This sermon was uploaded by Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas and our website is www.gccsatx.com or you can find us on Sermon Audio by going to www.sermonaudio.com slash gcc Let's open up our Bibles to Romans chapter 1 and Romans chapter 1, verse 16. It seemed right to most that I would spend these next four sermons speaking on the gospel, since that is the topic, the uniqueness of Christ and the gospel of the small group teaching and things such as that, and so we'll... There's no way in four sermons to even begin to touch the foothills of that Mount Everest. But we'll look at some things that are important in Scripture and also important in the context of our culture today. In Romans 1.16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I come before you in the name of your Son. The privilege is all mine. The most blessed of all people we are, that angels would trade their highest state to be able to go by the name redeemed, that they long to look into the very things that have been freely given to men. And, O Father, that we might know the Gospel because it is the Gospel of Your Son, and that we might know how to clearly and correctly proclaim it, and that we might with great reverence live in light of such wonderful things. God, I pray for wisdom. You have given me the best and the most terrible of tasks. Angels mumble, Lord, when they try to describe what Your Son has done. Oh, the depths of the wisdom of God. that He would call upon fallible men with a weak language to speak things that angels' tongues cannot declare. O God, for this cause help me this day. In Jesus' name, Amen. For I am not ashamed of the gospel." Paul's flesh had every reason to be ashamed of the gospel because he preached a true one. We live in a day where we think that in order to be relevant to our culture, we must be like our culture. We live in a day where we think in order for the gospel to be relevant, we must somehow adapt it to the culture and nothing on the face of the earth or in the bowels of hell could be further from the truth. We are relevant not because we are like our culture. We are relevant because we are absolutely different. And our gospel has power not because it is acceptable to carnal men. Our gospel has power because it is a scandal to men. Paul was not ashamed of this gospel. But His flesh had every reason to be." Imagine for a moment, we're not talking about a man who comes into the context of the Bible Belt. We're talking about a man who comes into the context of Jewish mythology, to Greek philosophy. Every concept of Greek philosophy, every concept the Jews had about the Messiah, contradicted the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Every time Paul the Apostle stood up, he seemed to carnal men to be nothing more than a raving madman. And every preacher that's ever been worth his salt since that day has had the same label put upon him. G. Campbell Morgan, when he would go up to the tower at Westminster to preach, He always said that he would quote the verse, like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep before its shears. Why? He knew that unless God moved on his behalf with this gospel of God's dear Son, absolutely nothing would happen. But we don't see power like that today. Why? Because we prop up a gospel with the carnal devices of men. We remove the scandal in the name of love. as though we had greater wisdom than God to tweak His gospel here and there so it might be more palatable to men. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the flesh has every reason to be ashamed of it. But in that lies the power. Everything about God's Messiah contradicted everything that men believed about the Messiah. Everything about God's salvation contradicts absolutely everything men believe about how salvation should be won and in what form it should take. And unless we realize that, we'll have no gospel here in this church. We'll have no power and we'll see no true conversion. We have to be willing to join our Master in being a scandal, that we preach Christ crucified in such a way as to exalt God Almighty and to humble men, so that in learning to despise themselves, They esteem the gospel and are saved. The worst thing that could ever happen to a preacher and the worst thing that could ever happen to a church is to become civilized and respectable. For in that lies no power. We are pilgrims. We are strangers. We are awkward. We are dislocated. We find no home here, no place where we properly fit because we have a city whose builder and maker is God. And our job, is to take a gospel so covered up by the designs of men that it no longer has any power. It is our job to strip away all that faulty dress and to preach the bare bones of a gospel that's nothing more than a scandal. But in that, we will see the power of God. Now look at the gospel that we have today. Just let me set this gospel before you. The gospel of four laws, the gospel of five things God wants you to know, the gospel of how do you get to heaven, it goes something like this. Do you know you're a sinner? And then if the person says yes, then the next step, would you like to go to heaven? If they say yes, the next step, well then repeat this prayer. And if they repeat that prayer, then the next step, Well, did God save you? And usually the answer is