I want to read with you tonight Ephesians chapter 3 verses 7 and 8. Ephesians chapter 3 verses 7 and 8 and I'd like you to read these verses with me in God's Word. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Ephesus and he writes these memorable and very powerful words. Would you please read with me verse 7 and 8 of Ephesians chapter 3. Whereof I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." Would you please pray with me? Father, we come to you tonight and we thank you for the infinite sufficiency of your Son. We thank you for the glorious gospel of Christ, the good news that we can be saved by righteousness outside of ourselves, Father, we thank you so much for the suffering of Jesus and our minds cannot comprehend. We cannot fully understand what he did for us at Calvary's Cross, but we praise you tonight and we pray that we would be holy yours. We thank you for the virtue of his life and death. And Father, his purity that makes us pure in your sight, his suffering, that is accounted in our room place instead so that we can be forgiven of all of our sin. And we praise you for this glorious gospel. And we pray that tonight that our fellowship would be inflamed, that our minds would be excited by this truth, that we would be drawn closer together around the glory of the gospel. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, Paul says in verse 8, unto me who am less than the least of all saints. Have you ever noticed how the apostle Paul in one place says that he is not worthy to be called an apostle? In another place he says, I am less than the least of all saints. In yet another place he says, I am the chief of sinners. Spurgeon describes it this way. Someone says to the Apostle Paul, you're a great apostle. He says, no, I'm less than the least of all the apostles. I'm not worthy to be called an apostle. And they say, well, what exactly are you saying, Paul? Are you just an ordinary saint? Oh, no, says the Apostle Paul. I'm no ordinary saint. I'm less than the least of all of the saints. And they said, well, what are you then? Just a common sinner. No, I'm no common sinner. I am the chief. of sinners. Yes, the Apostle Paul was one of the holiest of the holy, but he was one of the lowliest of the lowly. He never counted anything to himself, but he gave all the glory to Jesus Christ alone. And by the way, we see from this text that saints are not dead people in the earth or already in heaven, that saints are people who are walking the earth as well, because the Apostle Paul says that he is a saint. Those are true saints, not that are made so by the Pope of Rome, but they are true saints who are made so by the living God. But I'm not here to talk to you about the Apostle Paul. I'm here to talk to you tonight about the Apostle Paul's savior. I've been accused of preaching Christ too much. I had a meeting one time where a church was in the process of getting rid of me and one of the men stood up and said, that young man just preaches Jesus too much. And I was kind of like Brother Pruitt said this morning, put that on my grave, put that on my tombstone. I'm OK with that charge of preaching Jesus Christ too much. I don't think you can be guilty of such a crime, but I'll take that. I just wish I could preach him better. Amen. Paul was a little lowly man. But he had a great and glorious gospel. And tonight I want to talk to you about the unsearchable riches of Christ and the magnitude of this glorious gospel that we have contained in the Word of God. And the first thing that I want to talk to you about is the designation that Paul gives to it here. The designation of it as the unsearchable riches of Christ. The Word of God never paints the Gospel as some beggarly little thing. It never paints the Gospel as some slight blessing. It always magnifies it. It is not a beggarly Gospel. It is a glorious Gospel. But like Martin Luther said, we are beggars, right? We are nothing but beggars, but thank God we have a good door to beg at. We go to the door of grace and we beg the mercy and grace of God on the ground of the finished work of Jesus Christ. Thank God for the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Thirteen times in Paul's Apostle, he uses this word riches. He talks about the riches of God's goodness. He talks about his riches in glory. He talks about the riches of full assurance and the riches of wisdom and knowledge. And here he talks about the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. We have nothing to be ashamed of in the gospel. We should be ashamed of ourselves, but we should never be ashamed of our Lord. Now, I can see being ashamed of other religions. If I had a religion with a weak, small God with questionable integrity, I would be ashamed of that. If I had a God like is described in the popular book called The Shack, a God who has a questionable sense of humor, likes to dance, and has questionable morality, I might well be ashamed of that. If I had a religion that taught that you were to be saved by your own filthy rags, I might be ashamed of that, but when it comes to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, how can we be ashamed of a mighty God, of a mighty Savior, of a mighty Gospel, of a powerful Spirit, of the living Triune God, the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, who formed this Gospel in eternity past and executed it so perfectly and applies it by His mighty power? How can we be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, and