Gracious Heavenly Father, in the name that is above every name, the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we bow reverently and humbly before Thee. Thou art the only true and living God. And we are members of a depraved and fallen race, but in thine infinite mercy and grace thou didst set thine everlasting love upon us, and thou didst make choice of us way back in the eternity of the past, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Oh, the wonder of it! Oh, the joy of it! Oh, the miracle of it! Oh, our God, the tremendous warmth We have in our souls tonight the warmth of the love of God that passeth knowledge and all understanding. And we thank Thee that in time Thy Spirit sought us out and we came under that conviction brought to the heart by the Holy Spirit of God. And thou didst breathe life into our dead souls. And thou didst call us from the sepulchre of our depravity onto redemption ground. And one day we were born again by the Spirit of God. Remember that day with gratitude. and joy. Love lifted me when no one but Christ could help. Love lifted me. We thank Thee for the journey and the path that Thou hast brought us. We thank Thee for Thy protecting care, for Thy wonderful forgiveness and pardon, in the days when we sinned and went astray. And we thank Thee that amazing grace has kept us to this hour, and we know it will never let us go. And in the great eternity that is to come, when time will be no more, and heaven and earth will pass away, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which dwelleth righteousness. In those unending eons of the future, we thank thee that we'll still be rejoicing in the blood of the Lamb and in the word of God. Lord, take our thanks for saving Greece and keeping power. We pray that thou wilt be pleased to bless us as we meet here together. We thank thee for the day when in cross scar we raised the banner for Christ's truth, for Christ's wonderful truth. And, O God, we were despised and hated and even spat upon. But we bless Thee that we had a joy in our heart, a joy that the world knew nothing about, a joy that they couldn't take away. We thank Thee for our history. It hasn't been anything of us, but it has been all of the grace of God. We thank Thee for so many people in this house who have been saved from hell and death and judgment by the preaching of the free Presbyterian evangelists and ministers and the churches. Lord, I give thee thanks. I look back and I say, Lord, thank you for giving me some part in this wonderful ministry. And, O God, I pray that the best will be yet to be. I pray that you'll come down this week and baptize us with the Holy Ghost and fire. I pray that we'll be lifted higher from the carnal mind. You'll set us free, that you'll fill us with liberty today. And God's people will go marching forward. And those of us who will be spared two years' time to meet in another continent, we'll look back and say, yes, the Lord has answered prayer. The Lord has been our guide and our stay. The Lord has done great things for us whereof we are glad. Bless thy servant. We thank thee for the day that he came to the Free Presbyterian Church and how God spoke to his heart. We thank thee for the day when you called him into the ministry. We thank thee for the day when he went to Canada to start that work in Toronto. We thank thee for the way God has prospered that work and blessed it. And we thank thee today he can look back and say all that God promised He has done for me and He has done it after His amazing man. What we could think of, what we couldn't even expect, God has done it for us. So Lord be with us and bless us and make us a blessing for Jesus' sake. and everybody said, Amen. I'd like to thank Dr. Paisley for the kind words of welcome. It is indeed a joy to be back in my own church. I spent many years in the Ravenhill and then the Martyrs' Church and I do thank the Lord for this opportunity of coming back again and what a night this is and what a week this is going to be. But tonight is a watershed in the 55 year history of the Free Presbyterian Church and that is a particular blessing to me because in entering the ministry in 1969 I came back from North America on the clear command of the Lord from Genesis 32 and 9 which said, Return unto thy land and the land of thy kindred and I will deal well with thee. The Lord called seven years later and I left the shores of Ulster again and just 30 years ago this very month to start the work in Toronto, the first free presbyterian church outside of Ireland. It is indeed thrilling that in the all-wise providence of God that we are assembled from the old and new worlds and we're here tonight truly to rejoice in what the Lord has done. And we can thank the Lord too that the very next verse in Genesis 32 that the Lord spoke to me through is these words here, We are not worthy of the least of thy mercies, and of all thy truth which thou hast shown unto thy servants. But we can also echo the words of Jacob in that same scripture where he said when he was speaking about crossing over Jordan, he said, I am become two bands. And at this Congress, for the very first time, we meet as two bands, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and the Free Presbyterian Church of North America. We are now the two bands, the two bands but one loving family, the two bands but blessed and prospered together of the Lord, the two bands but united in the Lord Jesus Christ and his atoning blood, the two bands but joined in our belief in the veracity and inspiration of the word of God. The two bands but combined in the great contention for the faith and the object of preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to a dying world. The two bands but amalgamated in our stand outside the camp of modern church apostasy. The two bands but co-operating fully in evangelical and missionary outreach. The two bands but united in our determination to uphold the