I wish to state that this week has been a tremendous blessing to me personally, especially to be able to renew old acquaintances and to make new acquaintances, enjoy this time of spiritual fellowship around the word of God. I certainly rejoice in the perseverance of this church in the faith and of your pastor. and encourage you to hold him up in prayer because you are a privileged people to have him to minister the Word of God to you from week to week. Because so many churches today do not have men who are faithful to the Word, and there are so many places where people are hungry for the Word and can't find churches where it's preached. So you are a blessed people, and one of the surest evidences of God's favor toward a people is to give them pastors after his own heart. We love your pastor dearly and rejoice always in our remembrance of him. I want you to open your Bible, please, to the book of Philippians, chapter 3. By the help of God's Spirit, I want to speak on the subject conformity to the death of Christ. I'm sure that we've all heard messages on conformity to his life, but I want to look at the subject of conformity to his death. and we read in verse 10, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death. The third chapter of the book of Philippians is within itself a classic. In this passage of scripture we have covered various subjects and the whole area of man's salvation. For example, in the first part, the Apostle Paul gives us a warning against legalists who would bind us down to systems and standards of men that do not conform to the Word of God. He says in verse 2, Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision, For we are the circumcision which worship God in spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." The warning here is against the confidence that one puts in the flesh for salvation, his own personal works rather than the grace of God. The Apostle then illustrates this by his own pedigree, pointing out that if anyone had an occasion to be confident in the flesh, it was he. for he was circumcised on the eighth day. He was of the stock of Israel, and as rarely known by many, he knew of the tribe from which he was born, the tribe of Benjamin. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews and a Pharisee in his earlier profession. In his zeal for his religion, he persecuted the Church and by the outward standard of the law. As he was measured in the eyes of men, he was without blame. However, all this he counted to be nothing, refuse to be thrown away on the dunghill, that he might win Christ and be found not in his own righteousness, but in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. Then in the second part of the chapter, he warns us against the sensualists, those who would take upon themselves the opposite spirit, that is, of antinomianism, and would say that the grace of God was an occasion to liberty to sin all the more because our sins had been pardoned and our own personal works do not enter into the matter of our own justification. And so he says in verses 16 following, Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk, as ye have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping. They are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. Also in this same chapter, the Apostle Paul gives us the whole subject of salvation from its past to its future consummation. setting forth first of all the great doctrine of our salvation from the penalty of sin in our justification in the ninth verse, where he says, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. And then secondly, the present aspect of man's salvation in his deliverance from the dominating power of sin in sanctification, where he says in verses fourteen following, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many be perfect, that is, mature, not sinless, but as be mature, be thus minded. And if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule." That is, let every one of us individually walk by the same rule of the word of God in the matter of our progressive daily sanctification. And having set forth our sanctification, he then turns to the future aspect of salvation, our deliverance from the very presence of sin in our glorification. For in verses 20 and 21 he says, Our conversation is in heaven, from which also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." This passage of Scripture, this classical passage of Scripture in the book of Philippians, was of such importance in the thinking of that great and sweet Puritan, Thomas Matton, that he preached a multiplicity of sermons from it that cover an entire body. the reading of which I recommend to each of you that you might become better acquainted with the depth of the subject matter which the Apostle covers in these verses. However, I want us to concentrate on one thought, and that is conformity to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Apostle Paul, now as an aged Christian, as a man who had traveled far down the road of personal sanctification, says, not with reference merely to his salvation, but as he nears the end of his sojourn, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death. Even there, the Apostle Paul was still saying, that which is my major objective in life is to know the Lord Jesus Christ, to know Him more intimately, to enter into a greater relationship with Him, although I have known Him for years in my salvation. And in this, the power of His resurrection, as that power of the resurrected Christ works in my own life, and then to enter into fellowship with His sufferers. suffering in like manner, to fill up those sufferings that are ordained for His mystical body, which the members of that body must experience as God has planned, for their full conformity to the image of the Son of God in all this being made ever conformable unto His death. Now, in spite of the various categories into which men are divided, there are only two basic categories into which all fall. Men are either in the realm of grace, or they are else in the realm of rebellion. Men are else the children of God, or they are the children of Satan. Men have either been saved and so under the favor of God, or else they are lost and under the wrath of God. There's no halfway house that a person can come to and say, well, I'm about saved and about lost. I'm straddling the fence. Whichever way the strongest