something like this, I don't know. And then the witness for Christ says, well, of course He saved you. If He didn't save you, He was a liar, because He said if you opened the door and invited Him in, He would come in, and He doesn't lie. And that right there is the reason why the great majority of evangelical organizations today are filled up with lost people. Right there. Now let's go through that scenario for a moment. Do you know you're a sinner? And sometimes we say it, you know, we want to not be too serious about all this. Now you know everybody's a sinner, don't you? My mother's been diagnosed with cancer. My mother-in-law has just recently been diagnosed with cancer. What would you think of a doctor who walked up to both of them and said, now you know, you've got cancer, don't you? The way we talk about sin betrays our ignorance of the absolute devastation of the thing. We talk to men about sin, what is wrong with being solemn? We live in such a trite age, and we all march in a vanity fair, where everyone wants to wear bright colors and ignore the fact that everyone's marching off a cliff into eternal destruction. Societies as we know them, the West is crumbling before us, and we still choose to be trite and frivolous and happy. The fact of the matter is, man is twisted and broken and dead. The fact of the matter is, a judgment is coming. The fact of the matter is, all that we can see will be melted as with fire. So we look to men and say, now you know you're a sinner, don't you? And usually we'll even say this, because we've been taught this in seminary. We say, well, you know, we are all sinners. We don't want to just say you, because we don't want you to feel isolated and guilty by yourself. I do want you to feel isolated and guilty by yourself, because only in that will you come to see your need for Christ. You know you're a sinner, don't you? And if they say yes, we go on. Now let's go back. If someone says yes to the question, do you know you're a sinner, it means absolutely nothing. Go ask the devil. You know you're a sinner, don't you? He'd say, well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do, and I happen to be just about the best. The question is not, do you recognize you are a sinner? The question is this. Since you have heard me preach the gospel, has God done such a work in your heart that the sin you once loved you now hate? And the righteousness you once hated and ignored, you now desire. That's the question. Everyone knows they're a sinner. They just don't realize how heinous and terrible that is. Nor do they want to let go of the very thing that they choose to drink down as though it were water. So you see, the question is not, do you recognize you're a sinner? The question is, sir, As I have been speaking to you, or maybe it's long-term discipleship over a period of time, sir, as I've been sharing with you and discipling you, what has God done to your heart? People come to me all the time and they say, I have a new relationship with God. And I say, well, do you have a new relationship with sin? Because if you don't have a new relationship with sin, you don't have a new relationship with God. So it's not really, do you know you're a sinner? It's, sir, you are a sinner. Now, sir, let me go through Scripture and explain to you how terrible that statement just happens to be. And the terrifying predicament you are in before a loving God. You thought I was going to say righteous God. Well, it's not just His righteousness and His holiness that brings about wrath. It is also His love. And then we work with a person. That is why we study Scripture. That is why we seek to be workmen who are not ashamed. That is why we do as the Apostle Paul did in Romans chapter 3. We work with all our might to show men the terrifying nature of their sin and their predicament before God, and we stay there until that work has been accomplished. Rather some... Do you know you're a sinner? We go from Genesis to Revelation if necessary. And we paint a picture using Scripture of men so that men might recognize their need. An illustration that I always use, I may have used it here before, I'll pull out some keys and I'll jingle them in front of the congregation and I'll ask them, does that make you happy? And then I'll say, if it does, you probably need counseling. But I tell them the reason those keys jingling does not make you happy is because you're not locked away in a dungeon. If you were locked away in a dungeon, the sound of keys would give you hope and make you happy. One of the reasons why men see very little need of Christ is because they see very little need of their predicament. And they see very little terror in their predicament because they know not how sinful they are. And they know not how sinful they are because we're not telling them. Because we found a new way to evangelize. that protects us from the scandal and causes all men to speak well of us. You can go on any secular program in America and say, smile, God loves you, and no one's going to have a problem with that. You can go into Hollywood and say, God has a wonderful plan for your life, and no one's going to have a problem. It's when you begin to point to man and say, you are guilty. Before the bar of God, you are guilty. Now, we do so with love. We do so with compassion. We do so