biblical Protestantism, the true bands but allied in our love of Reformation doctrine and the great fundamentals of the Christian faith, the true bands but united in the great desire to see God send us revival in our day. Now it was said in a well-known story of a man in Scotland who decided he was going to hear the three best preachers in Scotland in that day. Of the first he went and was greatly blessed and he said afterwards, what a wonderful preacher. Then he went to the second church and the second minister and again was blessed and he said, what a wonderful sermon. But the third one was, when he went to hear the godly Samuel Rutherford, After listening to God's servant preach the word of God, he came out and said, What a wonderful Christ! Friends, as we gather here, we have gathered this week not so much to speak about the Free Presbyterian Church, although the Lord has done great things for us. We have not assembled so much to hear great preachers and sermons, but to focus on Christ. Our conference theme is the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ. And if we leave this Congress today and this week saying, what a wonderful Christ, then this Congress will not be in vain. We are two bands. The two bands, but the supreme uniting force is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And tonight I want us just to go back in our minds, slipping back past and seventy-six when we started in North America. Slipping past 1951 when the Free Church was started in Crossgar. Slipping back down to the days of the revivals of God's servant here in this land, Nicholson. Slipping past to the days of Spurgeon and Whitfield and Wesley's. Going back further, down through the times of the great men of God, the Reformers, Whitfield and Knoxon, Thingley and Luther, and going back down through the dark ages, back down to 2,000 years to a hill just outside the wall of Jerusalem. And tonight we need to see the Lord Jesus Christ and I pray that God will open our eyes to behold Him whom our soul loveth. I want just to read you one verse from Galatians 6 and 14. God It forbids that I should glory to save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. And I want to focus, in the middle words, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's just bow for a word of prayer. Our Father in heaven, we come before Thee tonight on this special evening. And Lord, if we could take this whole night to bring praise unto thy name for what thou hast done within the founts of the Free Presbyterian Church in its past fifty-five years. O God, we give thee all the praise and all the glory. But Lord, when we come to consider what is the foundation, the centre of all this, we realise it goes right back to that most important event of the history of man's redemption when Jesus Christ, just for the unjust, died in our room instead that we might be reconciled unto God. And so tonight we pray that at the very commencement of this week of meetings that thou would give to every preacher and every speaker the fullness of the Holy Ghost that we may exalt not man, but exalt him whom our soul loveth. And Father, we pray that we will leave this week saying, What a wonderful Christ! Answer prayer, for we ask it in Jesus' name and for His glory. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just by way of introduction, a few words about the theology of the cross, because the word cross in the Bible has several meanings. Sometimes it refers to the afflictions of believers, where Jesus himself said that he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me. But that's not the meaning that Paul is giving to us in the book of Galatians. Sometimes the word cross is used of the actual wood of the cross, as for example in Philippians 2 and 8, Jesus who was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And so we're reminded that one time way back in the midst of antiquity a seed was sown, A little sprout came up through the ground and became a sapling and became a tree and grew and grew until full size and then one day was cut down and was shaped into the form of a cross. What a fitting emblem of the Lord Jesus Christ, a dead tree before a dying Saviour. And so sometimes referring to the wood of the cross as Willie Mullen used to say, but he made the tree for that cross of wood and he made the hill upon which it stood. But we're not talking about believers' afflictions and Paul's not talking about the wood of the cross, he's talking about the doctrine of the cross. the grand doctrine of the atonement and the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ, hated by this world, but loved by the believer in the Lord Jesus. His deity is under constant attack. even recently bringing forth this so-called mysterious Gospel of Judas in the National Geographic magazine, using again anything to denigrate biblical Christianity and to pull the Lord down out of heaven. But thank God for the great doctrine of atonement and the substitution of the death of the Lord Jesus. That is what Paul is talking about when he is talking here about the cross of our Lord Jesus. And that was the essence of the preaching of Paul because you find that he loved to preach the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In our day we need to follow the example of Paul and to make sure that our church always exalts the person on the name of our blessed Lord. It was also the essence of the writings of Paul. You will find the name of Jesus some 500 times in the epistles that Paul has given to us and you prick them anywhere and you will find the blood of the cross is there for our view and for our salvation. The doctrine of the cross was the essence of Paul's life because over in Galatians 2 and 20 he says, I am crucified with Christ Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me in the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. J. C. Ryle pointed out that we are to beware of religion that does