puff of wind blows is the way I shall topple. In other words, what is the main movement of the day will determine which way I go. You are distinctly in the realm of rebellion against God, no matter how religious, if you have not surrendered unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ, or else you're in the realm of Greece. I sometimes get a great deal of information out of reading men who are not Christian. but rather are men who are set in opposition against Christianity because our critics are often those that can look most squarely at our situation and come out with an appraisal that we need to understand. We're so close to the home base that we're so often prejudiced that we miss the whole meaning of the truth. And one particular writing, a writer that I always can turn to with freshness is an atheistic existentialist out of France by the name of Albert Camus, spelled C-A-M-U-S. Now he, prior to his death, had written many plays and stories and novels as well, as one book entitled The Rebel, in which he sets forth his own philosophy of unbelief and atheism. However, when you read this man, you begin to wonder, is he speaking as a Christian or as an unbeliever? And if you didn't know better, you would think at times that he was a hard-nosed Christian who was speaking to us far more effectively than any preacher we've ever heard. For example, in his book entitled The Rebel, he himself says there are only two worlds in which man exists. the two words that I've used for my own distinction, the world of grace and the world of rebellion. Then he describes the world of grace as that being made up of Christians who have truly been converted by the grace of God, and so who believe in God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Then there is the world of rebellion. Outside of Christianity, the whole world is that that he describes as a world in rebellion against the God of Christianity. However, eventually, after hard-nosedly describing these two worlds, he then states that he himself is in the world of rebellion. Now, he was, what we call in the realm of philosophy, epistemologically consistent. That is, he knew where his own ideas were taking him. He understood himself, and he understood what he believed, and he knew what the consequences were going to be. And so he goes on to describe himself as a man who is alienated from God, who cannot believe in God, and who cannot find any meaning whatsoever within the universe. Because of his existentialism, nothing is related to anything else, but everything is disconnected, and so like a junk heap upon which everything has been deposited without any purpose whatsoever. And he said, if I could find one single fact in the universe that I could interpret as having meaning outside of the Christian interpretation, then I could be saved. If I could find one meaning in my world, one meaning in my world of rebellion, in one fact, isolated from the Christian faith, then I could be saved. I could live. I could have hope. I could have meaning in my life. But because Albert Camus could not find in his world, isolated from God, alienated from the grace of God in rebellion against the God of heaven and of earth. He went out and consistently got into his fast, powerful sports car, drove it down a French road and up a telephone pole, and killed himself. A wealthy man, a man of fame in the heyday of his life. But he saw where his philosophy drove him, and because he could not find the world of grace in his world of rebellion, there was no reason to live. I'm telling you that the average person today simply lives because he adapts himself to the opinions of society, rather than following consistently his rebellion against God. But our only hope is in the world of grace, and the only entrance into the world of grace is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, if we are going to enter into that world, we must be concerned, as was the Apostle Paul, not only in the commencement of our Christian life, but throughout the whole of that Christian life, that we are conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus. Now, I'm going to deal with only two thoughts this evening. First of all, in answering what it is to be conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, the principles on which the death of Christ proceed, and secondly, the ends which the death of Christ accomplished. And out of this, see how it is that we ourselves are conformed to it. Now, the substance of the gospel The heart of the gospel is found in the word substitution. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, learn the meaning of substitution and you know the meaning of the gospel. Miss the meaning of substitution and you miss the meaning of the gospel. Now, if I use the word substitute and substitution outside of the pulpit, you know exactly what I mean. For example, I have been royally entertained by this church this week, for which I am indeed grateful. And without any problem I have made it known I want a sugar substitute, and you haven't brought me an ear of corn in the place of it. You haven't given me a turnip root instead. You have brought me some kind of a cyclamate that I can use as a sweetener. You knew what I meant. Yet when we begin to talk about the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ, then it seems that our minds just tune out. We draw a blank. Why? Because it's coming from the pulpit. Why? Because it's in reference to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we mean exactly the same thing. Here I stand in Adam the first. a condemned and lost sinner, under the judgment of God, helpless to deliver myself. As long as I stand here, I am an object of God's wrath. The only way that I can get out of this situation, be delivered from this mess, is by something being substituted for me and me substituted for something. And so the Lord Jesus Christ comes down and stands in my place. Now, you know, two people cannot stand in the same place at the same time. And so in His grace, He roots me out of my place, and He stands there, and He endures my punishment in my place and on my account. But when he roots me out, he roots me over into his place, and there I stand in his righteousness, being treated by God as God would have treated him all the while. Now let me try and illustrate this, and I'm using an illustration that I oftentimes use