When God Comes the Gospel Is Preached — Mose Stoltzfus

Well, amen. Good to be back here tonight and see all of you here with an interest in gospel meetings, preaching the Word of God, singing and fellowship, and reviving your own souls to the glory of God.

You know that does take some effort today to keep our souls revived and stirred up. The Bible even teaches us to stir ourselves up for His sake. Well, tonight again we are very grateful to open the Word of God and speak on this great subject of when God comes.

The Finished Work of God in Jesus Christ

I'm going to take a little bit of a different course here tonight and speak primarily on the subject of when God came, when God came. And we'd like to look at the subject of the finished work of God when He came on earth through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the New Testament, God visited mankind at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. Maybe you want to adjust that a little bit. It seems a little high from up here. In Acts chapter 2 and then throughout the Pauline epistles, as the churches were spread out and the gospel was preached to the heathen, then God visited many places and many people.

And the church of Jesus Christ became established at Ephesus and Corinth and Galatia and Colossae and Laodicea and many other places. According to the Word of God, we have the visitation of God and God coming time after time again.

And we want to look again at some of the things that happened when God comes. Because that is so distorted today, it seems very important for us to capitalize or emphasize those truths. Shall we bow our heads for prayer before we begin?

Father in heaven, we just come before you with your Word. We ask you to help us tonight, Lord. We are weak and needy men and we need the Spirit of the living God to quicken our mortal bodies, this flesh of ours, dear God, in order to give it the strength to deliver the great message that should be delivered this evening and many, many other evenings in these last days.

I pray for that, Father, that we may have meat to eat that the rest of the world knows nothing of in the strength and power of Jesus Christ. And I do pray, break the bread of life tonight, make it plain and simple, and don't let a soul go out of this tent without understanding that Jesus Christ came for them.

I pray, dear God, that the Gospel message could be clear and distinct once again tonight by the Spirit of God. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. I mentioned last night that when God comes, the Spirit of God comes to dwell in men's hearts.

The Jews made a drastic mistake when they thought that they could cleanse first the outside of the cup and somehow work their way into the human heart that way. I don't know if they ever aimed for the heart even as far as that's concerned, but it seems like that's what they were trying to do with their outward rules and rituals and regulations.

But the Bible says, cleanse first that which is within, that the outside may be clean. He doesn't say it doesn't matter what's on the outside. He doesn't say that it's only on the heart and nothing else matters.

He simply says that you're to begin at the heart and work your way out in a person's life. When God comes, that's one of the things that will happen. Now some people don't like revival meetings. They say they're all just some emotional hype.

All you have is a little bit of emotion, they say, and about a week later, most of it dies out. Well, that may be true for some, but I want you to know that that's not what we're here for, to give you a shot of emotion.

We actually believe that it does, though, revival does affect the emotions. And if you are emotionless or don't want to have your emotions stirred, you've probably come to the wrong place because I don't think we can go very far in revival until we recognize that there are some stirrings in the emotions.

But wouldn't it God that a lot more gets changed and stirred and affected than your emotions? So like I think I mentioned a little bit about it last night, we don't want you just to have an emotional high this week, but we want you to be so thoroughly affected that your emotions are indeed affected and stirred and challenged also.

But we want the very center of a man's decisive powers to be affected. That's what we want. That's what we're looking for and we believe with all our hearts that that's what God wants. The very core, the very center of a man's decisive powers where he can choose this day who he wants to serve and be affected for the rest of his life.

Like I think I mentioned also last night is we do believe that there should be a major change take place in your lives if you come to Jesus Christ. Some people think, well, you know, this religion shouldn't change too many things and there's a heap, a lot of people that try to get religion in this day and even get born again in Christianity but they're hoping that they don't move the status quo but that everything kind of continues as it was before.

Please don't ask me to move off of my place and don't affect my relationships with people and don't stir too many things up. I don't want to make a lot of changes. But the Bible says that there'll be a lot of, it gives many illustrations in the New Testament of a lot of changes that need to be made and that people make when they find God.