not make much of the cross. And again he said, too, about ornate churches with none of the real cross. My wife and I have just finished visiting Switzerland, greatly blessed by the influence of Spengler there. In Germany we saw evidences of the mighty work of Martin Luther and yet you look at these great churches today and many of them are just monuments of stone and their life is gone. But in our church we need to make sure that we exalt the name and the person of our blessed Lord who is not a dead a Saviour, but a living Redeemer. And thank God today we come in this Congress to exalt Him. Just a word or two about the history of the cross, because crucifixion as a means of execution has a lengthy history. It wasn't a Roman invention, but was used by the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, and the Persians. And until 1968, the evidence of crucifixion was purely literary. But then in 1968 they found an ossuary, a bone box, and in that bone box were two ankle bones joined together by a huge iron nail. The first evidence that crucifixion, the first hard evidence that crucifixion was performed. It was designed by wicked and cruel men as one of the most barbarous forms of punishment known to man because It was designed to give the slowest and the most agonizing death that man could understand, to leave maximum time for the criminal to contemplate his crimes before death. We are told in the book of Deuteronomy that there is a curse attached to those who are hung on a tree that Deuteronomy chapter 21 And it says in verse 22, If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, for thou shalt not any wise bury him that day, for he that is hanged is accursed of God. I am just talking now about the substance of crucifixion. When you realise who was crucified, and that he was made a curse, then we begin to realise how greatly the Lord has loved us and we should reciprocate our love to him tonight. The procedure of crucifixion, it was reserved for slaves, it was reserved for traitors and for the dregs of society. And again, think of the one who was crucified as we'll look at in just a moment. But in the procedure of crucifixion, in the days that the Lord was crucified, there had to be, first of all, the consent of the Roman governor. That's why a pilot was involved. Then the victim, he was stripped and he was scourged. And it is the most brutal of practices and painful of punishments. And they had to be careful not to kill him because they wanted to stretch out the death as long as possible and to maximise it. and then they would have the procession led by a soldier who carried a little thing called the titulus, and on that titulus was the name of the victim and the crimes of which he was accused. The criminal he carried on his shoulders the horizontal beam of the cross, and then at the face of execution the vertical beam was put down into the ground and the person had to be crucified was nailed to the horizontal beam and then lifted up between heaven and earth. And then they nailed the feet to the cross, probably with one nail, perhaps two, through the ankles to the cross. And sometimes they used a thing called the sigili, which was a little angled support for the feet, where the victim could actually delay the pain a little bit and ease the pain a little bit by pressing down on the legs. But all it did was extend the time of suffering and extend the agony of crucifixion. But then they would come along, as we read in the Bible about the Lord Jesus, they would come along to break the legs so if the person was trying to keep alive by pushing up on that little thing, then they would come along and break the legs so they couldn't do that. And then finally they came with the spears and thrust it into the side as a sort of post-mortem proof of death. My friends, I have just given you tonight the facts of what crucifixion is about. But now we come to the hard bit. We've spoken a little bit about the historical, theological and procedural facts. But now the cost and the awful agony of the Lord Jesus Christ on that cross. I've been a minister for a number of years since 1969 and in my ministry I've discovered there are three subjects that are well now impossible for any man to get anywhere near preaching in the manner that they ought to be preached in. Number one is the love of God. Would you think that the greatness and the wonder of our God, and you look at the wonder of the creation that He has made, not just in this world that we live on, but the whole of the universe, and you realise how infinite God is and that beside Him we are just mere specks of dust in the ocean of the universe. So very, very small, so very, very tiny, and yet God looks down and He loves. the world of sinners lost and ruined by the fall. What man, whatever likelihood he has, can possibly describe the depth of the love of God to our souls? And then the second subject that is well now possible is the subject of the pains of hell for the Christ-rejecting sinner. And you look at the Bible, you read the story, and you read the instructions there regarding the punishment of the Christ rejecter, and you try to get words to warn them to flee from wrath to come. But oh, our words are so, so small, so insignificant. so unable to paint the awful flames and the awful suffering of the soul that departs and goes down into the caverns of the damned to die forever and forever and forever without God and without hope and without Christ in this world or the world to come. And the third subject, my friend, that is, well, not impossible for any man to deal with, and Dr. Paisley has alluded to that already, in the introduction and that is to deal adequately with the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ on that cross. I'm glad tonight that our convention and our congress starts at the cross and we finish at the crown on Friday. But here's where we're going to start and tonight I pray the Lord will