You may want to first open your Bibles to James chapter 3. We're going to be taking note of several scriptures this morning. The theme of the message, or the title of the message, is The Importance and Seriousness of Preaching the Gospel. These thoughts that I'll give you this morning were prompted by Sister Bernice's departure. Shortly after, Garen called me yesterday to let me know that Bernice was gone, and I was in my study, and I just sat down in the chair I've got in there. I've got an easy chair in my study. more comfortable than me to sit and read or something like that rather than an office chair. I just sat there and it kind of hit me awfully strong, awfully powerfully, that preaching is no light matter. What we do here week by week as we meet to worship the Lord and as I stand up here and open up this book, this is no game. This is no religious exercise. This is serious business. My thought was, shortly after we hung up the phone, and this sobered me so much, that Bernice left this world to face God, believing what I preach. As I said, that's a very sobering thought to me. I stand here week by week and I claim to preach the gospel of God. I feel a great burden for the sake of those who listen to me. I don't want to lead you astray. One old preacher, and I can't remember his name, I think it maybe was Richard Baxter, but I'm not sure. But he made this statement about preaching. He says, I preach as one who may never preach again, as a dying man to dying men. Brother Mahan once told of a preacher who went to visit one of his parishioners who was dying. And the preacher said, is everything well with your soul? And the man looked at him and said, it's well with my soul if what you told me is true. How serious preaching is. Many of you here believe what I say. That is what I preach. You believe this. And someday you'll go and meet God believing that. And when that thought hit my mind, Man, I better be very careful what I say. I better be very sure what I preach. How lightly some take preaching, both the act of preaching and the act of hearing it. They'll preach anything and they'll listen to anyone. It's written in the scriptures, God is determined by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Preaching is very important. I want to preach what's true because the people who listen to me and to believe what I say. And it's good to have a religion that one can live by. And if you look at the advertising for most churches, most of them are setting forth a message on how to live from day to day. Messages on the family, messages even on matters of politics, and messages on how to be a success in this world. Well, I hope that we know how to live well. I'd like to do a good job of living. I'd like to have what the world would call a successful life. I've got no problem with that. But when it comes to the matter of religion, I'm less interested in having a religion I can live by than one I can die by. Because how my life will go, I don't know. Whether I'll live successfully or not, I don't know. But this I'm certain of, I will die. And so will you. We've got old people in this congregation this morning. We've got babies. And while there may be a difference in when they die, there is no difference over the fact. that every one of us will die. I want a gospel that I can die with. I want a gospel I can hold on to when I breathe my last. In this business of preaching, I feel a burden about it for myself. I shall answer for what I have preached. Listen to what James says in here, in chapter 3, verse 1. Not many of you should presume to be teachers, preachers, pastors. Man shouldn't just flippantly say, well, I can tell the truth. I can be a preacher. I can do that as good as anybody else. Don't many of you be that? He said, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. Everybody in the world thinks they can be a preacher. A man told a story, went to a dentist one time. And of course, you know how dentists are, they get your mouth pried open and stick it full of tools and then start talking to you. And this was back in the 70s when that musical Jesus Christ Superstar was real famous. And this dentist starts saying, he said, you know, I like that Jesus Christ superstar. I think it really presents good. And Henry pushed his hands away, got the tools out of his mouth and said, hold on a minute. He said, when I came in here, did I tell you how to do dental work? Can everybody be a dentist? He said, I'll tell you that that Jesus Christ superstar is blasphemous. And I know because I've been called to preach. Not everybody has. And those who are, just like we hold doctors more responsible because they set themselves forth as doctors, we hold them responsible for what they tell us to do. Likewise, preachers are held accountable for what they tell people. They are held accountable if they hold back that which they think will offend people. The Lord said to Ezekiel, He said, The enemy comes, and I set a watchman, and he doesn't blow the trumpet? And the people don't run? He said, well, the people will die for their own sin. He said, but I'll hold that watchman accountable that he didn't tell them of the danger that lies ahead. And there are some who preach a false gospel, who preach falsely with smooth words. They won't tell me how God sees them. And they'll set before them ways of salvation that puff up the flesh. And they get big fat