it is truly unsearchable in its nature. I want you to think about the mystery of it. Whenever we study the gospel, we have waded off into the depths of God's grace. I think it was Augustine who said, there are shallows where the lambs can wade, but there are depths where the elephants can swim. The Apostle Paul is one of the greatest minds that's ever been in the Lord's church. You know, even secular scholars have said that he's one of the six greatest intellects of all time. And yet Paul says of the gospel that it is the unsearchable riches of Christ. In Second Corinthians, chapter 12. Paul describes, I think, his own journey to heaven, into the third heaven. He doesn't know if he's gone there in the body or in the spirit, but he knows one thing. He heard unspeakable things which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Notice he says these are unspeakable things. Paul was an eloquent man. If anyone could have found the words to describe the gospel, he would have. But he says it's unspeakable to see the glory of God. It's unsearchable to fathom it with your mind. It is the unsearchable riches of Christ, the unspeakable things of God, these great, transcendent, glorious doctrines that are taught in the Word of God. Even the angels desire to look into it. In the Old Testament, you find the mercy seat with the Ark of the Covenant with the Ten Commandments. I love the imagery. And over the Ten Commandments is the mercy seat of God. And on that mercy seat, the blood of the Lamb is sprinkled. Over our violation of the Ten Commandments, the blood of the Lamb has been sprinkled. Amen? And that's where God meets His people. The Shekinah glory of God dwelt upon that mercy seat. And that is the same way it is with us today. Remember when the the best you might open up that Ark of the Covenant and look directly on the Ten Commandments and they died because you don't dare approach God on the terms of law. You'd better come through Christ alone. Martin Luther said, I don't even want to think about God outside of a mediator. I don't want to even fathom an absolute God. My friend, everyone speaks so flippantly about God, and they talk about coming to worship God, and they talk about approaching God, and committing their life to God, but if they ever saw the infinite sufficiency of God, they would be saying, God, receive the sin offering on my behalf. Oh God, receive the infinite suffering of Christ as my salvation, because I cannot approach an infinite, gloriously holy Christ pure God apart from the blood of the mediator. And over that mercy seat, throughout the cherubim, as if they were looking over into it. Because Peter uses this in 1 Peter chapter 1 as an imagery that these things the angels desire to look into. These are the unsearchable riches of Christ. They've been revealed in the Word of God. This verse, someone has argued, could literally be translated those things of God which you cannot trace His footsteps. You cannot trace the glory of the Gospel. You have to go all the way back into eternity, into the heart of God to find the origin. You can't quite get there in your mind. You cannot trace it and you can't track it. There's no hint of the Gospel in nature. Everyone talks about natural theology. You know what natural theology will do for you? It will condemn you to eternal hell. There's enough to leave you inexcusable in nature and in the revelation of creation, but there is not enough to save you apart from the Word of God. Nobody could search out the Gospel. Nobody can trace the Gospel. No one can track the Gospel. They can't read it in the stars. You can't find it in Plato. You can't find it in Aristotle. But you find it revealed to the humble and lowly in the Word of the living God. The unsearchable riches of Christ. That's a second person of the Trinity would become a man. Would be born as an outcast, placed in a manger, out there with the animals as if he were an animal. No home, because we didn't have a home in heaven, he didn't have a home on earth. lived and walked, and remember when he said to his disciples, the birds of the air have nests and the fox have holes, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head, that he would grow up in a carpenter's shop, that he would live out his own law, that sin would be imputed to him, and as 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, that he would be made sin for us, that he would bear the execution of God's law upon his own perfect flesh. Martin Luther said, Jesus didn't go to the cross. naked, he went there clothed in a garment of perfect righteousness and purity. And in that perfect garment of innocence, he suffered the infinite wrath of God. We are not saved by the abrogation of the law. We are saved by the complete execution of the law upon our substitute and Savior, Jesus Christ, that the Son of God would take up a cross and die on that cross and then be raised again from the dead, that the Lord should become the servant, that the life should die, that David's Lord should become David's son, that sin should be punished, and yet the sinner pardoned, that the maker of the world would be born into the world. These are unsearchable riches of God. This is the greatness and the glory of the gospel. Now, having looked at the designation of it as the unsearchable riches of Christ, I would like to invite your attention to look at the contents of it. What are these riches? By the way, if you're a child of