Hebrews 5. That's where we're going to be reading from now. Eric read the whole chapter so I won't have to read as much as I was going to. Next week is the plan to get back in the election series. I think it's part 32 or 33. But we were talking about some things the last few weeks that we were really getting into. This is kind of some leftover from last week. Got me thinking about this text here in Hebrews. And the title of the message is skillfully guarding the offense of the cross. Skillfully guarding the offense of the cross. Now let's, in Hebrews 5, let's start reading in verse 9. Hebrews 5, 9. We're reading from the modern King James Version. And being perfected, he became, speaking of Christ, the author of eternal salvation to all those who obey Him, being called by God, a high priest, after the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have much to say, and hard to be explained since you are dull of hearing. Now, let me just stop right there, because I know I don't have this in my notes, and I want to say this before I forget. Of whom we have much to say. I mean, that almost goes without saying, right? The Lord Jesus Christ, is the theme of this book. He is the Living Word of God. So of Him we have much to say. He is truly remarkable. We can remark about Him for the rest of our lives. If everything was written concerning who Christ is and what He did, the world could not contain the books it says in the Gospel of John, the last chapter, the last verse. being called a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have much to say, speaking of Christ. We have much to say about Christ. That is our goal. That is our task. That is our whole foundation of our ministry, the ministry of reconciliation, the ministry of the gospel. It's to preach Christ and Him crucified. I've said it many times up here. If you ever hear somebody say, that they've run out of things to say about Christ, turn around and run from them because they have no clue about what they're talking about. Because the depth of who he is and what he has done is limitless. That just means that they either don't know who he is or they don't know how to think, period. Because this Christ is remarkable, truly remarkable. And we could talk about him a thousand lifetimes. And that's what we're going to be surrounding the throne, bowing down to him, worshiping him for who he is and what he's done. And we'll still be in awe then of learning and seeing and knowing in clarity without the sin in our mind of who he is and what he's accomplished. We have much to say about him. And sometimes it says here that they're hard to be explained since he's the writer of Hebrews talking to his people. He said, since you are dull of hearing. For indeed, verse 12, because of the time you ought to be teachers. By this point in time, he said, you ought to be teachers by now already. But you have need that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, you have become in need of milk and not solid food. For everyone partaking of milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, even those because of their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Now, I've mentioned before and noted this, and I'll say it again and see if you guys, maybe they haven't heard this, it rings true with you, but in religion, false religion, the very things that those people are offended by, seem to me to be the most glorious things about our Lord, God, and Savior. Those things that offend people have to do with His character, especially His sovereignty, His power, His authority over mankind. His particular grace, His particular atonement His sovereignty, not only in salvation, but in reprobation. These things, we stand in awe and we look at God and they impress us and we glory in these. And these are things that actually stir us to worship Him, but they're offensive to man. They used to be offensive to us when we were dead in our trespasses and sins. I remember Oprah Winfrey talking about early on when she was younger, hearing a Baptist preacher talk about the fact that God was jealous. God was a jealous God. Well, she didn't like that. She thought, well, that means God is an egomaniac. It didn't make sense to her. So after she heard that, she was done with whoever that was that preacher was talking about. She didn't like that about God. You know, I can't get enough of that about God. You know, He is a jealous God. That means there are certain things about Him that stand out that He emphasizes to us. And these are the things that I had mentioned, that the world is offended by and God would bring out about Himself. And we see them, we see, oh yeah, I like that about God. I worship that about God. Whether it be His sovereignty, His power, His wisdom, His jealousy, all these things. They're not offensive to God's people. God's people glory in Him. So, since our Lord called us by His gospel, we seek to submit to His Word. We read His Word all the time and we hear preaching, we have discussions one with another to edify one another, build each other up. The Word of God is inspired and it's used for instruction, reproof, correction, and these things. And we seek to submit to his word in all things. And here we see the word of God tells us that we are to become skilled in, and there's a phrase used, the word of righteousness, to be skilled in the word of righteousness. And we'll get to what that means here in a minute. But this morning, I want us to tie in that phrase, the word of righteousness, with this idea and understand another phrase that's in scripture. It's the offense of the cross. And we want to tie these things together today. And I want us to see. And we've looked at this from another angle, of course, in times past. But I want