When God comes to the lives of people, it should affect some major changes. If you want an example of that, you look at our beloved brother Paul and beloved brother Peter and a whole lot of other men in the Bible and the changes that they made.

In fact, Jesus said that if you're not willing to leave father and mother, houses and lands, wife and children for my sake and the gospel, you're not worthy of me. I want you to get that. That's no little thing.

We say, well, the gospel shouldn't break up homes and we would, to God, know, we're going to probably preach a bit on that, that it should heal your home and for the most part it does. But every now and then, a spouse digs in her heels and says, I'm not going to change.

And the power of God changes the other one and we have war at home. And many men have had to walk away or their wives have left them or their husbands have left them because they have accepted Jesus Christ as to be Lord of their life.

I only say, when you come to God or when God comes to your life, you need to be willing to have happen whatever happens for Christ's sake. You need to be willing to put Jesus Christ absolute first and foremost in your life and let come what may.

Because heaven and eternity in heaven and even victory in your Christian life is worth more than still holding on to earthly possessions, properties, land, or relationships with anybody. With anybody.

The Gospel Is Preached, Not a Human Program

God is worth more than that when God comes. Well, one of the things that happens when God comes, the gospel is preached. The gospel is preached and we want to do that tonight by God's grace. We're here to announce to you that we do not have a 12-step program to give you.

Neither do we have a 21-step. That's the new one, you know. It used to be an 8-step somewhere years ago and then somewhere along the way these psychologists and psychiatrists and influenced a mixture of religion with psychiatry and psychology and come up with a 12-step program.

And now we have a 21-step. And I don't know where they're going next, but I'm still back at the couple of steps that are in the Word of God that a person should repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and they can be saved and go to heaven when they die.

So it's not so many steps that psychology is trying to bring us. It's actually so simple that a lot of people miss it. A lot of people miss it. Well, we want to talk about the finished work of Christ when God came.

About 2 ,000 years now, there was a baby born in Bethlehem of Judea and it is said of him that they shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. That is why he came and that's what he's about.

My Lord Jesus Christ came on this earth leaving the ivory palaces of glory and come down to a sin-cursed earth in order to save people from their sins. And in John chapter 19, we'll go to that scripture for a beginning in verse 28 through 30.

We read these verses. After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith hanging on the cross, it says, Saith I first. Now there was said a vessel full of vinegar and they filled a sponge with vinegar and put it upon a hyssop and put it to his mouth.

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost and died. Now I think in one of the other Gospels, it says he cried, It is finished!

And I believe that's what happened. He cried that great message of the Gospel. And I want you to know tonight that this is a very clear and a very profound message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ tonight, is that the work of salvation, the plan of salvation, the great work of God, why God came, is finished tonight.

The work of God is finished. Not like Sun Myung Moon, who believes that he is here to help finish the work of God and marry a bunch of wives or what have you and raise up a perfect generation because Jesus got cut off sometime before he finished the work.

He was supposed to start a perfect generation. That false prophet, he's a false prophet and has deceived millions in America, Sun Myung Moon. He's a liar and the truth is not in him, the Bible would say, because the Bible says that the work of God was finished.

Even though he was cut off at 33 years of age and he was at the prime of life, and many men thought that he never accomplished that much, but I tell you, he accomplished all that he was sent to accomplish.

And tonight, the great plan of salvation, once and for all, is finished. And if it ever needed to be shouted again, it needs to be shouted in every generation, in every age. He shouted it in weakness of body.

I believe he got the power from God at the last moments of his life to gather up all the strength that he had left in him to shout those final words. It is finished! And then he gave up the ghost and died.

But all those of us who have a voice and have strength in our bodies and are called to be preachers of righteousness or to witness to other people of the truth of the Gospel need to echo those great words of the finished work of the Lord Jesus, of his reason for being here.

Excuse me. It's the last statement of the seven statements that were made while hanging on the cross. And it is one of the greatest ever made. The Greek word is titalisteiai, I think is the word. Titalisteiai.

The word means accomplish, fulfilled, completed, made an end. And he cried it with all he had. Now when he cried it, other things bore witness of that and what is meant and what all is contained behind it.