paychecks. And they get people to call them Dr. This and Reverend That. And folks will bow and scrape to them. And think they're the most wonderful thing since sliced bread. But someday they'll meet God. And they'll give an account for what they told people. Paul said this, necessity is laid on me. Woe unto me if I don't preach the gospel. And also, I don't want to misrepresent God. Man that preaches. Look over here at 1 Corinthians chapter 15. You know, a man that preaches, he's not engaged in a theological debate with other preachers. We who preach, or not to take the attitude that we're in some kind of contest with other preachers and other religions to see who can argue their point the best, to see who can somehow have the biggest church, who can attract the most people, who can demonstrate the most talents. Here's what preachers are. They are representatives of God in this world. They are spokesmen. Paul says, I'm an ambassador. Now, what's an ambassador supposed to do? He's not supposed to go to the foreign country and say whatever he thinks that foreign country wants to hear. He's not supposed to go to that foreign country and say what he thinks that would be good. He's to represent the king that sent him. And Paul says here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 15, he says, more than that, When he's talking about it, he says, if we're preaching that Jesus Christ raised from the dead and He really didn't, he says, we are then found to be false witnesses about God. For we have testified about God that He did raise Christ from the dead. He said, well, it would be a wonderful thing to tell folks that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Paul said, it wouldn't be a wonderful thing if it didn't really happen. Because if we go around saying God raised Christ from the dead when he really didn't, we've been lying on God. And the preacher, when he stands up to preach, he has this burden laid upon him that he is an ambassador of God. He's been sent not to make a message, simply to deliver one. I don't want to misrepresent the God that sent me. If indeed I've been sent of God, And friends, if preaching is no light matter, then neither is listening. You should listen to gospel preaching with just as much seriousness as the preacher preaches it. We must never allow the world, the flesh, or Satan to draw us away from hearing the word preached. Do you ever wonder why there is such strong temptation in you to dismiss yourself from regular attendance on the priest work? I mean, let's face it, you know, we can think of plenty of things to do. We've got places to go, people to see, things to get accomplished. And it's easy for these things to draw us away. Why do you think that there is such a tendency, even in believers, to dismiss themselves from the preaching of the gospel? Very simply this, the devil knows full well that the word of God is that which gives life to God's elect and that which sustains them. The devil knows how important preaching is. Therefore, he'll do everything he can to keep you from it. Do you believe that? The most important thing you'll ever do is listen to the gospel. The most important thing on your calendar every week should be listening to God's gospel preached by whatever means is available to you. As pertains to our bodies, do we not count it very important that we eat? So much so, we work a lot through the week to make enough money to go to the grocery store and buy food, and we're careful to prepare it. And we schedule our day around, generally speaking, three meals and maybe a couple of snacks thrown in. Why? Because it's important to eat. And my friends, it's as important for your soul to feed upon the bread of life as it is for your body. Yet more important, our Lord was willing to go without food for 40 days to seek the face of His God. There's never been a man or a woman who gave light attention to the preached Word, who did not suffer for that light attention. When we listen to someone preach, we should give our whole selves to it. I say this, you should prepare to come here to listen just like I prepare to come here to preach. I realize that you wouldn't spend as much time at it, But you ought to prepare your hearts. You ought to come here intent on hearing, having set your hearts upon that task, to hear the Word of God. Give our whole selves to it. We should listen to gospel preaching with a critical ear to make sure that what we're hearing is the truth. It amazes me what people sit and listen to. And they know it's not true. Folks will go week after week to the same church and they won't leave that church simply because it's the church they've always gone to. They were raised in it. Their mom and dad were there and grandma and grandpa and all that. And they're not going to leave even though they know full well that there's nothing of any value being preached there. Don't come. hear week after week, and listen to me preach, unless you think it's the truth. Listen critically. It says of the Bereans in Acts chapter 17, Paul went there and preached. And they listened. And it says, and they received the word with joy. And they daily searched the scriptures. to see if the things that Paul told them was really true. Do you realize I, you know that I just, I won't accept the title. And, because I'm not deserving of any titles. But there's another reason. I don't want anybody ever to think