us to see the vital importance of being skilled in a word of righteousness to defend and guard the offense of the cross. vital. So we want to see the relation between those two. Now the offense of the cross, let's kind of look at this phrase, we've talked about it several times before, but that exact phrase comes out of Galatians 5, the offense of the cross. Now remember in Galatia, the churches that were scattered around Galatia, four or so churches there, The enemies of the cross crept in by stealth, bringing in works to add to the finished work of Christ. They brought in at least three things. The Judaizers brought in circumcision to add to the cross to become righteous. They added dietary laws and they added holy days. So these are three things that were added to the cross And when those things were added, it was to remove the offense of the cross. So the offense of the cross is this. And here's a simple working definition. It is the merit of Christ's righteousness alone by itself because of his death, because of his person to work as compared to and against all other rival standards of man's own righteousness. Let me say that again. The offense of the cross is the merit of Christ's righteousness alone, by his death, by itself, as compared to and against all other rival standards of man's own righteousness. So we stated what Christ did and we stated the antithesis is against the cross, in other words. We have to make distinctions to get to the bottom of the offense of the cross. So the offense of the cross is a real biblical principle that is actually part and parcel of the gospel itself. This means, don't forget this, this means to remove the offense of the cross is to make the gospel void. You don't have a gospel when you remove the offense of the cross, plain and simple. And if you don't get that before you leave here today, ask me questions. If you don't understand that, because it's vital that you understand that. Because that is what we're all about here. We talk about it all the time. And if you don't understand that, you're not going to really understand any other message that I preach here. righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is that righteousness that is outside of ourselves that was merited and established brought in and worked by the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the merit that is imputed to God's people for their justification once and for all time. That is the offense of the cross and that was established and merited by his particular effectual, definite, successful, sufficient and finished death for his people. And that's an offense. That is an offense to people. So the Apostle Paul in Galatians, and we're not going to go there to read this. We've gone through Galatians verse by verse years ago. We've looked at that particular verse just a few weeks back. But the Apostle Paul was telling us in Galatians that if he wanted to stop the persecution that he was receiving and that other believers were receiving. If he wanted to stop that, dead in its tracks, he would remove the offense of the cross and the persecution would stop. The offense of the cross is Paul saying, no, no, no, no, you can't add that stuff. Because the cross alone, Christ alone is the only ground of salvation. And when you add something to that, It's not making it better. It's not just okay. It's wicked. It's a false gospel. He pronounced anathema, a curse toward those that would do that. So in other words, if he would allow a work or condition to be added as part of salvation, to establish one's own righteousness at any part of salvation, especially in the end, it all adds up to final salvation. If he would allow them to add or then the offense of the cross would cease. It would stop. There would be no offense. The Judaizers would just say, hey, thanks. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. That's why we're retaining these circumcision dietary laws in holy days. I think we can get along, Paul. We're in that communicable club. We're going to be preaching for each other, right? We're going to be sharing pulpits. We're going to be working together. We're going to be partnering together, right? Paul would not stand for any of that for one minute. Do you remember when they had the council in Acts 15? And there was this issue about bringing this up, like, do we need these things? These people crept in and said we need to do this, this, and that. And the story there was that when the Jews came in to eat, Peter got up and he was sitting with some Gentiles and all he did, he didn't say a word, he moved over to a different table to sit with some Jews. Paul saw it and he said, he didn't put up with it. He got in Peter's face and he said, you do not walk uprightly according to the gospel. Peter didn't even say anything. He just changed tables. Now, I'm telling you today, it's not just changing of tables. It's what people declare. It's what people partner with. It's what people over and over. It's not mistaken what these people are saying. We'll get into what they're saying here in a second. It is. It's out of control. It's far worse than merely changing tables. Well, by the grace of God, we know Peter repented. Paul's rebuke was a means of this repentance. And some other things took place where, you know, Peter saw the vision of the unclean animals and all that. We know it's talking about Gentiles and so on. Paul, we know, was apostle to the Gentiles, so Paul was sensitive to this issue. But it's all about, it all boils down to, it's not just cultural thing, it has to do with salvation by grace versus salvation by works. So Paul didn't preach the works righteousness items. He didn't allow that. He said, if I allow that, if I or an angel allow that, let