with grace and mercy, knowing we ourselves were guilty, possibly more guilty than any other man. But at the same time, we do say guilty. And we work to prove that guilt. But a young preacher one time, he said, well, I don't have a ministry of condemnation. And I said, well, I do. I do. to move men to that with all my might, pray and study until the dawn's early hours, just to gain enough biblical ammunition to convince men of their lostness. Now, it doesn't stay there, but it does begin there. It doesn't stay with condemnation. It goes on to salvation. But in order to get to salvation, you cannot pass over the truth of condemnation. Do you know you're a sinner? Well, now we know that's not enough, don't we? Because that's not the question. The question is, has God done such a work in your life that the sin you once loved, you now hate? Now let me ask you a question. Long ago, I learned something. It's not enough for a person or a group of people to assent to the truth. to say yes or amen. The question is this, the statement I made, that the sign of a genuine work of God in the heart is that you begin to hate the sin you once loved and to love the righteousness you once ignored. The question is not, do you agree with that or are you challenged? The question is, is that a reality in your life? Is it? Young lady, young man, Elderly woman? Elderly man? Middle-aged man in the prime of life? Is it a reality in your life? Are you continuing to grow in your hatred of sin and your love for righteousness? That's the question. Now, we always ask them, now you know you're a sinner, don't you? They say yes, and then we go on to the next. Statement, would you like to go to heaven? I learned a long time ago this truth. Everybody wants to go to heaven. They just don't want God to be there when they get there. Everyone wants to go to heaven. Have you ever had someone say, why no, I'd rather go to hell? Everyone wants to go to heaven. That is not the question. I saw a film several years ago, and I don't recommend seeing films or watching television much. It can be a very terrible thing. But every once in a while, something will come along that will provide you an open window into your culture. It's good to see, to know where people are going. And a movie came out years ago called What Dreams May Come. Man is a doctor and his children die and go to heaven, and then he dies and goes to heaven, and the whole film is Hollywood's idea of heaven. But there is absolutely something astounding in that film, and it is this. First of all, the guy is agnostic. He dies and he goes to heaven. When he gets to heaven, he meets an angel, that he supposes at least is an angel. And it's an amazing dialogue between the man who has just entered into heaven and the angel. He says to the angel, there's a heaven. And the angel goes, yeah, there's a heaven. Well, if there's a heaven, then is there a God? And the guy goes, yeah, there's a God. Yeah. And he goes, well, where is he? And this is what the angel said. He's up there. Now look at what's happened in our modern culture. Everything we know about society and culture and government, we've relegated God to where? Heaven. God can't be the basis. The Word of God cannot be the basis for government, for society, for culture, for education, because God is so far removed from earth. We don't know where He is. We don't know who He is. We don't know if He has spoken. So we relegate God to heaven and keep Him away from our business. And now we go to heaven and He's not there either. We've just moved Him one step further. You see, all men want to go to heaven. The worst thing you can ever ask an unbeliever is, do you want to go to heaven? Because that's not the question. The question is this. Not, do you want to go to heaven? But, has God done such a work in your life that the God you hated and ignored, you now esteem, cherish and seek? Has God done such a supernatural work in your heart through the Holy Spirit, that although prior to that you have lived a life of ignoring God, of hating God, you now see Him as esteemed above all things. And you desire Him above all things. Now, let me say a few things. Friday and Saturday I spent time reading through Jonathan Edwards' work on the end of all things, the purpose of all creations. It's a marvelous work. It's very hard to work through, but it's a wonderful thing. And he argues an airtight argument, because the thing is just filled with Scripture, that the very reason why you were created, no, the only reason, you were created was to esteem God, to know Him in such a way that you would esteem Him above all things, forsake all things and seek Him and desire to know Him. So the end is not in seeking salvation. The end is not in seeking self-preservation. The end is, I want Him. Do you honestly think that heaven is heaven because of streets of gold and gates of pearl? Do you honestly believe that? I want to tell you, if it was streets of gold, gates of pearl, whatever, beyond your wildest dreams, for an eternity it would become so boring that you would border on suicide. You wouldn't make it 10,000 years before trying to take your life. So I have such a problem with a lot of Southern gospel. It's all about heaven and not about God. Do you realize what you're saying when you say, oh, heaven's going to be such a beautiful