with children or people who have never been introduced to the gospel of God's grace and the principle of substitution. So don't take it that I'm being a little bit arrogant with you or otherwise, because I know that from the many years of faithful ministry you have an idea of the concept of what I'm talking about. But this, I believe, it will nail it down in your heart so that you'll always remember this. And I borrowed this many, many, many years ago from the late Donald Gray Barnhouse in his little book of stick men called Teaching the Word of Truth, where he designed to teach children by drawing little circles in stick men. And he had a chart in there, and I looked at that chart, and I said, there is the illustration of substitution. Now, I want you to draw this chart at least in your mind. I want you to have a blank sheet of paper there. In other words, I want us to be good disciples of the English Enlightenment philosopher, Locke. Now, I don't follow his philosophy at all. I think it's terrible. I think he ruined American education, and I think that his philosophy is about the worst thing you can ever get a hold of. But he conceived of man being born into the world with a tabula rasa, that is, his mind was a blank page. And then the fountain pen of experience began writing upon it, and that's the way you learn things. Well, we're not born with a blank page. We are born with the image of God stamped upon it, and every one of us are born knowing we are creatures and that God is our Creator. We just don't like it. So we go off all of our lives creating other Creators and other experiences to crowd this, off that page where God has indelibly stamped it. But I want you to take a blank page now, and I want you to draw across the top of that page a line. a horizontal line, and above that line write these words, Be ye perfect, for I am perfect. In other words, a holy and a righteous and a perfect God cannot require of His creature anything less than total perfection. To do so would be less than God. Therefore, God must require of us that we reflect His image. that we live up to our original creation and that we be like Him in all things. Now, let's look then through history and see if we can search out and find one single person who has done that. And I'm sure that you and I can come up with at least one Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So out to the left-hand column, I want you to draw a perpendicular line down the page, and at the top I want you to put 100% righteousness. And then write the name Jesus Christ, because you have to admit that He was perfect in all His ways. He has 100% righteousness. He knew no sin, He never committed sin, He obeyed the law of God perfectly all the days of His life. Now, to the right of that line, inside, I want you now to think of the very best person you've ever known or ever heard of, whoever that person may be. Now, how good are they? Are they as perfect as the Lord Jesus Christ? Are they as righteous as God Himself? Could they ever stand before God in their own works? Of course you know better. They never could. Well, how good are they? You say, well, they were pretty good. I'd say they were good and righteous 90% of their lives. All right, run a line up, but not all the way to the top. 90% of the way up and put a 90% over the top of that. And then we come next to persons that are not quite as good, but pretty good people. And I want you to run a line up 75% and write 75% over that. And then you come to the average person, you know, of the urbanite, the good old average urbanite. What are you going to give him? Fifty percent suits me. Run a line up fifty percent of the way and give that good old urbanite that goes to church every Sunday with a hangover from Saturday night fifty percent. We'll give him fifty percent. And so we're now on our way. Now we get down to the real nitty gritty. Here are the preachers and the song leaders and choir directors and, well, we'll run the line up and give them about twenty percent. Now, you know Bob McNeil doesn't deserve any more than twenty percent. Maybe Rod would get twenty-two percent. They couldn't get much more than that, so give them twenty percent. That's a good round number. And then we come to the old down-and-outs, those who live in the city center, and we'll give them ten percent, you see. Now, we've got the whole gamut. And as we stand back and look at our charts, being perfect, even as I am perfect, what is it that you notice about every single line, without exception? What is the one outstanding thing with those lines inside of that chart? Do any of them measure up to that outside line that we gave to Jesus Christ, one hundred percent? No. Without exception, all of them fail to connect with the top line of absolute perfection. So inside there write these words, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But one line connects. Every line falls short. No matter if you've even hit the target, you never get close to the bull's-eye. As we stand back and look at that, we then see that the wages of sin is death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. How many sins? Ten percent. One percent. for a holy God demands total satisfaction for one percent of sin as well as zero percent of righteousness. Sin is against an infinite God, and an infinite God must mete out an infinite punishment on the account of sin. But as we stand back and look at the chart, we're not totally in despair because there is at least one 100 percent that belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the principle of substitution is this, and this is the principle of the death of Christ, that you renounce your 90 percent. You renounce your seventy-five percent, you renounce your fifty percent, you renounce your twenty percent, get way on down to the bottom, even if you've got five percent, renounce that five percent, go down yonder to the foot of the class, and take a zero, nothing more than a zero. Stand before God as a totally ruined sinner, with no righteousness. And when you go to the foot of the class, The Lord Jesus Christ steps down to the zero, and He takes one hundred percent of the wrath of God upon Himself against our unrighteousness, and then substitutes you into His place and puts you over here under the one hundred percent. Now, the only way you can get under the one hundred percent is to come up from