me be accursed. That's what he said. He said it's another gospel. So he saw that the truth was more important than he was. He stuck with the gospel of grace, which was an offense to the Judaizers, caused persecution towards Paul and toward other gospel believers. So in seeing that, we need to see that today, you know, here we are 2019, we're examining this today. A lot's going on, you know, and as time marches on and we see a lot of things in church history, we see a lot of challenges and things that pop up and things that have to be uprooted and torn down and stood up against and so on. We want to see these distinctions and don't let them pass. Now, these things are important. We want us to see this. that not only cannot the offense of the cross be separated from the gospel, the gospel itself, but also it can't be separated from the person of Christ himself. The Christ of the cross is also called something, the rock of offense, the stone of stumbling. Now, I'm saying this And let's not get confused here in thinking they're two separate things. Because somebody might hear me just say what I said. Well, OK, now you're so you're talking about the offense of the cross and you're talking about the stone of stumbling, the rock of offense, and those are two separate things. I want you to bring these things together. The gospel is the person in the work of Christ. These things cannot be divorced. The offense of the cross can't be divorced from the gospel. The rock of offense can't be divorced from the gospel. That's his name. You can't separate his name from who he is. This weird romantic ideas about this, you know, weak, flimsy, long haired, sissy Jesus that can't get stuff done, that failed at most everything he did because you won't allow him to do it. You have to help him finish it. When we bring these things together and not let them separate, we see the force of the truth of scripture that won't allow us to divorce these things. So the idea or the phrase, think about it, Paul, he summed it all up in Corinthians. Remember all the problems of Corinthians, crazy immorality going on in the church. And we know Paul didn't say, you know what, we're going to have some sessions here and we're going to have one. about this moral issue, one about this moral issue, and one about this moral issue. He said, I'm determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And if we're dealing with a moral issue, we're dealing with it through the funnel and the filter and the foundation of Christ and Him crucified. If we don't deal with it with Christ and Him crucified, we're not dealing with it, is what he's saying, because other religious people dealt with other issues through just moralistic, pietistic ways. Does anybody here know any atheists or agnostics? I know several. Some of them people are some of the nicest. I know people in cults. Some of the nicest people in the world. They will give you stuff. They will help you. I don't ask them what their motive is. But nice people, outwardly nice, immoral. If they see something immorality going on, they will freak out. So we know that's not the foundation of what Paul's saying here. If we are to teach anything, commands of the scripture, we do it through the means of and the foundation of that sound doctrine and theology of Christ's name crucified, the gospel of God's freedom and sovereign grace. We know in Galatians 6, toward the end there, as Paul wound it up there, correcting that mistake of these Judaizers that crept in, he said, God forbid that I should glory except in one place, Christ and Him crucified, the cross of Christ alone. And it goes on to say that that's the rule of the new creature. So again, these things are not to be separated. Christ and his cross are eternally joined together. So we clearly see that both the person and his work is an offense to the unbeliever. Go to 1 Peter chapter 2. I'm going to share some of that language there about the person of Christ, how that he has called a certain thing in reference to him himself being an offense. 1st Peter 2.1. Now, we know that Christians still sin. It says it right here, verse one. Therefore, laying aside all malice and all guile and all hypocrisy and envying and evil speakings. I mean, that was a lot of stuff listed there. He said he said, don't do that. Lay that aside. Upon my apostolic authority, And Peter's writing on the inspiration of the Spirit. He says, don't do these things. Lay them aside. They're sin. And he says this, he says, desire the sincere milk of the word as newborn babes, so that you may grow by it. If truly, notice this, if truly you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Now, let me just stop there just a second. could preach the rest of the message on this phrase, the Lord is gracious. Now, that idea that the Lord is gracious, we lap it up, we love it. We understand and love the grace of God. In our topic of the offense of the cross, we know that the Lord is gracious is the very offense of the cross, right? What does that do? The Lord being gracious, What that does is the Lord God intervenes. And as we studied a few weeks ago, he becomes the servant. He is the suffering servant and he does it all. And he says, don't touch this. This is mine. I got it. And he does it. The perfect work that the father accepts. And we're not allowed touching that. That is something that's more holy than the Ark of the Covenant. You touch it, you die. You don't bring strange fire on the altar. God will kill you eternally. So this right here is the perfect work of the Lord Jesus Christ and He's gracious. That's offensive. That's offensive to man's pride, man's righteousness. Have you truly tasted that the Lord is gracious? Have you submitted to the fact that, yeah, I'm