God, you are an inheritor of the riches of God through Christ. What are these riches that we partake in? Well, there's the pardon of sin. Can you rejoice tonight in the fact that every sin you have ever committed has been completely wiped away by Jesus Christ and his atonement? Isn't that a glorious thing? How can we be so depressed in life? When we have the knowledge that every vile thought, every filthy thing, every despicable thing that weighs us down, that it has been put away by the blood of Jesus, how can we be unhappy and miserable? And by the way, if you don't have this blessing, you better flee from the wrath to come and flee to Jesus Christ. Flee from God angry to God pacified in Christ alone. We have pardon of sin. We have the non-imputation of sin. Romans chapter 4, quoting Psalm 32, says, Blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven, whose iniquity is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. In other words, my past sin is forgiven, and the sin that I commit in the future is not imputed to my account, so as to destroy me. Because if the Lord should mark iniquity, who could stand? But our sin is not imputed to our account because it was imputed to our perfect savior's account. So we have the pardon of sin, the non-imputation of the non-imputation of sin and the imputation of the righteousness of God. The non-imputation of the righteousness of Christ to my account, so that in God's sight, it is as if I have done every perfect thing that Christ did. I am acceptable in God's sight because of the glorious life of Jesus Christ." Now here's where true gospel comes in at. Up until the time of the Reformation, people kind of blended guilt and moral defilement together in their doctrine of sin, and they didn't understand that you could be pardoned of guilt while still morally defiled. And they taught the way to be saved was to become holy and deal with all your moral defilement through different kinds of religion that you could be sanctified. And when you were purged of moral defilement, you could then be pardoned of guilt and counted righteous. But that, my friend, is not the gospel. The gospel is that you are forgiven of the guilt of sin entirely, even though you yourself are still morally defiled. And that then through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, now that you are in a right relationship with God, God deals with the moral defilement. But the glory of the gospel is that I am sinner and righteous at the same time. Simo eustis et peccatar, according to Luther. Sinful and just at the same time. I am still a sinner, and if at any point I had to count on my own precious holiness to be acceptable in God's sight, I would be cast away for eternity. But praise be unto God, I stand in the infinite sufficiency of my Savior. Do you understand what I'm talking about here? This is the Gospel. I sin. each day to my great shame. And yet my righteousness in God's sight is unchanged because my righteousness is seated at the right hand of God. So we have the pardon of sin, we have the non-imputation of sin, we have the imputation of righteousness. Are you feeling pretty wealthy right now? Hey, this isn't health, wealth, prosperity, garbage. This is spiritual riches through Jesus Christ. We also have peace of conscience. If I had to depend on my good works to be saved, I could never have peace of conscience. We have the throne of grace. If I had to depend on the fact that I was right in God's sight of my own self, I would never be able to come and pray because I'm always aware that I don't live up to God's standard. But in Christ, I can approach the throne of God. And so I have access through this grace wherein I stand. We have the Holy Spirit to comfort us and empower us. Have you blessed God lately for the gift of the Holy Spirit? You couldn't remain hopeful or peaceful or joyful one single second without the Holy Spirit of God. We have reconciliation. The Gospel doesn't just say, you may go, it says, you may come. It's not just you may go and not be executed, it's you may come. And we have adoption, the Bible says. We are adopted into the family of God. Can you imagine if someone was on death row and they were guilty of the crimes that they were charged with? And the judge himself showed up with a pardon. Wouldn't that be amazing? But imagine if, on the other hand, in addition to the pardon, he also had adoption papers. And he says, you're not just getting out of prison and off death row, you're coming home with me. That would be amazing, wouldn't it? How come we're not amazed with the gospel? Why aren't we shocked every single day with the gospel? I hope that we are. You know, when you know this gospel, you don't need the latest entertainment at church. You don't need the latest gadgets and methodology, and you don't need the pastor to make you feel special. Because you feel special enough when he preaches the gospel of the God who chose you, loved you, died for you, called you, and has eternally secured your salvation. That makes you feel pretty special, doesn't it? I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And 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. He gave Himself for me. This is amazing. Now, I want you to think about this. Christ, if He had died for one person, would have an infinite suffering. Because sin in its nature is against an infinite God. Jesus didn't have to die more to save 300 instead of 299. There is a sufficiency in