But I believe that it was the greatest event ever to happen in all of time in history. I don't believe when God spoke the world in existence that it was a greater event than when Jesus cried the words, it is finished and gave up the ghost and died and shed his blood for the redemption of mankind.

And make an atonement for men's sins. That's what happened. The Bible says the earth quaked. Can you imagine the very creator of the earth died? Jesus Christ, the living Son of God who always was. He wasn't born somewhere along the way.

He always was. And when man was created, the Bible says we created him in his image. Man was created in his image. And the word we is used meaning that it was more than the Father in existence at the time, but the Trinity was in full effect.

And so we had the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Jesus Christ was alive in creation. And he existed there. But can you imagine, even though he called and helped call the world into existence, yet now that cruel world and mankind whom he had so beautifully created and put in the garden had despised him and rejected him and put him on a cruel cross outside of Jerusalem, there on Golgotha's Hill, nailed him to a rugged cross after beating him and slapping him and putting the cat-of-nine-tails across his back, blood running down until he was so weak he couldn't even carry the cross up the hill, which normally he was made to do.

And he had to get a man to help him do it. But finally, he gave up the ghost and died. And when he did, the earth shook and quaked and darkness came on the face of the earth for at least about three hours.

The Bible says that the graves opened up. The graves opened up. And the dead that were in them shook out of the graves and laid there for another three days. And after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, three days later, those dead bodies arose and went into town.

But they didn't raise up when Jesus died. They only laid there, I believe, because he was the first of them that slept. He was the first one to raise from the dead. And those men did not rise, I don't believe, until Jesus rose.

Because he is the resurrection and the life. And therefore, we have this great event marked by earthquake and by darkness and by the rocks renting and graves opening up and shaking out their dead. And we have here a picture of the great Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world that John the Baptist talked about when he saw him coming and said, Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.

I want you to know that this great act, cultivated in all of the Old Testament history's offerings, came to a halt here. There were offerings and sacrifices. By the tens of thousands of oxen and bullock and sheep had to die.

Turtle doves and young pigeons. For men's sins, they were ever going for more animals because with every passing day there were more sins committed by humanity. And they needed to be atoned for and covered by blood.

But the blood that was shed of animals only stacked up the sins for Jesus Christ to come and take them away at his crucifixion. And therefore, it would not take away sin. Even though they were offering in sacrifices and it was the plan of God to do so.

But all the offerings from Adam until now, that were offered for the sacrifices of men's sins, all of them were finished. They came to an end. The priests could go get jobs. The Levitical priesthood, their work was over.

The altar didn't have to have another lamb ever upon it. Don't you offer no sacrificial lamb today in your communion service thinking that you're keeping the Passover. The Passover lamb has been slain.

And his name is Jesus Christ. And he was slain for your sins and for mine. Once for all, the Hebrew writer says, he was slain. The veil in the temple. Oh, I love that history. That story of how that heavy veil hung there between the holy place and the Holy of Holies.

Well, when Jesus died, the veil rent from the top to the bottom. Now, you ladies know how hanging cloths usually rent. They rent from the bottom up. But this one was supernaturally rent by the finger of God.

And inside was the place that only the high priest could go once a year. And then only with blood. And sprinkle the mercy seat with blood for the sins of himself and for all the people. But that day, the temple rent from the top to the bottom.

And men can now enter into the Holy of Holies and have direct contact with God without going through a high priest. Because Jesus Christ is once and for all become your and my high priest. He is the intercessor.

He sprinkled His own blood to atone for your sin and for mine. And therein is the hope of eternal life. Therein is salvation by grace through faith. And not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not of works that any man should boast.

We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works. But that is the gospel message in a nutshell. Christ died for the sins of humanity. Christ shed His blood for you. And if you ever want to get your sins atoned for and want an intercessor, His name is Jesus Christ.

And if He died for your sin once, that is enough. And they can be taken away and dropped into the depths of the sea somewhere where no man can find them. And are removed forever. I tell you tonight, if you are a sinner and you have had a lot of sin in your past life or a few sins, it does not matter because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

But Christ Jesus was slain on Calvary's cross to atone for your sin. You do not have to die. You do not have to go to hell. You do not have to continue living in your sin. Christ Jesus took your place on Calvary's cross to atone for your sin.