done. He is doing it all. I just rest in His graciousness, His perfect finished work. Now that will motivate you. to love him, to serve him, to worship him, to be a part of the church body. Whatever the scripture tells you, it will motivate you the more you see and grow in what? The grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse four, having been drawn to him. We're not drawn to a religion. We're drawn to this person. We're drawn to him, Christ. and starts calling something him, starts defining him with some language here that we're getting at. A living stone, indeed rejected by men, but elect precious with God. We looked at this in detail in our election series, I believe it was Isaiah 42, somewhere around there, or three, 42 I think, about the elect one precious. And we're elect in him. He's precious to the Father, therefore, the effect of this whole salvation, we love him because he first loved us, and we see that he's precious to us, and we follow him, we hear his voice and follow him. Verse five, you also as living stones, talking about the church body, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, referring to you're separated And what does this priesthood do? What do priests do? They offer up sacrifices, right? Offer up spiritual sacrifices. It says in Romans, I believe, if I remember right, 12, talking about sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, that type of a worship. And that's what Peter's talking about here. Sacrifices acceptable to God. How? Through Jesus Christ. They're not going to be acceptable any other way. You can't bring an offering to God without a mediator that makes it acceptable. That's the way sovereign grace works. The sovereign grace of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, verse six, also it is contained in the scripture. Notice this. Behold, I lay in Zion, what? A chief cornerstone, elect, precious. Looky here. He who believes on him, on Christ, shall never be ashamed. It kind of reminds me of the language in Romans 1.16 where Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Right? For it's the power of God and the salvation of everyone that believes. It is this Christ that's the chief cornerstone. If one believes in Him, he will never be ashamed or be put to shame. Verse 7. Therefore, to you who believe is honor, but to those who are disobedient Let's put the brakes on a second. To them that are disobedient, does that mean to them that swung down to the corner and picked up a shot of heroin and shot it in their arm? To them that are disobedient, does that mean to the guy that went to the store and bought him a pouch of tobacco and he's chawing it and spitting it out his truck window? But to him that is disobedient, Does that mean the guy that was late for work and he was going 70 instead of 55? This is talking about unbelief. This is talking about unbelief. But to them who don't believe, he is the stone which the builders rejected. This one, Christ, came to be the head of the corner. stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, again, to those disobeying. Those that are in unbelief. They're offended. They can't believe. They don't want to believe. They hate him. They're at enmity. They're dead in their trespasses and sins. They're in the flesh. They're in darkness. And you could go on and on and on with all the synonyms. It says, who stumble at the word. Notice this, another offensive thing, which this is coming up in our series in reprobation, in our election series. Who stumble at his word to which they were also appointed. The sovereignty of God in reprobation. They were appointed for ordained unto condemnation, to stumble, to be blind, to be darkened, to be sent strong delusion, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's offensive, right? Well, when we see it, those that have been brought to him, what do we see? The Lord is gracious. The Lord is gracious. And we we plead for those people, we feel for those people, we preach to those people, we love those people. We have compassion for those people, mainly because we were there. And we see now that if it weren't for grace, we could be in their category. No pride or haughtiness involved there. It's like, thank you, God, for your graciousness. But you are a chosen generation. Remember a few weeks back, we studied You have not chosen me, I've chosen you. John 15. But you're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for possession, so that you might speak the praises of Him who has called you, notice this, out of darkness into His marvelous light. So we're going to talk concerning what the darkness is and the light is. that's compared in our text to having our spiritual senses exercise so that we may discern both good and evil. Good and evil, darkness and light. We'll see the connection here. Now, back in our text in Hebrews, let's look at verse 12 and kind of move down through there. And I don't know how much, what we're gonna cover. You heard what I said last week. I mean, I don't care about parts anymore. It's unending, so it's probably not going to get finished today. Hebrews 5.12, For indeed, because of the time you ought to be teachers, but you have need that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and you have become in need of milk and not solid food. So, hey, remember Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, what the book was all about. It was a warning telling these Hebrew believers, you believe the gospel. This is a better priesthood, a better covenant, a better everything's better. This is concerns, this gospel concerns the blood of the new covenant from this perfect sacrifice. It fulfilled all the types and pictures and shadows of what the old covenant represented. And here we see the getting rid of the administration of death, bringing in the blood of the new covenant through Christ. And we see that it's the gospel of God's pre and sovereign grace. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, don't go back. Don't go back, because if you go back, you've left the final and only sacrifice. These other sacrifices, they're inferior. They're weak and beggary elements. All they do is show what the real substance is. Christ is the substance. Don't go backwards into that old system. That's what the warning is. The whole book is that warning. So the first principles of the oracles of God is the gospel of free grace. Christ alone, the basics, it's milk. So we know there was that temptation in this culture of these people who were being persecuted. From what I understand, historically, some of these families, they would have funerals and say, you know what, you're dead to me. And Paul kind of alludes to that in Galatians 6 when he says, I quoted part of the verse earlier, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ alone to whom I am crucified and the world's crucified to me. The world is like, we don't even recognize you as a human being. Don't even talk to me. You're dead to me. In other words, I hate you. That's what they're saying. That's what some family members were doing to each other. So there was pressure You know, imagine if you were like by yourself and you were dependent on other people. I'm not saying that's an excuse, but I mean, this would make things harder. And here's the warning and the encouragement. You know, people, hey, this is this is a permanent fix here. This gospel is a permanent fix. That other stuff, it's not going to last. It's going to be destroyed. He said that later on in that in that book. So the God that spoke before in the end is going to speak again and not only shake earth, but he's going to shake heaven and earth and everything's going to be removed. And the only thing that's going to remain are the things that cannot be seen. Faith and what our faith is in. The personal work of Christ. We don't have this kingdom that can't be, you know, people have this idea, this earthly king. And that's what the Jews had that idea, too, that the Messiah was going to bring in this splendid thing and rescue them from their economic troubles. And it's going to be just a utopia. Christ said, my kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom has to do about what I'm going to accomplish my decease in Jerusalem. I'm going to be a sin. I'll be the king on the throne. And that's what it's all about. And eternally, that's what I'll be worshiped, concerning the lamb slain, how worthy I am. That's what it's all about. And people don't, you know, scratch their head. What? It just goes over their head. It's an offense. They think it's stupid. It's because they're blind. They receive not the things of the spirit. So again, the book warns about that. Don't go back. The basics, the milk is grace. Christ crucified. What he accomplished is the milk. So here's the question. What are the doctrines of works for salvation? Some might say, well, you know what? Well, that's what you first learn when you're a baby Christian. Works can be added. You might get tangled up in Arminianism, Plagianism. That's where we all start anyway, right? That's for baby Christians. And then we graduate and we gain a higher knowledge and we put the cherry on top and we learn. We come in to the doctrines of grace. You can tell by my tone, I'm being sarcastic. A false gospel is not for baby Christians. It's for children of the devil. It's a lie. So we must know about it, we must be warned about it, we must warn others about it, we must run from it, we must call it out. A friend of mine in Indiana, Bob Dishman, he did a message not too long ago at Grace Church in Mount Summit. He doesn't do much preaching, but his points, I think if I remember right, the title of his message was, The God That Nobody Is Offended By. And here's his three points. It refers to the God who loves everybody, the God who sent Christ to die for everybody, and the God who sends his spirit to try to save everybody. That's the God that nobody is offended by. As far as unbelievers in the world's concerned, I'm offended by it. We here are offended by it. We used to dabble in it and we have been given repentance from it, but That is a truth, that people are not offended by that God. That God serves no threat to them. A God that loves everybody, well, everything's cool. Well, I don't have to be reconciled to a God that already loves me. He's not angry at sin or he has no wrath toward anything about me, my sin or a false gospel. And God died for everybody, Christ died for everybody. That's cool. I knew that already, right? Everybody knows that. That's a given. John 3.16. So we just get in there and you know, if we can grab on to that right before we die and get our ticket in. And the Spirit's trying to save everybody. Yeah, I'll let him. I'll let him one day, probably at the end. I'll get right with God. That is not offensive to anybody. So why are some of the reasons why that popular message is used in churches as a means to try to get people in? As crazy as it sounds, and I know for some of us it might have been just last year or some of us it might have been years ago, to try to scratch your head and remember what was I thinking? What are the people all around me thinking when that lie was being preached? But why is it? spoken that way. Number one, deception. Ignorance. Shame. They're ashamed of the true gospel. They're afraid of persecution. It's in reference to our topic, offense of the cross. They want approval of man. That's why they want their churches big. And as we spoke of last week, they