place? Listen to me. God has made your heart. For eternity, he's put that in your heart, an infinite thing he's put there. Yes, he has. Now what? What can fill an infinite, that infinite spot in your heart? What can fill infinity except infinity? And what is infinite? Heaven? No. God. Do you know why heaven is always going to be heaven? And every day of heaven, if you could say such a thing, is going to be greater than the day before? Well, for those of you who haven't been there, let me teach you. You walk into heaven your first day. We're using human terms here. And you see God in a way you have never seen Him, nor ever imagined possible. And if you had not been supernaturally strengthened by the power of God, you would have either dissolved or gone mad because of His beauty and because of the joy. And you worship Him with such ecstasy as you never in a million lifetimes could have dreamed possible. And then you go to bed. And then you wake up the next morning. And you see a new vision of God. that so surpasses the vision of God you saw the day before. It's as though you have never, ever seen Him before. And again, if you had not been supernaturally strengthened by the power of God, you would go mad at the joy of it. The ecstasy would kill you. And you fall down in His power and you worship with delight. Then you go to bed. Then you wake up the next day. And you go on and on and on and on and on. And it never, never ends because... Well, seminary students will say, Brother Paul, when I get to heaven, will I know everything? Well, you'll know a lot. But you won't know everything. God is infinite. Heaven will be an infinite chase. An infinite tracking down of the glories of God. But most don't want that. Even most who attend evangelical churches don't really want that, and I can prove it. They don't want it now. If you don't want it now, you won't want it then. Because eternal life does not begin with dying and going to heaven. He says, this is eternal life, that they may know you. Know you. And that begins the moment He regenerates your heart and reveals to you, this place ought to be a contradiction. First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals ought to be a contradiction in every sense of the term. Our theology should be high, even it should be called academic to some degree. People should think that the only thing we think about It's theology and truth, and yet when the worship leader gets up here, this place ought to go wild. That is, of course, you're civilized and respectable. It's not, do you want to go to heaven? The question is, do you want God? Do you want Him? Have you ever heard someone say, now, love's not an emotion? It's a verb, you know. You love God, it means keeping His commandments. You love people, it means you're patient. I don't believe that. I believe love is an emotion and so much more. I don't believe love is just doing the right thing. I don't believe love is just keeping commandments. And I don't believe love is just being patient and kind. That's what love looks like when it walks and talks, but that's not love. Love is passion. Let me ask you a question. Do you have a passion for God? Do you desire Him? Do you long for Him? Yes, we all go through times in which our hearts are dull. Yes, we go through times when we need to be encouraged. Yes, we all go through times when our eyes are mesmerized by things they should not be. Yes, we all struggle in that. But if someone were to look at your life, would they say, this person has a passion, not for ministry, not for missions, not for evangelism, but for God. Back in Illinois, I lived on a 320-acre farm, and I lived in the very back of it. I think my mom gave me a piece of that land back there to keep me as far away from civilization as she could. And I used to love, I loved to work in my woodshop and things, and I had this pair of old biv overalls, half of it's tore apart and everything else, and I just loved working around that shop. But sometimes, just to be working around my shop or out there, you know, doing something, cutting wood or something, And then all of a sudden, it's like the Lord just shows up. And it's like, you're thinking I'm going to say just bowing down and worshiping. No, it's taking four bean field rolls at a time. Running and jumping and screaming and hollering and shouting, hallelujah, glory to God. I work at not being civilized. A passion for God. So it's not a question of do you want to do the right thing, or do you want to be moral, or do you want to have a good life? It is this, do you desire Him? I hate preaching that goes something like this. You know, you've got a wonderful life there, yuppie. You've got a really nice house and a really nice job, and you've got a really beautiful wife, and you've got 1.25 children, and you've got three cars and Subarus and Suburbans, and you've got a great job. You've got a great life. Everything fits perfectly in place. You just lack one thing. You lack Jesus. That is the most disgusting thing you could ever say. What would be more appropriate to say is, Your life is nothing. It has no value at all apart from Jesus Christ. He is not some little accessory that a yuppie puts on top of his life as though it were cherry on the top of ice cream. You have Jesus and Jesus has you or you are barren and wasted and