was his doing. Yes, by the hands of wicked men.

Yes, but according to not only poor knowledge. But a predetermined, glorious decree now whom God displayed publicly, why, why publicly he could have put this thing in a closet, he could have done this great work in the wilderness.

Why is it that Christ was portrayed at the crossroads of the greatest religious city in the world being hung over a garbage dump? What is God's purpose? Because God, through the cross, is going to reveal something about himself.

And every time he does that, it must be center stage. We are going to learn some things about God through the cross that we could learn no other way. And not only that, but in the cross of Jesus Christ, God, you've always heard how through the cross God justifies man.

Well, then listen to this through the cross, God justifies himself, the word that Martin Lloyd-Jones is through the cross, God vindicates himself. Now, what do we mean propitiation now, if you can grasp.

This. Tonight, you will have learned some things. That many do not know the why of the cross. The reason for the cross, but what happened at the cross propitiation, what does it mean? A sacrifice. That enables a just God to be merciful and you say, I don't fully understand the problem, I want you just to listen, just just listen to something I'm going to show you the greatest problem in the entire Bible.

Yeah, it is what the entire Bible is written about. This is it. If you want to know the center of the Acropolis, everything is right here. I just listen. I'll give you the verse in a moment. Just listen.

He who justifies the wicked. And he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. Now, let me shorten it, he who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. It's the greatest problem in the entire Bible.

Do you realize what do we sing about in this church all the time? We sing about how God justified us, how God justified the wicked. And yet the Bible says anyone who justifies the wicked is an abomination before God.

You see, here's the problem. This is what it is all about. And if you miss this, you miss the cross. It's what it is all about. If God is just, he cannot forgive you. If God is just, he cannot forgive you.

Let me give you a horrid example. Let's say that you go home tonight and find your entire family slaughtered on the floor and the assassin is standing over them with blood on his hands and you throw the man to the ground and you carry him off to the police and the police presenting before the judge and the judge looks down upon this horrendous criminal, this fiend and says, I'm a loving judge.

I pardon you, go free. What would be the response coming out of your mouth? This is wrong. This is vile. You'd write the Congress, you'd write the Senate, you'd get on the television, you'd write the newspapers, you'd get on the radio.

You would say that there is a judge on the bench, more vile and more wicked than the criminals he pardons. Would you not do that?

Is it because a judge does justice?

How much more shall the judge of all the earth do justice? If God is holy, if God is just, he must pour for justice upon those who have broke his law to give way to pardon, is to turn his back on sin and not to do justice in the world.

The greatest question in all the Bible, what the Old Testament sacrificial system and everything else, what it is all written about is this. If God is just, how can he pardon the wicked? That's what it's all about, folks.

That's it. If God is just, he cannot forgive you. Because you have broken the law of God. And the wages of sin is death. Have you ever heard someone say instead of being just, God was loving and he saved you.

Do you realize what they're saying about God when they say that? That we have an unjust God with an unjust love? No, my friend, there can be no contradiction in the character of God. God is both just and loving.

So how can a just God demonstrate love and forgive the wicked? Again, verse 24, we were boasting, we were reveling in the fact that we have been justified even though we were wicked. We have been declared legally right.

That's not right. That's wrong. How can God look at the wicked and declare them legally right when they are not? That's what Paul is dealing with here. Now, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation, Christ was a propitiation.

Penal Substitution and the Wrath-Bearing Cross

How can the just judge of the universe pardon the wicked by taking off his robes of glory and becoming a man and living a perfect life on this earth? The son lived in perfect submission to the law and will of God and then going to a cross and on that cross, he carried the guilt of his people.

And then and listen to me carefully, the son of God was crushed under the wrath of his own father. It was a great. Disturbance when the movie The Passion came out, I don't know how many emails I got from pastors and theologians and such that were either sung for many against it.

Well, I have no bones to pick with anybody, but it doesn't matter how true the film, I didn't see it. Doesn't matter how true the film might have been. It cannot demonstrate to you the pain of the cross, the pain of the cross is not found in a Roman where the pain of the cross is not found in a being laid across his back.