atonement that is infinite in its power and its sufficiency. It is absolutely amazing. And the glory of that doctrine is this, that every bit of suffering was for you, specifically. It's not like part of the suffering was for you and part of it was for Brother Harold and part of it was for Dr. Kent and part of it was for somebody else. It all was for you. It is infinite, but it is because your guilt was infinite. If you had been the only elect child of God, he would have suffered the same thing. This is amazing. Makes me feel pretty special. Only by the grace of God. He loved us and gave himself for us. We have adoption. We have the glory of heaven before us. We don't just escape hell. We have the glory of heaven stretching out before us. And we have all things in providence working to our good. Every single thing that's going to happen tomorrow is for your good. Everything's been filtered through the hand of the loving, wise Trinity and is going to work for your sanctification and for the glory of God. That's pretty good to know as well. That makes me feel rich. You know, the Bible says that we are more than conquerors in Christ. What does it mean to be more than a conqueror? I mean, if you were a conqueror, wouldn't you be satisfied? But it says you're more than a conqueror. What does that mean? When a conqueror wins a battle, he took some losses. God's people never know losses because everything worked to our good. You know what that means? That doesn't just mean that everything that's ever happened to you happened for your good. It means that everything that has ever happened in the world is for your good. Why? Because your ultimate treasure is God. And because as He is glorified, your heart is filled. And because everything that ever happened in Europe 500 years ago, added to the glory of God, therefore everything that ever happened works to my good. Amen? Because God is glorified by all things. Because He works all things according to the counsel of His own will. Not some things, but all things according to the counsel of His own will. And I am blessed by that, my friend. And I don't just get heaven and the glory of God. But I also get a resurrection body someday. When Christ saved me, He didn't cut a deal with the devil and say, I'll take part, you take part. He redeemed me entire, soul and body. And someday He's going to raise me from the dead. And your loved ones who have died in Christ are going to receive a glorious resurrection in Christ. I know that life is tough, but if you can say tonight, even though your paycheck may have gone down, even though you don't know how you're going to pay your bills, if you can say tonight, of Him I am in Christ, who is made of God unto me, wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, then you're the richest person I know. Because you're rich in God's grace. It's a glorious gospel, is it not? This is why Paul can say the unsearchable riches of Christ. And I've got all the promises of God as well. You realize how much treasure you have in this Bible? I was reading John Bunyan the other day and he made this comment. He said, if somebody offers you all the wealth in the world to remove one promise from the Bible, a child of God wouldn't take it. You'd say, oh no, each one of those promises is too precious. You leave me in poverty and you leave me with the Word of God and you leave me with every single promise because they are all yea and amen in Jesus Christ. We have the promises of Almighty God in this Word. We need to search through it and pray them and believe them and trust them and learn them. But how often our Bible lays to the side and we live in spiritual poverty when we could be abounding in spiritual riches through the promises of God. So we've seen the designation of it, the unsearchable riches of Christ. We've seen the content of it, all these glorious things. Thirdly, we find, I want to talk about the procuring of it. How are these things procured for us? Well, we mentioned it a moment ago. Every time you find an inheritance, you find some long planning. If you're going to leave your children in inheritance, you've been planning, you've been saving, and God the Father, in eternity past, the Bible says that God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit made a covenant, and God the Father gave a people to Christ, and Christ agreed to go die for them, and the Holy Spirit was given in promise to Christ to draw the elect of God. This has been planned out from eternity past, and then in time, after the promises had been given all throughout the Old Testament, In time, Jesus Christ took on flesh. What does it mean for Jesus Christ to take on flesh? I'm like Brother Pruitt. I don't have that figured out yet. I do know what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that he ceased to be God. John Flavel said it this way, he didn't cease to be what he was, but he became what he was not. The incarnation didn't happen by subtraction. It happened by addition of a human nature to an already existing divine nature and brought under that divine person so that you have two complete natures in one glorious person. That is Jesus Christ taking on flesh. He became man so that he could suffer. Because God can't suffer. the death of the cross. So he became man that he could suffer, but he remained God that it might add an infinite dignity to the suffering that he underwent. And then he came under his own law. The lawmaker came under his own