lost. So it's not a question of, do you want a better life? Do you want to go to heaven? Do you want to fix your marriage? Do you want all these things? No. Do you want God? Do you desire Him? And then we come up with the idea of this. Well, if we get them to say yes about going to heaven, would you like to pray this prayer and ask Jesus to come in? Because He's standing there at the door and He's knocking. No, He's not. Revelation 3, verse 20. He's standing and knocking at the door of a church. He's not standing and knocking at the door of a sinner's heart. And I have told people that. I've sat there and talked to evangelists and say exegetically, theologically, whatever way you want to look at it, that's not what that verse means. And they'll say even, yes, I know, but it works. It works. The moonies have a lot of things that work. The Jehovah Witnesses have a lot of things that work. Satan is very practical and pragmatic. It works? No, it doesn't. It just fills churches up with people who don't know God and don't love Him, but through a little kind of contract they made with Him through a prayer, their salvation is sealed. It has never been. Do you want to open up your heart and ask Jesus to come in? My friend, in the dear words of a dear friend of mine, Randall Easter, if Jesus wants to open up the door of your heart, He'll kick the door in. It's His. The question is not do you want to pray a prayer and ask Jesus to come into your heart. The question is this. since I have been sharing the Gospel with you, has God done such a work in your heart that you have seen your sin and you have given up on every work, you have given up on every hope to save yourself And you desire to throw yourself upon Christ and Christ alone, His perfect person and His perfect work on your behalf. That's the question. I can remember preaching years ago in Alaska. And a man, just south of Alaska, and as soon as I got up in the pulpit, the doors of the church opened up and this mountain of a man walked in. And he was the saddest looking man I think I've ever met. He was in his 60s, but he could have whooped 30, 20-year-olds. I mean, he was just a mountain of a man. He came in. He sat on the front row of that tiny little church. And I immediately, just in my heart, I changed. I began to preach the Gospel. I preached the Gospel to him. Afterwards, I came up to him and I said, Sir, what's wrong? What's wrong with you? He pulled out a manila envelope and he handed it to me. And he said, I'm going to die in three weeks. The doctors have told me I'm going to die in three weeks. He said, I have lived out on a ranch all my life. You can only get there by plane, bush pilot, or floating down the river. He goes, I've never been in a church, I've never read a Bible, and I believe there's a God. And one time I heard some guy talk about some fellow named Jesus. I'm going to die and I'm scared. And he said, what must I do? And I said, you heard the message. I told you what to do. Do you understand it? And this is what he said, yes, I understand it. But that's all. I mean, I understand it. And I said, well, call upon the name of... He said, I could, but... He goes, anyone would understand what you've said, but there's no change wrought in me. Better theology in that man than in most preachers. And I said, Sir, I will cancel my plane back home tomorrow. You have three weeks to live. I will stay with you here in this church room right now for three weeks. We will get down on our face. We will read through Scripture. We will read through the promises of salvation. We will cry out to God until you either die and go to hell or God does a work in your heart and saves you. And so we begin in the book, the Old Testament, and we went through for an hour or so, we went through promise after promise of salvation in Jesus Christ. And I said, Sir, do you understand? He goes, I understand, but that's all. I said, faith cometh by hearing. Got down on our knees and we prayed. We got back in the Word again. We went through the promises again and again and again. We were there late into the night. And then we came to John 3.16 for about I don't know how many times we've gone through that verse. I said, Sir, read it. He looked at it. Okay, Pastor. For God so loved... I'm saved! I'm saved! God, I'm saved! I'm saved! I said, How do you know? He said, Haven't you ever read this text before? Now, what would have happened? I'll tell you what would have happened. You got the majority of Southern Baptist evangelists there. They would have had him saved in five minutes, gone to Denny's, and three weeks later, he'd have died and gone to hell. You go to Christian bookstores, most Christian bookstores today, and you go in there and what will you find? Every book in there is written on every certain sort of thing. And then you go in there and try to find one book that describes what it means and how it was that Jesus died and rose again. And how can a person truly know biblically that they're born again? You won't find a book. We've skipped over the only thing that matters. We have turned the gospel of Jesus Christ into nothing more than fodder. A little baby step someone takes and then they jump over and get to the mature stuff. There is no greater thing than the gospel. If you read old preaching, the great majority of that preaching