All you need to do, though, is come to Him to receive the gift of salvation and the atonement for your sin. Now, it is very interesting. You can check my theology if you want to, but I think it is straight when I tell you that though Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, it is not in effect for the whole world.

It is only in effect if you believe it by faith. That makes the connection. And that does the work. So Jesus can die. It is just like somebody could have died and left a million dollars in the bank in your name.

As long as you do not go down to the bank and claim it. It has your name on it. But it lays there and you cannot spend a dollar on it until you go down there and get it and claim it. And that is the way it is with salvation and the blood atonement.

God has atoned for everyone. The million plus hundred million dollars is in the bank, but it will only affect you as you go and get it and believe it by God's grace. That you reach out in faith and say, yep, I accept that.

That money is there for me. Jesus' blood was atoned for my sin. And you have to recognize, first of all, that you are a sinner. If you are a good boy tonight and you are some religious kid who never thinks he has done anything bad, it is not for you.

Jesus Christ came only for sinners. He came for the sick, not for the righteous. Not for those that are so good and well that they do not need a Savior. But if you need a Savior tonight and you have had sin in your life, then you need an atonement for sin.

And that is available through Jesus Christ our Lord. But you have to reach out by faith to receive it. It is so simple. My dear people, it is so simple. Well, the veil was rent. I did not finish my story.

I got carried away with the Gospel. But they say in the temple, when that veil was rent, history would say, you know, the Jews, oh, we cannot see in there. We cannot see the Holy of Holies. If we do, we die.

In fact, history gives it that they used to put a rope around the leg of the priest when he went in there because if he would be smitten dead, like some of them were who had not cleansed themselves properly before going in, then the next man going in to get the dead body out would have been killed too because you cannot touch the dead, you know, under the old law.

And so the bodies would have just piled up in there. So they used to put a rope around their foot so if they were smitten dead that the people could haul the body out without anybody going in. This temple, this veil was rent from the top to bottom and they quickly sewed it up.

And history says, I think Josephus gives this, and perhaps some others, that the next morning when they got into the temple, it was rent again. The threads failed to hold it. And so they sewed it up again and the next morning they came back in and it was rent again.

And then they finally gave up. But I love it because God said, you have access into the Holy of Holies. That Ark of the Covenant is no more. In King David's time, you remember Uzzah, how he steadied that Ark, wanted to steady it when the wheel went into a hole and they were hauling it back from the Philistines, you know, and Uzzah steadied the Ark and it smote him and he died because they weren't supposed to haul it, they were supposed to carry it and he had disobeyed God and he touched the Ark.

I want to tell you that after Jesus died, Uzzah could have put his hands all over that box and nothing would have happened. Because that was not the holiness and dwelling place of God was not there anymore.

It was now in Jesus Christ and His atonement for sin. And the law and the prophets were finished. So when He said, it is finished, He meant the Holy of Holies is finished, the temple is finished, the priesthood is finished, the curtain is finished, the blood is finished.

All of those things were finished. And now Christ had died and atoned for the sins of the whole world to whosoever believes in Him should not perish and have everlasting life. And that is the Gospel. That is the Gospel.

I think of the manna. You remember the pot of manna that was in the Ark of the Covenant. Well, that was holy too. That didn't spoil in there, you know. That was preserved by God. If they kept manna on the Sabbath day or overnight on any other day in the wilderness, the manna would spoil and stink and get wormy.

But here was a pot of manna in the Ark of the Covenant that never spoiled. But I imagine it would have stank a day later when Jesus died because it was all over. It was all over. And the same way with the rod, Aaron's rod that budded.

The Philistines could have done anything they wanted to with it. They could have held it down there and it wouldn't have affected them. Like, you remember how they broke out with emeralds when they had the Ark of the Covenant down in their camp?

Well, I don't think they would have broke out with any diseases this time because Jesus had died and when He said it's finished, it was finished. Now, when God came, that's what happened. When God came in the presence of Jesus Christ, that is what took place.