I'm an authority. I'm not. This is our authority. And you who listen to me week by week, I'll tell you, I may be Pastor Joe to you, and I may be a friend, and I may have been faithful up to this point, but don't you believe a word I say that cannot be backed up by this book. You search the scriptures. God may send you preachers as a gift to you to tell you the truth, but he also holds you responsible to listen with a critical ear. Check it out. Is this really true? And if it's not, don't believe it. And we furthermore should act on what we hear, to listen to a message at church and smile and nod and say our amens, to shake the preacher's hand on the way out and tell him how good it was and then not act on what we hear. Terrible. It would be better for a man to never hear the word of God at all than to hear it and not act on it. Really, it would. You're held responsible for what you hear. James tells us, he says, don't be just hearers of the word, be doers of it. I went to the mirror this morning. In fact, just before I came here, I ran downstairs and I looked at myself in the mirror. I figure you all got to look at me for about an hour. I want to give you the best face I can, you know, make it as easy as possible. And I went to check, because I didn't get any hairspray put on my hair, so I ran down there to check my hair. And I looked at it, and it wasn't that bad. I don't know what it's like now, because like I said, there's nothing to hold it in place. But it wasn't that bad. But there's a little outside. I did this with my feet. I acted on what I saw. It wouldn't make any sense for a man to look in a mirror and then not do anything about what he sees. And there's no reason for us to look into the Scriptures and not do anything about what we see there. Do you think that God can speak and us ignore it and nothing happen? Preaching and listening to the gospel are very important. Well, what is the gospel? Well, that's not as easy a question as it may seem. You who believe the gospel, you may at first think, well, that's simple. Well, I ask you, what's the gospel? How would you tell it? You see, we can mean several things by that word gospel. We can mean the historical truth of the life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said, I preach to you the gospel that I remind you of the gospel I once preached to you, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and how that he was buried and rose again according to the scriptures. That's the gospel. But the gospel can also be described as that whole doctrinal system of grace. That whole doctrinal system of gospel truth. The gospel can even be expanded to include all the effects of God's saving grace. For you see, the gospel is simply God's good news. That's what the word means. And everything that pertains to that good news, that message of how it is that God takes sinners like you and me and makes them acceptable in His sight and blesses them forever, that's the gospel. And everything that involves the gospel of God, which the book of Hebrews calls the Word of God. It's a living thing. It's an active thing. It pierces. It cuts. It changes. It grows in a man. It transforms him. It won't transform him all at once. You plant a seed in the ground, it takes a while. First that seed is going to Put out a shoot and roots and start growing to make a plant. Some leaves will come out. And eventually there will be some fruit. Maybe more fruit. Some people think that as soon as God regenerates a man, that man is totally turned around and changed. You know, God does that to some people, but not most. Most of them, they struggle with their sins all their lives, the same old sins. And yet we can say this of a certainty. that the gospel will have an effect on a man's thoughts and on his affections, on his actions, on the way he perceives things. The gospel changes a person. And a gospel that does not change a man is a gospel that has never been put in the heart. But what I want to be certain of, and this is getting back now to the main subject, and if you'll turn to Job 25, as I said, Those that listen to me, when they die, they go to meet God believing what I say. And that frightened me enough that I wanted to go back and look and make sure I'm telling the truth. Make sure that I told Bernice right. Make sure I'm telling you right. And here's the ultimate question that I want to make sure I get right for me and for you. Here in Job 25 verse 4, how then can a man be righteous before God? Everything, every issue of the gospel is summed up and centered on that one question. That's it. I'm not saying that there are not more questions in the gospel, that there are not other issues which the gospel addresses, but this is the foundational one, because you see, it's sin that caused all of our problems. All the other issues that the gospel addresses were caused by sin, and fixing that problem begins with fixing the problem of sin. How can a man be righteous in the sight of God? This is the all-important question, because you see, all of God's blessings are for the righteous. Do you realize that? Life is for the righteous. Acceptance is for the righteous. Heaven is for the righteous. You say, well, I thought God saved sinners. Yes, He does. And yet the Scriptures tell us this, saying to the righteous, it shall be well with them. Well, then that brings us to this question. How can man be righteous