have no reverence for the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are just some things off the cuff of reasons why they're trapped in that system. God has not shown them that they're blind. Look at verse 13 of Hebrews 5. For everyone partaking of milk, notice, is unskillful in the word of righteousness for or because he is an infant And I think this means the idea of milk only. Everyone that's partaking in only milk or currently partaking in only milk is by definition unskilled in the word of righteousness. Now, when you go back to verse 12, it says partway through, it says, you have need that one teach you again, the first principles of the oracles of God. And it says you have become in need of. milk and not solid food. So the writer of Hebrews is telling people, look, I've dealt with you before. I'm kind of ad libbing here. I think the idea is I've dealt with you guys before. At this point in time, you guys should be teachers by now. And because of these people that have influenced you, I've got to come back again and teach you the first oracles of God, because evidently you're listening to these people. That seems to be the idea of what's going on there. It's a warning. And he's saying, as he's saying this, he's building up to constantly saying, don't go back, don't go back. I'm telling you, don't go back. And all along, he's preaching that gospel. He's feeding them that gospel. And it does get better as the chapters go on, especially around like eight, nine and 10 is some good stuff. So we hear phrases in God's word like the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, Romans 117. And do you think that that's related to the phrase in our text talking about being skilled in the word of righteousness? The word of righteousness, the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. Now some even preachers would not even connect those things. They have nothing to do with each other according to these preachers. They're the self-same thing, I'm telling you. It has to do with the gospel. It has to do with Christ's personal work, what he accomplished. That word, that faith, that record, that truth that sanctifies us and separates us from the world, that's revealed to us by grace, by the same powers, it says in Ephesians 1, that it took to raise Christ from the dead. The God who caused light to shine out of darkness is the very same God who caused the light of the gospel to come and to shine into our hearts to give us that light of the knowledge of the grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It's a revelation of God at no credit to us. Well, we've got this treasure in earthen vessels, and the writer of Hebrews is saying, get on it, grow in it, study in it, be skillful with it, because this gospel is not something you just believe and say, okay, I believe I'm going to heaven, so done, I'm done. This is something that you utilize for the rest of your life, and it does everything for you, and it has to do with your joy, your assurance, your worship, your obedience, Everything has to do as you pivot off of this truth and never leave it, but grow in the depth of it. But many would say skilled in a word of righteousness, it has to do with the obedience to the law, practical obedience and personal holiness and righteousness. First of all, we learn personal holiness and righteousness. That's the point. The gospel says it's all in Christ. And once we know that gospel, that gospel will help us in our obedience to that Christ. If anybody says we don't have an allegiance to obedience in that Christ, they don't know the first thing about the oracles of God. Because we do. We are obligated to this Christ. We're bought with a price. We've talked about this the past few weeks. We're not our own. So just like these guys, these false preachers, they want to create a whole new brand new vocabulary. And they want to go through the scriptures and they want to use words and take them and pit them against each other and totally redefine everything and make everything in the whole scripture be conditional. And it's really consistent all the way through the way they have it. And they think they've taken the high road and they want to scare everybody and say, hey, don't listen to that little small group over there. God's not going to bless them anyway. Bunch of antinomians. They don't ever talk about personal holiness. They're going to be in trouble. You know, that's what they try to say. They think they're taking the high road and scaring us with their pietistic baloney. So that's why I have to get up here and say this every once in a while and remind us of the first principles of the oracles of God to say to you, don't go back there. Because some of you came out of that. Some of you came out of that world of legalism. I think most of us did. Verse 14, but solid food belongs to those who are full age, just referring to maturity, even those who because of their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. I want to concentrate on that last phrase there, about their senses being exercised to discern both good and evil. I want us to kind of look at some of this for the rest of the time, tied to the idea of the offense of the cross. The problem with today, groups that claim to believe what we believe, they use the same language They call themselves sovereign grace. You might say that they're Calvinists or they are reformed in their theology. You start looking, there's a lot of people that claim that. At least I'm sensitive to it. I always look for it and I try to communicate to these people. The problem with them, most of them, not all, but most, is connected to that verse we just read. They cannot discern both good and evil. They can't do it. Let me explain. The majority