And every human being, in order to have the effect of that coming, it must come to God in repentance of sin, acknowledging that I am a sinner and that I need that for me. I need redemption. I need an atonement for my sin because I have sinned.

I have sinned. And all of us have. So all of us need that. You don't have to belong to a church. You don't have to be baptized. You don't have to do a bunch of things that you are told to do in order to get the atonement for your sin.

Even though that church life is right and for a church to have godly order is right, but for you to get right with God, you don't join a church, you don't get baptized, and you don't dress a certain way.

When you want to get right with God, you come as a sinner as you are and you must be saved from your sin through the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed for you. And you have to accept it by faith. You must believe the record that God gave of His Son concerning it.

The Serpent’s Head Is Crushed and Sin Loses Its Dominion

Now, another thing that happened when God came. When God came nearly 2 ,000 years ago, you might remember in the Garden when Adam and Eve sinned and were driven out of the Garden and they had the little dialogue there with God and God chased them out.

God says to Adam that He is going to send a Redeemer at some future generation. And it says there, concerning the serpent, it says in Genesis very clearly there, that the head of the serpent would be crushed.

The serpent would bruise the heel of mankind. And he did so when he crucified Jesus and opposed the prophets and men of God down through the ages. The bruising of the heel of the men of God was happening all through those 4 ,000 years.

But when Jesus Christ died on Calvary nearly 2 ,000 years ago, that act crushed the head of the serpent. That crushed the head of the serpent. Before that time, the serpent of sin was always biting man.

Always nibbling at his heels. Always after him. And man did not have the power of God to overcome sin. Sin always had a dominion over mankind through those years. Though they could atone for it over and over again, the concept of victory over sin was not known in the Old Covenant, in the Old Testament.

In Romans chapter 6, we are given that beautiful layout. I won't go into the whole details, but Romans 6 says, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him that the body of sin or the sin nature should be destroyed.

That henceforth, from now on, we should not serve sin. And in verse 11 he says, sin shall not have dominion over you. And that is the great cancer of our society. Is that sin has dominion over men's lives.

And they cannot quit! They can't stop their sinning. They can't stop lusting. They can't stop stealing. They can't stop being angry. They can't stop losing their temper and using sharp words and a host of other things.

They can't stop smoking. They can't stop drinking for the most part. A few of them with great willpower are able to change a few of those things. But for the most part, you can simply say they cannot quit.

But once and for all, I have to tell you, they cannot root out the sin nature out of their hearts. That's for sure. They can modify their behavior maybe a little here or there. But it's like a balloon.

Did you ever try squeezing a balloon somewhere and it's always popping out somewhere else? You know, you squeeze it and it always comes out up through here and down through here. And that's the way the sinful nature is.

It's simply we have been bit by sin by sinful nature. And we try to squeeze the balloon and it only pops out somewhere else. I heard a story the other day by phone that a brother from Canada gave me that I was just thrilled.

Redemption Illustrated Through a Backsliding Man

You know, it happened there that a young boy from Albert, Ontario who had lived a life of... He had actually given his heart to the Lord and his parents didn't want him to do anything and go where he could get spiritual strength.

And he got discouraged and he threw in the towel and gave it up. And he went west and he went out to Alberta and he lived the life of a sinner there among the Hutterite colonies and drank and caroused with the young people there and lived high that way in a life of sin.

But after some time he came home. He came back into Ontario and his brother and his sister persuaded him to come along to Bible school in Pennsylvania last November. And there on Tuesday night with a ring in his ear and his hair dyed blonde, he gave his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he was born again by the Spirit of God and a few weeks ago he decided, well, I lived such a life of sin with those boys out there in Alberta I ought to go make it right. And so he called out there and he said, I'm coming out.

And they didn't know anything. They didn't know anything that happened to him. And so he took his brother along and they headed for Alberta. And when they got there the whole place was waiting on them.

All the young people were out there so anxious to see their buddy again, you know, that they had sinned with all that time. And they said, well, how have you been? How's it going? And he didn't say too much.