in the sight of God? Do you realize that every religion in this world Trying to find an answer to that question. Everything that people do in religion is an attempt to appear righteous in the sight of God. All the ceremonies, all the doctrines, all the religious duties, all the moral actions that men do is an attempt to appear righteous in the sight of God. Because even though men are ignorant of the things of God, God has by common grace, what is called common grace, put within the heart of everyone that comes in this world an understanding that God is righteous, and he demands righteousness of his creatures. Everyone understands this, even though they try to deny it, even though they try to silence The word of conscience in their heart, everyone knows this, what God said to Moses in Exodus 34, I will by no means clear, I will not justify the guilty. How then can we be righteous inside of God? If everything depends on that, how can I be righteous before God? One thing's for sure, one of these days I'm going to be before God. Righteous or not, I'm going to be before Him. Righteous or not, I'm going to stand in His presence, and His eye is going to behold me. In that day, how am I going to be righteous? Well, that's a big question. And we better look at the individual terms of that question, because you know you can't come up with a good answer until you've understood what the question is. For you see, most of religion, even most of the religion that goes under the name of Christian, has changed this question by changing the definition of the terms in it. You say, how's that? Well, they have set forth a God different from what he really is like. They've brought God down. And they have perceived man to be something more than he really is. They've made God less than he is. Made man more than he is. And then answer the question, how can the little God, or excuse me, how can the big great man be righteous in the sight of the little puny God? And they based their religion on it. They set forth men that aren't all that sinful, and they set forth a God that's not all that righteous. And there really isn't that big a gap to span. And therefore, their little gospels are well suited to their little gods. They can build them a bridge of ceremonies. They can build them a little bridge of moral duties. They can build them a bridge of Sabbath keeping and tithing and all this. And think they're going to get a cross. And indeed, With their little God and their great men, those Gospels are good enough. But you know something? That's not the God of the Bible, and that's not the God that you and I will face. And that's not man as he's described. Look what Bildad says here. These are the words of Bildad as he's speaking to Job. Look how he describes God. Dominion. This is verse 2 of Job 25. Dominion and all belong to God. He establishes order in the heights of heaven. How does Bildad describe God? He describes Him as one who is so high and lifted up. He rules everything. He describes him in terms of a great king who has an innumerable army. Of course, that innumerable army is just himself. God by himself is an innumerable host. But dominion belongs to him. You know, Job in chapter nine asks the same question, and he talks about God's dominion and sovereignty and how he's the one that makes the sun come up and he's the one that covers the sun. He's the one that puts the stars in their place and he can hide you, make it so the stars don't shine if he wants to. He can tell the sea to overflow the earth and he can tell it to go back. Do you realize that everything that happens, everything that happens, happens because God willed it and ordained it and brought it to pass. He does as He wills in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and nobody can stay His hand nor say unto Him, what do you think you are doing? How can you be righteous in the sight of a God like that? He gives life when He wants to give it. You were born on the day that God ordained you to be born. Your mother went in to labor and brought you forth at the time that God decided. And He's already got it marked in His calendar, the day that you'll leave. When we bury someone, we put in their birth date and their death date. But long before we ever chiseled it in stone, God did. And man thinks he's going to have his way with God. It can't be done, friends. You can't stand up against God. You'd do better spitting into the wind. Dominion and all belong to Him. Have you ever been before God? Have you ever been confronted by a God who put your soul in the dust? Before whom you cowered? before whom you trembled? Have you ever met a God who shut your mouth? It says what things the law says. It says to them that are of the law that every mouth may be shut and the whole world become guilty before God. I'll tell you one way you can tell that a person has met the God of the Scriptures, he got real quiet. He quits talking about all the good things he's done. He quits making excuses for his sins. He quits making reasons not to obey God. He gets real quiet. Because he stands in awe of the God who made the heavens and the earth. and orders all things by the power of His Word. He commanded, it stood firm. Or it came forth, He spoke, and it came forth, He commanded, it stood firm. Have you ever met that God? Or have you only met the warm, fuzzy God that popular religion wants you to believe? Who is this