of them, they'll give lip service to the doctrines of grace, what we consider Tulip or the Five Points. They'll give lip service to it. But what they'll do is they'll soften, they'll take these teachings and they'll soften them to make them acceptable to the maximum amount of people. I've seen it over and over again. And they make it, what, less What's the word we're looking for? Offensive. Make it less offensive. They'll divorce these doctrines from the gospel itself and they'll make them merely theological points that we can agree to disagree on. They are especially ignorant of the doctrine of repentance from dead works. Again, they're especially ignorant of the biblical doctrine of repentance from dead works. They have no clue what that means. So that's what I want to talk about the rest of the time remaining. We don't have much time. How do I know that? How do I know they're ignorant of the doctrine, the biblical doctrine of repentance from dead works? How do I know that? Many ways, but here's some examples. Let's take, for example, total depravity. The first point in the TULIP, total depravity. Many of them will look at that doctrine and they'll say, I've listened to so many introductory messages on the doctrines of grace. Many, many different men over the years. And it's weird. You start hearing the same thing. They pass along the same stupid notes. They'll say, we believe in total probity, but we want to emphasize that man is not as bad as they can be. They'll make that statement and they'll make it in the context of related to gross radical, outward immorality. Say the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson, child molesters, abortionists, the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. They'll make it in the context and couch it in that meaning. Like in other words, I guess we could be like Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson, etc. We could be an abortionist. And I understand that. We could be. If it weren't for God's grace, we'd all be in trouble. But here's the point. The deception of the false gospel is primarily made up of moralistic, pietistic, fake grace plus works message. And the foundation of that is conditions for salvation. Now that kind of message, that kind of false gospel, what does it do? It robs, it seeks to rob God of its glory. And what else does it do? It takes away the offense of the cross. That's what it does. It takes away the offense of the cross. So the aspect of total depravity that deals with immorality, or in other words, transgression of the law, we admit to that. It's there. It's not the main emphasis. That's not the deceptiveness of total depravity. That can even be detected by man's conscience. Man's conscience can detect that killing babies is like over the top. It's ridiculous. That's like otherworldly. Man's conscience can detect that. Even without the Spirit of God, man's conscience can detect that. So what's going on there? Man's conscience was designed to detect things like that. All transgression of the law. But some of those type sins are committed by people who have had their natural conscience cauterized. The scripture, King James, I think it says, seared with a hot iron. It means cauterized. In another spot, it talks about its past feeling. It means it's nama. So there are some people that God, he'll have them get to that position. As it says in Romans, he'll turn them over to a reprobate mind. They're done. There's no hope. They're gone. He just has them do their own demise and destruction, those things that are unnatural in all circumstances. And they're just heaping up, treasuring up wrath to the day of judgment. But the deceivableness of a false gospel is self-righteous obedience toward God. And that type of work cannot be detected by the conscience of man. It can't. As a matter of fact, that's the remedy for the sin that's bothering his conscience. Self-righteousness is the remedy to fix his outward immorality. We've gone over this a bajillion times here. So the true gospel is the only thing that exposes the self-righteous prideful religious sins of dead works. You can use other phrases. Conditional salvation, works righteousness, synergism, it's all the same. The true gospel is the only thing that will expose that. What else will it expose? Well, there's the unpardonable sin. That's the final unbelief. There's the sin unto death spoken of in 1 John. It's pretty much the final unbelief. There's the willful sin spoken of in Hebrews 10.26, if you sin after you receive the knowledge of the truth, what's that talking about? That's talking about the whole warning of the book of Hebrews. That's going back, apostatizing, going back into that old system, the administration of death. That's final unbelief. That's the offense. When the gospel exposes all that stuff, that's the offense. So the false gospel seeks to undermine the offense of the cross with its boastful, glorying in the flesh, and again, turns everything into a condition to attain and maintain salvation. Even in our text, look, in chapter five, verse nine, notice this. They'll even do it with this verse right here that we used in our introduction in reading. Verse nine, and being perfected, he became the author of eternal salvation to what? All those who obey him. See, I told you Scott, there it is. I do that almost every week with a verse, don't I? That's not what it is. We read through contextually that it means it has to do with believing the gospel. Obeying is believing the gospel in this context. Not every context in the scripture. In this context it is. Those disobeying are those that don't believe. In chapter 10, You can turn there if you would like. Verse 38, the writer of Hebrews, when he gets to that point, he