draw us each one very near to the precious wounded side of the Lord Jesus. The suffering of Christ When we think of heaven, heaven is always thought to be a place of joy and eternal bliss. But as I think of heaven, and I think of the day a way back two thousand years ago, when the commandment, Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors. Not that the King would come in, but that the King would go out. And the Lord Jesus Christ at that time to set his foot upon the top rung of the ladder of condescension and went down, down, down to this world of wickedness and woe. And when the Lord Jesus Christ arrived at the babe in Bethlehem, from that moment until the moment he died, The devil was against them and the world was against them and they dragged them down to the abyss of human sinful behaviour. Tonight we want to think a little bit about what the Lord went through for your salvation and for mine. The first thing is that They struck him, but they smote him. There was a trial before he got to Pilate. And one of the authors of the temple took his hand, it was made by God, and they slapped the Lord Jesus Christ right across the face. And they buffeted him. And we would cry, O man, whomsoever thou wert, Didst thou not realise that the One now is Head? Head is the very Son of the Living God, that All-Creator. And you see, when you get slapped across the face, there is no way to hide it, because the blood immediately goes to the point of impact, in this case, the point of sin. It is, when you get slapped across the face, a sign of awful insult. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered that and He suffered it for you and for me. And then when He got to Pilate, they scourged Him. The Roman lictor, he picked up the leather scourge laced with bits of bone and metal. They began to beat the back of the Lord Jesus Christ as the psalmist tells us there, that he had ploughed the very back of the Lord until the blood ran down and Pilate had to be there. He had to be there to observe what was going on. But Pilate, how can you crucify the Son of God? How can you, having just said three times, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, Because, he said, I find no fault in him. How then, Pilate, can you scourge the Son of God? A young man in our church had a serious accident recently that required major plastic surgery. When I was going through Switzerland a couple of weeks ago, I met a retired plastic surgeon. I talked to him, and I asked him how, first of all, do you take the skin off and so on, and how do you put it back on? And I asked him, I said, how is it? How is it that anybody who gets plastic surgery, they'll tell you that the pain of where they took the skin of your body is excruciating, whereas the pain of the area that is being repaired is not nearly so bad? And he said, well, we take off about six layers of skin, and he said, what that does, it leaves bare thousands upon thousands of open nerves. and the pain is excruciating, it feels like a third-degree burn. My friend, that's what the Lord Jesus Christ suffered in that scourging. And, of course, in the scourging, they make sure that the person doesn't die. And then, after that, they scorn him. The mockery of the king. They come along and they say, you're a king. A king needs a crown. And so they took the cruel eastern thorns and wove them into a crown and they placed it on the head of our blessed Lord and Saviour. And little did they know when they did that, that they were giving us one of the greatest symbols of the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ because it was a crown of thorns. And thorns are related to the curse of God for sin. And here Jesus Christ, not only was He going to bear our sins, but He bore upon His head the very mark of the curse for our sins. And those thorns were pressed in until the blood ran down on His body. And you can listen to the depraved laughter you're a king, here's your crown. And they mocked the Blessed, the Son of God. And then they put on him a scarlet robe, the robe of Athens, the robe of a mocking king. And then They put the reed, which is of course a flexible piece of vegetation, they put that in his hand as a scepter, the scepter of a wavering kingdom, not realising that the one who held that scepter was the King of Kings and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And then they went further, because they stood almost to the ultimate depravity of humanity, and that is that they spat upon the Lord Jesus Christ. They spat upon Him and of course that is an awful, an awful sin and an awful thing to do. And the Bible tells in the book of Leviticus that when a diseased person spat upon a clean person, that clean person became unclean because of the disease of the one who spat upon them. And you think, These sinners they spat upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And he was the spotless Son of God who knew no sin and in whom was no sin, the Lord Jesus Christ. He took that and he took it on himself. So there's a couple of verses in the Bible that are like the subject and mention, well nigh impossible to preach. And that is, that Jesus Christ became sin for us. Not that he was like sin, not even that he bore our sin, but the Bible makes it clear that he became sin. And even Martin Luther, don't get me wrong, Martin Luther said at the moment of crucifixion that Jesus Christ was the most sinful man the world's ever known. Not for his sin, because he had none, but because of your sins and my sins that were placed on him. And so they dredged the stinking mucus from their filthy mouths and they spat upon the Lord Jesus until the filth ran down. And then they stripped Him. They put on Him the mocking ideas of sovereignty, but now they take them off Him. My friend, that's what the world's ever about. taking away the indications of the sovereignty of the blessed Lord and God who is our Saviour. And they cried out, We will