God before whom we must appear righteous? He's the righteous God Himself. Look at verse 3. The last line says, Upon whom does His light not arise? Skip down to verse 5. If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in His eyes. When it says, Upon whom does His light not arise? The sense is this. Who is it He doesn't see? You remember as a kid, you thought you could get in the dark and hide from your mom and dad. Of course, your mom and dad have spent some time being a kid, and they knew exactly how kids act. There's nothing more dangerous than a quiet child, you know? As long as they're making noise, they're probably okay. My mother used to tell me, I knew we needed the mischief because everything got quiet. And we think we can get quiet in the presence of God. We think we can hide back in the little nooks and crannies. Especially do we hide in religion. We hide in our works, and we hide in our ceremonial performances, and we hide in our dutiful actions. And we get back in our little nooks and crannies and we think we can hide in the shadows and God's light won't come on us. On whom does His light not rise? You cannot escape God. You're not going to find a blessed eternity by avoiding His gaze. He will see you. And He will see you not as you keep trying to convince everybody you are. He will see you as you really are. That's a sobering thought. God's not going to see you like you pretended to be. He's going to see you like you really are. He says the moon's not bright and the stars are not pure in His eyes. I think it was last Sunday night. Reverend Dean pointed out to us the moon. It was just coming up over there. It was a big full moon, just so bright. It looked white. And that's even with whatever pollution we've managed to put in the air. Imagine in Job's day when the air was clear, and they'd see that sun, excuse me, the moon in the sky, and it looked so bright and pure. And those stars out there, crystal clear. Here's what Bildad is telling us. Those things that we perceive as so white and so pure are not even clean in God's sight. Isaiah put it this way. He said, our righteousnesses, all those beautiful, bright righteousnesses we put on, those things about us we think are so good, they have become filthy rags, fit only to be cast out. A just God. He says, I'll by no means clear the guilty. So it's a gospel of a God as He's revealed in the Scriptures, and it's the gospel of man as He's revealed in Scriptures. Hold on to your pew. Here's man. Here's you. Let's forget man. Let's quit being doctrinal. Let's be personal. Here's you. Here's me. Verse 6, How much less man who is but a maggot. Can you think of anything more disgusting than a maggot? It was my job as a child to take the trash out. I didn't have many chores, but I was one of them. And once in a while, during the summer months, you know, you'd put some garbage out, maybe early in the week, and you'd sit there in that hot sun all week long, and flies would get to it. And later on in the week, you'd be taking out another bag of garbage, and I'd lift up that lid. and is just crawling with those filthy, stinking maggots. The smell of it was awful. The sight of it was awful. Make you gag. Immediately put the lid back down and hope there's another garbage can. I didn't like cleaning very much when I was a kid, but when I found a maggot-infested garbage can, I wanted to dump it out and wash it. It's how disgusting those things are. Nobody likes maggots, friends. That is the only creature that the scriptures could come up with to define what we are in the sight of God. That's not flattering, I know, but it's true. I believe, as Winston Churchill said, well, all men are worms, but I do perceive myself to be a glowworm. I'm a little better than all the other worms, no sir. Maggots feeding on death. We're born that way, having the nature of a sinner, corrupt through and through. Now I ask you, how could any of those maggots in the garbage can ever be acceptable in my sight? And how can I, a spiritual maggot, ever be righteous in the sight of God? You know, neither Job in chapter 9 nor Bildad in chapter 25 gives us a clear answer. But Bildad does hint at it. The way he asks the question begins to show us the answer. Look here in verse 4. Here's the question. How then can a man be righteous before God? And he repeats the question. And notice how he asks this question. How can one born of a woman be pure? I turn over here to Galatians chapter 4. Eve gave birth to the first man, first child that is, into this world. And that one was a murderer. And every child born of women since then has been impure, except one. Is it not interesting that Job did not say, how can the son of a man be pure? Back then, everybody counted their ancestry by their father. They didn't care about the mothers. That's just the way things were. Who your mother was didn't make any difference. Why would Job or Bildad fly over talking about somebody being born of a woman but this? Galatians 4 verse 4, But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son born of a woman. Here's one whose biological ancestry cannot be traced to a man, only to a woman. And this but one born of a woman is pure. He was pure. He came into this world without sin. You and I came already guilty of the sin of Adam. You and I came into this world already of the nature of a spiritual maggot. You and I came to this world sinners, impure. This