The pain of the cross is not found in nails, a fourth of an inch in diameter. The pain of the cross is that the son died there, forsaken of his father and under his own father's wrath. Carrying the sins of a wicked people, let's go to the garden for a moment, just think about this.

Christ in Gethsemane and the Cup of Wrath

Jesus Christ is in the garden, he says, let this cup pass from me. Let this cup pass from me, Father, let this cup pass from me. I've heard so many preachers say Christ trembled at the fact of being crucified, Christ trembled at the at the fact of being thrown off to the Romans to be beaten, to be to be hung on a tree rubbish.

Let me tell you something, is our captain not greater than the ones who follow him? How is it that we hear about martyrs who have been burned at the stake, singing hymns? How is it that we hear about martyrs who willingly walked out of their house and said, here, place the cuffs on me, carry me to the tree, all for the sake of my Lord?

And they trembled not even by their lip. And yet our captain trembles. Was it a cross? Was it nails, was it a crown of thorns that made the omnipotent God shudder like a babe? No, it was this, he said, let this cup pass from me.

What was in the cup? I was teaching at a classical reformed school several years ago, the front row were kindergartners on back. And I asked that question and a little girl stood up. I said, what was in the cup?

She said, sir, the wrath of God was in the cup. That's why when I got all those letters about people mad about the film from Mel Gibson, I would write them back and say, well, I probably have a problem with some of his things he does in there, but I have a greater problem with Southern Baptist preachers and the way they preach the gospel.

I heard a man during this movie who had this great big radio program who actually said, I'm going to tell you the true meaning of the cross, and he never got to it. Not once he preached a romantic, emotional, sentimental version of the cross that has no power.

The power is that when Christ was on that tree, he bore the wrath of almighty God. He bore the curse. Turn with me for a moment to the book of Galatians, chapter three, verse 10. For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written curse, it is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law to perform them.

They're not afraid. Well, then I suppose I should tell you what it means to be under a curse. It means this, that if you are not converted, you are so vile. So loathsome, so detestable, not only before a holy God, but a holy heaven, that 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 because he has rid the earth of you.

You see, oh, to give this church, to give this creature a sensitivity to sin, are you shocked? Go to verse 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. Do you understand what I just read?

You were shocked that sinful humanity would be considered so wicked that the last thing it would hear when it takes its first step into hell is all of creation standing to its feet and applauding God.

Well, then be more shocked that the thrice holy son of God will bear your sin and become the curse before his father. A serpent lifted up in the wilderness, Eli, Eli, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Do you not understand what he just said? Are you like the liberal theologian that says Christ at this moment realizes he's not the Christ and gives his last cry of despair before he dies? Or are you a true believer that realizes that in order to be a true believer, in order to be a child of God, no holy son of God was forsaken by his father and then crushed under his own father's punishment.

He said, oh, brother, Paul, you've gone too far now. Have you not read Isaiah 53 10? It pleased the Lord to crush him. Take a 10 ,000 pound millstone and put another on top of it. To the grain of wheat between them and see what you've got when it comes out on the other end.

Take a dam a hundred thousand miles high and a hundred thousand miles wide and have it break in front of you. And as the torrent of water rolls down towards you to engulf you, to destroy you, all of a sudden the ground opens up and drinks it down and not one drop splashes to your feet.

And so Christ raised his hand up to heaven and took the wrath of God, that great cup and drink it down. We cried out, it is finished, he turned it over and not one drop came out, he drank the wrath of God and satisfied justice and appeased wrath, and therefore God can now be just and justify the sinner.

This is what he's done. This is what he has done. Go to Psalms 22 for a moment. Verse one. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. Oh, my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer and by night, but I have no rest.

This is the complaint of the Messiah on that tree. You see, you and I have lived so much out of the presence of God. We're not like the sun in the very bosom of the father and to be ripped from that bosom, to have that eternal, beautiful vision darkened, that's his complaint.

And then in verse four, he gives an argument in you, our fathers trusted, they trusted and you delivered them. And to you, they cried and were delivered in you. They trusted and were not disappointed.