He just kept kind of quiet. And then he had his brother along who was never there and he said, why don't we give them a tour of the place? And so the whole group rose up and they took him and showed him all their big farm and their big operations.

You know, they live in community and they have pretty big farms out there and big operations and animals and all that and feed mills and stuff and big combines and tractors and what have you. And they took him on a tour of the place and as they were walking from place to place, they kept saying, well, what have you been doing the last year?

What's going on? He said, wait until we get back to the house and I'll tell you the whole story. And so they got back to the house and he sat down and he told them, well, this is what happened to me. I had once accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, but I got discouraged and fell away and went out into sin.

And last November, I went to a Bible school and I gave my heart and life to Jesus Christ and I got born again and God changed my life and everything. They were aghast. They couldn't believe it. I mean, this man.

And by the way, by then, one of the men had come out of the house and offered him three beers, you know. And he said, I don't drink anymore. Oh! It shocked him. And the man knew how much he had drank with him.

And he offered them to his brother and his brother said, well, I don't drink either. And so he finally went back to the house and got some pop out and gave him some pop, you know. But anyway, he got to share the story from the beginning and how he got born again.

And before the evening was over, others were shaken and crying perhaps over their own sins as Christ by the Holy Spirit brought them into the forefront. If you are living in sin and have a whole load of sin on your shoulders, when you hear a testimony of another man and how he got free, it affects you majorly and shakes you to the core because the Spirit of God is shouting in your ear saying, you can get free too.

I died for you too. I shed my blood for you and I'm interested in your soul tonight if you only give me your heart and life. And that's what happened. That place was filled with religion and had the history of 500 years behind them, but lost in the depths of sin and ungodliness and laden with sin.

Never to understand that Jesus came to save His people from their sin and that sin shall not have dominion over you. Well, after they heard him out and then they asked his brother his story and he gave his own testimony and they heard another one.

And I tell you, they left that night and the last I heard is even though they came back to Ontario, they want to have contact with him again because they asked so many questions and were very curious and we believe that God has opened the door to touch their hearts there.

Well, when God came, when God comes and gives us the finished work of Calvary, that's what happened. That's the change that takes place. That's the beautiful thing. And the head of the serpent, the devil, is crushed.

His power and his dominion in our life is stopped. You don't have to get angry anymore and fly off the handle. Your cursing tongue can be cleansed by the blood of Jesus as I heard a testimony today tell me.

Your fornicating and adulterous lifestyle, your lusting after the opposite sex can stop by the power of God and you can be changed and turned away from all that. And you know the battle. If you've tried to do it in the flesh, you know the battle.

It's an endless one that we cannot quit. That's usually the one none of us can quit. Well, the devil. Now the devil didn't bargain for what happened there on Calvary. I want to tell you that. The Bible says, for had the princes of this world known what would have happened.

It gives that idea. I can't say it word for word. Had the prince of this world known, he would not have crucified our Lord. That whole thing was the greatest, greatest, greatest act against the devil that ever happened.

He thought he had him. He thought he killed him. He thought he overcome him. He thought he had the reign. He thought he actually killed God. Imagine. He knew who he was. He knew well who he was because he had created him.

Jesus had created the devil. And the devil had rebelled and all that happened in heaven and he got cast out of heaven. Now he was after the Son of God to thwart his plan of salvation. And he was after to kill him.

And when he killed him, I can imagine all of the fallen angels rejoiced and they thought they had him. Only to find out three days later that it was the greatest undoing of Satan that there ever was and ever will be in the fact that it took and robbed the power right away from him.

He had power over humanity. He had power over mankind. He drove men to sin. But after that, anyone could go to Jesus and be free from the devil's power. And free from the drive of sin. And free from the nature of sin.

And it's the greatest act in all of history. The devil's head was crushed just like God said to Adam that it would happen. Down there somewhere down the way this thing would happen. And it took 4 ,000 years for it to come to pass.

But when it came to pass, it came to pass and it was the greatest act there ever was. I tell you, I rejoice tonight that when God came, the devil's head is crushed. And if God comes to you tonight, if God comes to your heart and mind, and you have a load of sin on your back, I tell you, the devil's grip on your life can be taken away.