law. He was circumcised. He obeyed his parents. He did everything just right. John Bunyan put it this way. He said he had two righteousness. He already had one righteousness as God and he worked out a second one to give to us. Amen. Blessed be God for the righteousness of God that is imputed to our account through Jesus Christ. And then he endured that perfect suffering on the cross. Have you ever thought about that on the cross? Jesus Christ for you had earth and hell and heaven against him all at one time. He had earth against him. The people are spitting on him. They're mocking him. They're ridiculing him. He had hell against him. And he had the glory of heaven against him. The infinite weight of God's wrath bearing down upon him. Let me tell you, my friend, this is substitutionary atonement, not the ransom theory where Jesus pays the devil. He didn't pay the devil. He satisfied the wrath of God. There's a false doctrine out there that Jesus went... You've heard the little illustration about the boy with two birds walking along and the old pastor sees the boy with the two birds and he says, where are you going with those birds? He says, well, I'm going to torture them and kill them and pluck the feathers out and slowly maim them. And the pastor says, oh no, I'll give you this much money for it. And then the preacher says, this is what God did for you. Satan wants to destroy you and Jesus purchased you from the devil. No, he didn't. He purchased you from underneath the wrath of Almighty God. So that you're not only saved by God, you're saved from God. You're saved from His wrath by His mercy. That is an incredible substitutionary atonement. This is not the little modern church gospel. This is something big. This is something significant. This is something sufficient that you can base your life on. And on the cross, every attribute of God was against Jesus. God's justice was against Jesus. God's wrath and holiness and righteousness was against Jesus. And God's truth was even against Jesus on the cross. Because God had promised salvation to his elect, so that God's truth even was against Christ on the cross. And God's mercy was against Christ on the cross. Because he would have mercy on his elect, he would punish the substitute. My friend, when God's mercy is against you, That's serious business, isn't it? And God's mercy even was against our substitute. So that Jesus, you know, I love the distinction. I think Calvin really popularized this understanding of the threefold office of Christ. The prophet and the priest and the king. And I love to think about that priesthood. Because in his priesthood, Jesus wasn't just the priest. He was also the offering. He offered up himself. And he wasn't just the priest and the offering, he was himself the altar upon which the offering was slain. You know how in the New Testament it says the altar gives virtue to the gift? The gift in and of itself is nothing until it's laid on the altar. And the human suffering of Jesus is offered upon the infinite divine nature so that there's an infinite value to that human suffering so that it can pardon the vilest iniquity. I know sometimes if you're like me and you go to looking at yourself, You get pretty discouraged, don't you? And you start thinking, how on earth is God going to save somebody like me? How am I going? How can I possibly be saved after all that I've done and the lies that I've told and the lies that I've lived? How can I be right in God's sight but one look away at Christ? And you'll be like Spurgeon. You won't be miserable anymore. When you look at Christ, And you see Him, that's why they say, one of the old Puritans said, for every look at self, you better take ten looks at Christ. You go looking at self too much, you'll get discouraged. But if you keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, He will bring peace. In fact, doesn't the Bible say, they looked on Him and were lightened? Brothers and sisters, if you look at yourself, you'll be frightened. But if you look at Him, you'll be lightened. Blessed be God for the glorious Gospel. And then Jesus Christ not only died on the cross suffering the wrath of God, being the prophet, priest, and king, and being the priest, and the altar, and the sacrifice, but then the Bible tells us that he rose again, and he ascended to the right hand of God, and he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him, because he ever lives to make intercession for them. Theologians call all of this the humiliation and the exaltation of Christ. The humiliation of Christ, that He humbled Himself and became obedient to the cross, and the exaltation of Christ, He has been exalted to the right hand of God. And my friend, let me tell you tonight, we are saved by works. By the works of Jesus Christ. The covenant of grace requires the same thing that the covenant of works required. The covenant of works required perfect obedience, perpetual obedience. And the covenant of grace requires perfect obedience, perpetual obedience. Here's the difference. The covenant of works required personal obedience. The covenant of grace gives a substitute. So that the obedience of Jesus Christ is my salvation. Now, we talked about the designation of it, the unsearchable riches of Christ. We talked about the content of it, all these glorious things and the procuring of it through the suffering of Christ. Number four, I want to talk about the appropriation of it. How are these things appropriated