says, again, this is off the heels of verse 26, that willful sin, which is talking about unbelief. And he says there at the end of the last two verses, now the just shall live by faith. But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them that draw back unto perdition. but them that believe to the saving of the soul." What did we quote last week? We quoted Colossians 1.23 concerning continuing in the faith, notice this, grounded and settled and be not removed from the hope of the gospel. That's perseverance in the gospel. To stop and to believe some of these popular preachers that are spitting things out like Piper and these guys, that it's a conditional salvation, is to not be grounded and settled and it's to be removed from the hope of the gospel because your hope has just been put in something else, something you're doing for your final justification. But the offense of the cross protects that and ensures that baloney can't creep in and take the place of the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace. So all the more the importance for that idea of being skilled in the word of righteousness, being skilled in the gospel of Christ, in other words. Growing in the gospel and not going backwards into some form of double-mindedness and tolerating another gospel. So as we close, I just want to describe what is going on in the circles of people that we've noticed maybe tried to read after, tried to figure out what they're saying, and we concluded that it's not good. What are they saying? What are they doing? These popular preachers, these ones that are the big conference speakers, the sought-after conference speakers that everybody has to get a picture with, right? Well, for one thing, they always have their question and answer sessions, and those are interesting, more interesting even than their preaching. Kind of a lot of more stuff comes out in those. I've heard most of them, not found one yet, most of them will claim that they were converted under a false gospel of Arminianism, semi-Plagianism or Plagianism. Some form of a conditional salvation. They'll claim, yep, that's where I started. And then I learned, you know, they'll claim that they were saved back then under a false gospel. This is an attempt to ease that offense. That's what it is. What if they said, you know what? Back then when I was believing in universal atonement, I believed in a false gospel of the devil. And I was influenced by the very spirit of Antichrist. And I consider myself lost at that point back then. And I'm going to flush it like the dung that it is. And what if they said that? There goes all the money, there goes all the speaking engagements, there goes all that stuff. And here comes the persecution. Hey, it'd be all over Facebook and the internet. Hey, did you hear about so-and-so, what he said? What a dummy. He said this, that, and the other, and he doesn't have anybody following him anymore. That is exactly what would happen. He'd be an outcast. And he'd probably be here speaking at our next conference with a handful of people here. But that's what would happen. Persecution. Hatred. Mockery. Paul did it. That's what Paul did. He was like top dog. He said, I flushed all that stuff. You know, Peter, years later, he probably thought, man, why did I move from that table? What in the world was I thinking? And he had to reflush that stuff in his head. You know what I mean? He said, that was stupid. I thank God for Paul telling me that I was not walking uprightly according to the gospel. And then Peter turned around and preached the gospel of grace to other people and people came to Christ. And he's like, you know, Peter did a lot of stupid stuff, right? Like, like us. But these, these famous guys, they don't get the under, they don't understand good from evil. They call bitter sweet and sweet bitter. They will look at pietistic, self-righteous stuff as evidence of their salvation. We'll say that's evidence of their lostness. We'll say that's dead works. That's not evidence of regeneration. What are you saying? What they're spitting out is contrary to the gospel. So the evil that they're talking about is them being the difference maker in salvation. You know what, that is synonymous with this phrase, practicing sin. That's what that means. Another synonym, glorying in the flesh. A righteousness of my own. You can't tear it out of their hands. It's evil. They can't discern good from evil. You know what good is? Good is the gospel promise of salvation conditioned on Christ alone. That's discerning good. That's doing righteousness. That's doing anything by faith based on knowing that. Believing the gospel. What is a life that's faithful to God and his gospel? It's just living your life, believing this gospel. You're gonna fail? Oh, yeah, all the time, every day. But the minute you start looking inside and you start forming some other foundation, you're going back. You're not persevering in the gospel. You can't look inside. There's nothing good. Paul said, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. He said, I'm going to be found in Him, not having, what, my own, that means personal righteousness, my own righteousness. But he sought to do everything for the glory of God based on his love and reverence for Christ. Okay, I'm going to stop there. I had a ton of other notes, but you know how it goes. Any questions or comments before we go any further? I think there's some health food back here. Some cheese Danish health food stuff. Looks like somebody brought in. Going to lunch somewhere here in a minute, but appreciate everybody being here. And I know a lot of times when we turn off the camera we have questions, but I appreciate everybody's attention. We got a song? Can somebody pick out a song?