was what? It was on salvation. What it is. How it is applied. How can you know that you're saved? And it's not because one time in your life you prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to come into your heart. It's not because with some evangelist you wrote your name in the back of your Bible and put a date there. You know you're saved because the Spirit bears witness that you are born again. Because your life has changed and is changing and continues in a process of change. And when it stalls in that process of change, that merciful, loving God comes and disciplines you. That's the difference. You see why there's no power in that thing they call the gospel? Because it's not the gospel that they're preaching. It's not. And I'll take any man to task who says it is. It's not. I worked in a country for many, many years of my life where everybody believed they were saved because as infants they were baptized. They can commit every abomination and hellish form of device and thought, and yet they believe they're saved because when they were infants, they were baptized. And Baptists scoff at that. And I tell you, Baptists do the very same thing today. The only difference is it's not infant baptism, it's repeating a prayer. Treating salvation like a flu shot. I repented. Don't worry about me, preacher. I repented. Don't worry about me, preacher. I done did that." My dear friend, salvation is not a flu shot. The evidence that you truly repented long ago when you said you did is because you're still repenting now and even to a greater degree. The evidence that you believed a long time ago is that you're still believing now and ever more believing in greater and greater degrees. Do you want to ask Jesus to come into your heart? No. These are the things that I'll usually deal with a person on. I'll say, well, the first question is, have you repented? Now, I could go into a theological, you know, treatise on what repentance is, but usually it will confuse. I'd rather use illustrations. It helps people to understand what I'm talking about. I look at them and I say, sir, or a congregation, I'll say, now congregation, You may have come here today for every reason in the world other than the right reason. And the whole time I've been preaching, you've been looking at your clock wondering, when is this diatribe going to be over? When are you going to get out of here? And right now, you're only concerned about where you're going to eat or where you're going to go after church. I want to tell you, sir, you cannot be saved if that's your attitude, because you have no repentance. But if you came here this morning with all the wrong reasons, and you sat here wondering when this was going to be over, but partway through this sermon, you knew that someone was dealing with your heart, and you began to see the holiness of God like never before. You began to see your sin as never before. And your attitude towards that sin about which you once boasted has totally changed, and you hate it, and you're ashamed. Sir, that is repentance. You can be saved. You lack one other thing. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll give you another illustration. It has been very helpful to many people. It doesn't always happen this way. Sometimes I have preached and people have come and talked to me for no fewer than a few minutes. I've even had people come down the aisle crying out, what must I do to be saved? Cry out to the Lord and be saved. But that's not the way it happens always. I remember preaching up north one time and a girl came forward and she says, I need to be saved. And I knew something of her case. I knew her father well. And I said, but how many times have you been saved? How many times have you prayed that prayer? She said, six. And I said, it didn't do any good, did it? She said, no. My life is vile and sinful and I'm empty and lost. And I said, well, there's no sense then in us repeating that same mistake, is there? She said, no. She said, what do I do? I said, go home. Just go home. And cry out to God as though hell were opening up its mouth to swallow you down. Cry out to God that He might save you. She came the next night and she looked just tore up, just totally broken. And she said, I cried out to God all night and He did not answer me and I fell asleep. And I woke up this morning and I'm just in such distress, I don't know what to do. She says, what do I do? I said, you have two options. Most of you will think this is cruel. I said, you have two options. Stop crying out to God and go to hell. or continue crying out to God till He saves you. She went home. The next night I was there with her father and we were talking about these things and he was excited. Most fathers would have been mad, but he was excited about what God was doing in his daughter's life and the way that it was handled and everything. And we were up there weeping and the old man was crying out for his daughter and then the music started and he went and sat back down and I took my seat up there in the front and I was sitting there. I was still crying out for this lady and all of a sudden someone plopped down beside me, opened my eyes and looked and it was her. She's glowing. I said, what's happened? She goes, if every person in the world got together and told me right now I was lost, I