There has never been a time in the history of people, history of the covenant people, Israel, that a righteous man has cried out to God and God has turned his face away. And the son says, but I, your son, I hang on a tree.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then he gives the answer. Verse three, if you are holy, verse six, but I am a worm. The Greeks, the Greek fathers called Christ, Triodion, the thrice holy.

Notice that it never says in the Bible, God is merciful, merciful, merciful, and it never says God is love, love, love, but it does say he is holy, holy, holy. And that holy one born a virgin, become a man, that great shepherd of our soul goes to a tree and on that tree, he who knew no sin becomes sin and the father's favor is turned away.

You know, all those little tracks as God on one side and man on the other and sin in the middle, that there's separation between us and God because of our sin. Well, someone has to pay. And so Christ died, separated, abandoned, forsaken of the father.

And not only that, he died under the father's wrath. Who can die for us? For the blood is the blood of bulls and goats sufficient. The one who died for us had to be a man of like nature. Of those who committed the crimes, man has sinned, man must die, the son of God became a man, the one who died had to be God.

Christ's Deity and the Sufficiency of His Sacrifice

In the flesh, why? Well, first of all, salvation is of the Lord, Jonah learned, and that's why the doctrine of the Jehovah Witnesses, if you're here tonight, you're a Jehovah Witness, I am not saying you are an abomination, I am saying what you teach is.

That's why the doctrine that Jesus Christ is nothing more than a mere creature is such an abomination, because if he is a mere creature, then our savior is not God. And salvation is not of the Lord. Why did he have to be God?

Who else but God can withstand the wrath of God? Mountains turned to wax, man, one time said, I won't bow before him. The man who's been such an influence in my life looked at him and said, son, you will melt before him like a tiny wax figurine before a blaster.

Who else but God could withstand the wrath of God? Drink it down and rise again. Another thing, who else has life to give? You say, well, I would lay down my life. It's not yours. It's borrowed. Go to an angel, ask him the source of his life.

It's borrowed. Only Jesus has authority to lay down a life and Jesus has authority to take it back up again. And then my favorite. I almost trick students into asking me this. I love it when some college student pops up and says, how can one man dying for a few hours on a tree save a multitude of men from eternal destruction?

You want to know how? Because that one man on that tree was worth more than all the others put together. You take everything that there is, everything in existence, you take crickets and clowns and moles and mountains and stars and galaxies and planets and trees and rocks and dust.

You put it all on the scale, put Jesus on the other side and he outweighs them all. That one who died. Was an infinite worth and his sacrifice is of infinite power. He died. Yeah, he died. But if you were in one of the early churches, if you were in the primitive church, you would have probably heard a pastor walk before you in a little house church and stand before you and say this, the Christ has risen only to repeat to him, sir, he has risen indeed.

The Resurrection and Ascension of the Victorious King

One of the great problems of Christianity today is that we're not preaching the cross and then we turn it back around and we're not preaching the resurrection either. He has risen. Indeed, I will dance as the Irish would say, I'll dance a fine jig on the lid of that box they put me in one day.

He has risen. He has risen, indeed, took death at its own game, strangled the power out of sin and made us right, rose again from the dead. My older brother was killed in a car accident. And. My father died in my arms in the middle of a field 10 years ago, I preached my sisters, but will blow and I'll mark death.

Where's your power of yours? Where is your whole lost your grip? Have you because the Christ, but not only risen, he's ascended. Look at Psalms 24. This is called an ascension song. Psalms 24, verse three, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord and who may stand in this holy place, modern vernacular, who can go to heaven, who can go to have you want to know who can go to heaven?

Well, I'm about to tell you. Verse four, he who has clean hands and a pure heart, anyone here qualified. Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and not sworn deceitfully, anyone here qualified to give you the desire to repeat the words of Job, oh, that there was someone an umpire, a mediator.

Who could lay his hand on us both. Job, don't despair. There is one who has died and has risen and then 40 days after he ascended, the early church fathers. He's verse seven through 10 to describe that ascension.

Now, remember, and when Paul writes to Timothy, he says there is one mediator between God and man, the man, Jesus. Now, look, he says man is not denying the deity of Jesus Christ. He's just making a point.