not have this man to rule over us. But, my friend, worse is to come, because our Saviour was then kneeled to the cross, and there alone He suffered and bled and died for you and me. Alone He paid the price of our sin. Alone, amazingly, He became sin for us. Alone He suffered until His great heart cried out, My God, my God, why? Why hast thou forsaken me? The answer to that question is, because in that moment in time, Jesus was cursed by your sin and mine. And in the eyes of God, and God the Father, I could not look upon him. And so the Lord cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And triumphantly cried out, Celestine, it is finished! Because the work of redemption was over. My friend, I don't want to finish there tonight with the Lord Jesus Christ nailed to the cross, but there is in the closing moments the consideration of the victory of the cross. Normally death is the end both for good and evil. My wife and I were in Heidelberg Castle there just a few days ago where Martin Luther delivered his great exhortation and justification by faith alone. And yet today Martin Luther's dead. His influence remains to some degree in Germany and other parts of the world but there's nothing new from Martin Luther because like the rest he's dead. And then also you'll find that death is the end for evil as well because you take another German like Hitler and we saw there in Germany some of the evidences of the awful results of the World War II. Hitler's gone. We don't hear from him anymore. His influence may remain, but he's gone. But Jesus Christ today, he lives and he lives in the power of an endless life. The ground of history is as cold and barren as ice. We travelled through many of these great churches, some of them that were mightily used during the Reformation and the time afterwards, into these great churches and As I wandered through them I couldn't help but think of that question, why seekest ye the living among the dead, dead stones? For thank God Jesus Christ is alive and alive and forevermore. There's a resurrection, there's an ascension and there's a coming again. The devil and sin and death has been defeated. When we were in Switzerland, we were over Lucerne, and we took a rather difficult trip up a mountain, a mountain called Pilatus, 7,000 feet high. And Pilatus is supposed to be named after Pontius Pilate. And up there, something stuck in my mind that right on the top of Mount Pilatus somebody has erected a cross because Pontius Pilate is dead and gone to his eternal awards. But the cross is empty and Jesus Christ is in the right hand of the Father. We think of the triumphant words of the Apostle Paul, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? We think of the words of Henry Francis, like, I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless. Ills have no weight and tears no bitterness. Where is death's sting? Where crave I victory? I triumph still if thou abide with me. As John Bowery wrote, In the cross of Christ thy glory a towering o'er the wrecks of time. Oh, the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime. In this week of meetings, let us each one individually and collectively pray that night after night as we focus on the preeminence of Christ, sirs, we would see Jesus. God forbid that I should glory save in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world was crucified unto me and I unto the world. Let us bow together in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank thee for thy presence with us this evening. We thank the Lord for the songs of praise because thou art a great God and worthy of our praise. And Father, we ask of Thee that Thou would impress upon our minds once more what it cost Thee, the Holy One, to bear away our sins. And Father, we pray that Thou would cause every believer to be drawn nearer and nearer to Him, and grant, O God, that through the crosswork of Christ that we shall be crucified to the world and the world be crucified to us. And Father, we pray that should there be those in the service tonight who know not the Lord, but, O God, face with the love of God as seen in the suffering of the Lord Jesus. O God, we pray it tonight, that thou would draw them unto thyself. What a blessing, Lord, if in the very first night of our meetings the precious souls for whom Christ died would come to meet their Lord and Saviour. And Father, for those who are wandering far off from thee, we pray that thou would draw them back again to their first love and back again to the cross O God, we pray that this night thou would restore backsliders to save sinners. And Lord, bless thy people, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Let us pray. We pray for our brother that has taken ill, for thy healing touch. For thou hast said, Pray one for another that ye may be healed. And we pray to thee. for that healing touch. We pray for every sinner in this meeting, not yet born again, that they may be saved this night. We pray for backsliders, that they may return to their first love. We pray for us all that will fall in love afresh with our blessed Lord Jesus. O blessed Savior, You died for me, a dirty lost sinner, fit only for the fuel of hell. But the wrath of God that was mine too upon the lamb was laid, who by the shedding of his blood for me, for me, for me the debt he paid. Oh, help us to go out to tell of her. of our wonderful Saviour, our blessed Redeemer. Oh, the bleeding Lamb! Oh, the bleeding Lamb! He was found worthy to take a book and loose the seal, to bruise the head that bruised His heel. He was found worthy. We join with the Church triumphant and we cry from our hearts, worthy is the Lamb. Keep us in the spirit of prayer. Bring us back tomorrow night to worship thee in spirit and in truth. And keep us tomorrow in thy love and in thy fear. And may the blessing of the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be with you all now and for evermore. And everybody said, Amen.