would still have the greatest of confidence that my God has heard my voice and He has saved me. I said, what happened? She said, I cried out all night and I fell asleep in just total distress and I didn't know what to do. And I woke up the next morning and as soon as my eyes just flew open, She said, God pressed upon my heart, I have saved thee, daughter. And she said, the love of God was shed abroad in my heart. Some of you old, old people will remember preaching like that from a long time ago. But we've turned it into a little business, haven't we? If you're here today, you could be saved. You may be saved in the next five minutes. You may be saved in the next five weeks. But as preachers of the gospel, we must deal with you honestly and not like charlatans. Salvation is a supernatural work of God. I would submit to you that the work of salvation, the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation, the work of regeneration in that is manifested as much power as when Christ was resurrected from the dead and greater power than when the Spirit created the world itself. Because in this work, The Spirit is creating, recreating, taking a wicked, vile, God-hating heart and recreating it in true righteousness and true holiness in the image of Jesus Christ, in the image of God. That is the Gospel. That Christ died for sins. And that's what we're going to talk about tonight. That Christ died for sin. And why is that necessary? Payment has to be made. The justice of God must be satisfied. Your sin must be put away so that you can come to God and He can forgive you. And that was done through the blood of Jesus Christ on that tree. And it is applied not through some little contract, but it is applied through the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit. But at the same time, that it is applied through the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit. At this moment, God commands all men to repent and believe that today is the day of salvation, that you are to flee from the wrath to come, to flee from the law of Moses that condemns you into the city of refuge who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Run to Him. Repentance is simply giving up. to stop fighting against God and to stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your own works, to literally give up and fall upon Christ. That is salvation. So that you say, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling. And when that seed grows in you to the point where you know that your standing before God is 100 absolutely percent based and founded upon the perfect work and merit of Jesus Christ, then you stand before Him with confidence, knowing that all your sins have been atoned for and that you are righteous in Christ. Come to Him. It was very hard for me to preach this today because I was wrestling with probably six different things that I thought would be good for this congregation. But I want to end with one of the things I could not touch on. You will hear often that preachers like myself and preachers like Jeff are mean-spirited, proud, critical. That may be true. I will not judge myself. For whatever mean spirit or critical spirit one of us may have, I would apologize. But truth is truth. First of all, Truth bites, and it stings, and it has a blade on it. It does. Secondly, how would you expect us to preach? If your child was about to walk into the railway of an oncoming train, would you expect us to be civilized? Would you expect us to whisper a kind word? Or would you expect us to scream like a madman? And if for the name of being civilized, we did not raise our voice so that someone would not think improperly of us, would you not hate us that we cared more about ourselves and our own reputation than we did the welfare of your child? Is it well with your soul, you, church member of 15 years? Is it well with your soul, teenager? It is so easy to be Southern Baptist and never saved because it's created its own culture and its own little world. where you can be born, go to nursery, go to Sunday school, vacation Bible school, go to youth group, find a mate, everything in the context of that culture and yet never know God. Do you know Him? Do you know Him? Every chance that I get to preach, it will be the same as a dying man preaching to dying men, preaching as though I shall never preach again. And I did bring heart cry here because it was God's will, but the number one thing on my mind was not heart cry or bringing it to Muscle Shoals. is that my wife and my two little boys would sit under preaching. That's why I came here. That's why I came here. So that when I'm off gone fighting battles, there'll be a man standing before them preaching something that just could make them mad, but at the same time save their soul. Is this a reality in your life? Is this a reality in your life? Let's pray. Father, I come before You in the name of Your Son, and is always the case, O God, how can one speak of the things of which we have spoken this morning? Lord, please work, Lord, in people's hearts, that if there's someone here today who doesn't know you, that this day may at least be the beginning of the work of salvation on this side of heaven. Begin to work in their hearts, Lord. Begin to work in their hearts. I ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.