in the life of the child of God? The Bible says that we are saved by grace through faith. Faith doesn't add anything to Christ. Faith isn't a good work. Because faith is a gift from God. I was reading today where John Bunyan said that he went to his first observance of the Lord's Supper and he said, God gave me such a clear sight of the death of Jesus for my sins that I felt such comfort and I saw that I was plunged into the virtue of that death. Have you had that faith look to Christ where you saw yourself plunged into the virtue of the death of Christ so that His death was your death? You know what repentance is? Repentance is owning the fact that you are a beggar! That you are bankrupt! It's admitting the fact! That I deserve death and hell. I have no merit to bring to God. The saints have no merit for me to bring to God. The Virgin Mary has no merit for me to bring to God. I am a wretched, vile sinner and deserve infinite, eternal condemnation, suffering under the wrath of God. So that like Scourge said, if I myself were God, my first order of business would be to cast somebody like me into hell. And owning all of that, owning my bankruptcy, And then faith is going out of ourself to the riches of Christ. As John Calvin said, he is our full perfection in whom we must fully rest. Have you rested? completely in Christ. Again, faith is not a work. It is not a merit. You can't merit the merits of Christ. Faith is an emptying grace, a going out of self, a coming to God for everything. Faith is a gift from God, and faith is a gift from God because of the cross. Because Jesus lived up to his part of the covenant, He can claim by rights the salvation of all of his elect and God saves because of the cross so that everything you've got comes from the cross. It's not the cross plus my faith. It is my faith because of the cross. It is everything from the cross. God gets all the glory. It is given unto us on the behalf of Christ to believe. And we have obtained like precious faith. through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is a gift of God rewarding Christ. That is the appropriation of it. And then finally, the proclamation of it. What a privilege it is to preach the gospel. The world hates a true preacher, but a true preacher is a savor, sweet-smelling savor to God. As we preach the gospel, there's a sweet savor. The world thinks you stink. But it is a privilege to preach the gospel. William Carey's son, Felix, became an ambassador to India. It's a high office, something most fathers would be very proud of. And William Carey said, Felix has dribbled into an ambassador because he went from preaching the gospel to being an ambassador. He dribbled into an ambassador. God may say to us like Isaiah, go and preach until judgment come and you'll never see any results, but it is still a privilege to preach the gospel of Christ. Amen. You say, brother, I haven't done any good in my preaching. I haven't seen a lot of conversions lately. Oh, but it has been to the glory of God, because God is going to be glorified both in those He saves by His grace and in those that are even more inexcusable than they were. And God's justice is going to be magnified through your preaching, either in the salvation of His elect or in the condemnation of the non-elect. And as John Bunyan, but he said this, whether to heaven or hell your soul tends, God gets the glory in the end. And so you're preaching as a sweet smelling savor, whether of life and the life or death and the death, what a privilege it is to preach the gospel and what a gospel it is we have to preach. You ever notice in the Old Testament when Abraham sent out his servant Eleazar to go and find a wife for Isaac, all Eleazar did is went and presented the riches of Isaac to the bride-to-be. He just went and said, my master's wealthy, look here and come with me. And all we have to do is go out and preach the riches of Christ. We don't have to go beg people to come to Jesus. We don't have to go out and use manipulation to get them to come to Jesus. We don't have to be more eloquent than the next guy. We don't have to be a more powerful speaker than the next guy. We have to present the riches of Christ to the lost and dying world and trust in the Spirit of God to apply it. We are to preach Christ, not the church. Not the glory of the denomination, not the history of our church. We are to preach Jesus, His story, not my story. So what does this mean for us tonight by way of application? First of all, don't settle for anything short of Christ. Don't settle for a church that does the ordinances right. Settle for nothing short of Jesus for your own. Lay hold of Christ by faith. Don't trust in reputation as someone who knows a lot. Don't trust in intelligence or gospel doctrine even. You must have Christ. I love doctrine as much as the next guy. But you can have all the right doctrine and still go to hell, right? Because you can have a head knowledge. The doctrine are the signs that point us to Jesus, but you must come to Jesus. Only by the gift of God does somebody come to Jesus, but you must come to Jesus. Jesus Christ is salvation. Remember when Simeon held Jesus in his arms and he said, now I have seen thy salvation. Jesus is salvation. And we look to him and we trust him. So don't settle for anything short of Christ alone. Number two, with Christ be satisfied. Be satisfied with Jesus. You say, I don't have the job I want. No, but if you got Jesus, you got more than