one born of a woman came in without sin. Though he was born under the law, the law had not one word to say against him. Not when he came into the world, not through the whole time he lived in this world. The law had not a thing to say against him. In fact, God who gave the law looked down from heaven and said, This is my son in whom I am well pleased. He never said that about anybody else. Because there were no other born of a woman who was pure, but this one was. But now behold this, over here in Psalm 22. These words were written about a thousand years before our Lord was crucified, and yet they most obviously describe His crucifixion. And here's this one born of a woman who was pure. And yet he says this, verse 6, but I am a worm and not a man. He who knew no sin. This is 2 Corinthians 5.21. He who knew no sin. He was born of a woman, made under the law to redeem those that are under the law. But he knew no sin. He did no sin. He had no sin. In him is no sin. And yet he was made to be a sin offering. The sin of all God's people from all the ages were laid on Him. The sin of all God's sheep was put on Him. The Bible said we're worms, we're maggots. And yet He who was no maggot became one, was made one. And what does 2 Corinthians 5.21 go on to say? He who know no sin was made to be sin, a sin offering, in order that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. How can a man be righteous with God? Not by anything you can do. I guarantee you, God being who He is and us being who we are, I'm a Baptist preacher. I could dunk you from now to eternity and it wouldn't wash away your sin. I could take wine and bread and feed it until you were fat and drunk and it wouldn't put away your sin. You could walk on your knees on glass from here to one of the east or west coast of this country. You could take pilgrimages You could say your prayers. You could read your Bible through every year. You could memorize it. It won't put away your sins in the sight of that God. But this one, this pure man, born of a woman, he could take to himself the sins of all God's chosen people and absorb them within himself and say, I'm not a man anymore. I'm a worm. So did us worms. by His grace could say, I am the righteousness of God in Him. I don't have any righteousness of my own. Look over here, Philippians chapter 3. We'll close with this. How does that righteousness come to me? Christ was made to be sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. But how does that righteousness get from Him to me? Well, so far as all the legal matters are concerned, God did that. He put my sin on Christ and put Christ's righteousness on me. But what God does within the councils of His own courthouse, He accomplishes in my own experience, in the believer's experience. And he says this, Paul says this in Philippians chapter 3, But whatever was to my prophet I now consider lost, For the sake of Christ, what is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him," now notice what he says, "...not having a righteousness of my own, not one that I made, not one that I accomplished, not some garment of righteousness I knit together, Not having a righteousness of my own which comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. How can a man be righteous before God? The first thing is to do like Paul and count all your righteousness rubbish. He says, I count everything rubbish. What was everything he's talking about? all his righteousness. Boy, he'd been doing a good job. He had such a good righteousness, he says, as touching that righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless. And he said, but I throw that all away. I count it worthless. I don't want that righteousness of my own anymore. I want this righteousness, the one that comes from God and is received by faith. It is the righteousness of Christ given to sinners. I ask you, today, everybody here, is trying to be righteous in the sight of God. Everybody is. You've got some way, you think that if I died now, there's some argument I could bring forth, there's some way I could make myself appear righteous in the sight of God. What is your argument? What is your righteousness? Is it what you've done? Is it your church? Is it your preacher or your priest or your pastor, whatever you call him? Is it your charitable endeavors? Is it your religious duties? If it is, I'll tell you this, you are still a maggot. But if your righteousness is none other than Jesus Christ, who was made to be sin for you, then notwithstanding all your sins, you have been made the righteousness of God in Christ. And Job's question is answered. Now I've done the best I know how to tell you the truth. This is the gospel I'm going to die with. I'm not planning any changes. I feel confident to leave this world believing this gospel. So I've told it to you. What are you going to do with it? Are you just going to go away from here and forget about it? Or are you going to seek the Lord? Are you going to try to put the conviction of your heart out of your mind? The scriptures say this. Today, if you hear His voice, don't harden your hearts. God grant that none of us will harden our hearts. God grant first that He speak. Because hearing me speak is not the same thing as hearing God speak. God grant that He speak. And then God grant that you not harden your heart. but you'll receive the righteousness of God in Christ by faith.