the world can ever afford. You say, well, I don't have the family situation that I want. You've got Jesus. You say, I don't have the wealth that I want, or I don't have the religious heritage I want, or I don't have the ministry that I want. You have Jesus. Jesus is enough. You know, Jesus satisfies the infinite heart of God, the Father. Remember what God the Father said when He looked upon Christ after Christ had lived for 33 years? He says, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. God the Father with His infinite ability to be satisfied was satisfied with an infinite Christ. If Christ can satisfy the heart of God, I'm guessing He can satisfy your heart too. So be satisfied with Christ. Study the Word of God. You know what this book is? This is a will made over to the elect so that everything hears about your inheritance. You know, if you went to hear somebody's inheritance read that you didn't have any part in, it'd be kind of boring, wouldn't it? I mean, if you went to somebody else's house and heard all they were getting, it would be boring lawyer talk, all these technical terms and all these lengthy paragraphs, making sure everything was stated rightly. You would hate it and despise it. But if it's the will of your Ancestor being read. And you are the beneficiary of it. It changes things, doesn't it? So the world comes to church and they just hear somebody else's will being read. Because they don't have any personal union with Christ. They just hear something else. And it's just disgusting. It's boring. It's sickening. They're ready to go. They come to church. Have you ever felt like sometimes that church members come to church for the sole purpose of leaving? From the time they walk in. They're looking out. We used to put the clock up on the outside of the church so the people could get to church on time. Now we've got it inside the church so the preacher, you know, so they get out on time Sunday for the Sunday afternoon meal. But when you're listening to your will being read, to the promises God has made to you, man, it's exciting. And you love it. So study the Word of God. Number four, look forward to heaven. Be content to be the off-scouring of the world. Be content to be incognito here below. Nobody recognizes you as a prince or a princess of God. Be content to be despised by the world, because when you get to heaven, like J.C. Ryle said, you will find out that you were neither unexpected nor will you be unwelcome. You have a glorious inheritance in heaven, so look forward to that. Live off of the future by faith looking to things that are eternal and not by sight looking to things that are temporal. Number five, give all the glory to God. Look what Paul says in verse seven. Paul says that he was made a minister by the effectual working of the power of God. Give all the glory to God. Paul says, by the grace of God I am what I am. Give the glory to God for everything you are. Number five or six, I don't know where I'm at. Recognize the depravity of man. Because if this gospel is so glorious, it tells you right quickly that the reason people don't come to it and don't believe it and hate it and persecute it is because they are, brother, totally depraved. The problem is not with the gospel that we preach. The problem is with the people that we preach to. The problem is with us. We are depraved. The reason I heard the gospel as a child and continued in sin is because I was depraved. If I had had eyes to see, it is too glorious to reject. There is irresistible grace when God removes the blinders from your eyes and you see the glories of Christ, you are saved. But apart from the sovereign work of the Spirit of God, you are totally depraved. So that a preacher can say, if our gospel be hid, it is hid from those whom the God of this world hath blinded their eyes, lest they see the glories of Christ and believe they're blinded, they're totally depraved. The gospel, my friend, is glorious. Don't be ashamed of it. And then number seven, pity those who are without Christ. Sometimes we just go through the world when only God can save. But I sure wish I could be more like Whitfield and look at a lost and dying world with tears streaming down my eyes as I preach Jesus. We need to pity those who are without Christ. I remember one time reading about a preacher who year after year preached the gospel, preached the gospel with passion and love and compassion. Somebody said to him one time, they said, how is it that year after year you stand up and keep preaching the gospel? He said, because every time I walk through that pulpit, I stop and remember what I was without Christ. You remember the rock from whence you were hewn. You remember that without Christ you were dead in trespasses and sin. And without His grace tonight, and by the way, we don't just say, there go I, but for the grace of God. The doctrines of grace preachers know, there goes I, but for the grace of God. If it wasn't for God's grace tonight, I would still be a blasphemer. I would still be a drug addict. I would still be an alcoholic. I would be hopelessly lost for eternity. There goes I but for the grace of God. Bless the name of the Lord Most High tonight for His sovereign saving grace and for the unsearchable riches of Christ and then go to our churches tomorrow ready to preach Jesus Christ who is Himself the Gospel. Let's preach Jesus. Preach Christ, Christ, Christ. And then have it put on your tombstone if need be. Preach Jesus.