zero, because it must be the gift of God. And if there is a single one percent of righteousness that you hang on to, that you cling to, that you want as your own for salvation, saying, at least allow me this, God says no. You want that one percent, that five percent, that twenty percent, I'll deal with you in terms of that, but you'll be locked up under that declaration for all if sin didn't keep right on coming short of that standard I require. Go to the foot of the class and you'll go to the head of the class. The only way the Lord Jesus Christ will exchange places with a sinner is a total exchange, whereby you must receive His total righteousness. in which he receives your total sin and guilt, and then pays the sin debt in full. Now, that's the principle of the death of Christ on which it proceeds. And I want you to see three or four things by which we ourselves can be conformed to that, how we can be made conformable to his death. That is, by the acceptation of these principles. which means, first of all, that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ presupposes that we ourselves deserve to die. If I go down to the zero, to the foot of the class, am I not in so doing saying in so many words, I have no righteousness except filthy, contaminated, defiled rags in the sight of God? Therefore, because of my unrighteousness, I deserve death." The very fact that God sent forth His Son into the world was a judgment against the world that men are worthy of death. Therefore, to be conformed to the image or to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ means that we accept this principle. as being true with reference to ourselves. We see the sentence of death against ourselves. We see that we deserve the execution that was administered the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. So when I am conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, I accept God's verdict in Christ's death. against myself. Do you know what repentance is? The more I study the word repentance, the more comforting it becomes, the bigger it becomes, and the sweeter it becomes. The word repentance, metanoia, means a change of mind, of course. That's what the two Greek words metanoia means. But it means simply more than just changing your mind about something and going on your way. It means that you change your mind so that you come over onto God's side in judgment against yourself. You accept God's verdict. You say what God says about man's condition and about the method of salvation. Until you learn to say what God has said, you have not repented. When God thunders down from Mount Sinai, Pharaoh Griswold, you have transgressed my law. There is a spirit of repentance. I echo that. Yea, Lord, Pharaoh Griswold has transgressed thy law. And when that Mount Sinai quakes under my feet and says, Pharaoh Griswold, thou deservest to die. There is repentance. I answer back, Yea, Lord, I deserve to die. When that law comes to me written in bronze and says, You cannot keep my precepts, your only hope is in Christ, and I point to Him as a schoolmaster, I come back and say, Yea, Lord, only Christ is my hope. He alone has fulfilled the righteousness of the law in my stead." In the second place, not only does the death of the Lord Jesus Christ presuppose that we deserve to die. You certainly don't think for one moment that Christ deserved to die. But His death was a declaration of our deservedness. But in the second place, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ presupposes that sin is exceedingly sinful. Sin is exceedingly sinful. As a matter of fact, sin is so sinful that when the Apostle Paul, in writing the Roman Epistle, was searching out a definition to define sin for us, to describe it for us, the Holy Spirit found only one definition, and that is, you can define sin only by self. And so the Apostle speaks of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, describes it in its own terms, the sinfulness of sin. Now, when we are conformed to the death of Christ, for if sin were not exceedingly sinful, if God could arbitrarily dismiss it and turn His back upon it and say, Oh, that doesn't matter, I have a heart so filled with love that I must take you to myself in spite of your sin. Oh, no. The exceeding sinfulness of sin demanded that if God manifest that love to us, that Jesus Christ had to die. If sin is not that sinful, why should then he have died? There are two basic words that describe sin in the New Testament. There is the word anomia and the next word harmatia. Now, a Christian can never be guilty of anomia. But he's guilty every day of his life of armatia. Armatia means lawlessness. It's that rebel that Camus writes about in his philosophical dissertation. Now, a child of God can never live as a rebel against God. Oh, he may find his heart arguing with God about his terms, but he never rebels against God. Now, hamatia means to miss the mark. It means you draw back with your bow, and you shoot your arrow, and you miss the whole target. You never hit it. That's the way we go through life, missing the target. But we go through life continuing to aim at it, and we get closer to it. And bless God, one day, when Christ comes again, we're going to hit it right bull's-eye, right in the center. No perfection in this life. We'll never be without sin here. We'll miss the mark. Therefore, sin is never simply imperfection resulting from lack of development in an evolutionary process that doesn't exist. Or finitude, that is, just simply being a creature. The angels are creatures. When we get to heaven, we're still going to be creatures. Now, there was a woman down south, got awfully upset when she found out she was not going to become an angel when she died. She just counted on the fact that she was going to have wings, going to be on a cloud and strum a harp. She got awfully upset when she was told it wasn't so. I'll tell you, I'd get awfully upset if I was told it was so. I don't want to float on a cloud. I don't want to strum on a harp either. I want to be who I am in the presence of the sovereign Son of God throughout all eternity. No, it's not being a creature. It's not lack. It's not the environment. But sin, basically, is guilt incurred from rebellion against God. Which means, then, when we are conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, we see sin in its true nature. We see that sin must be punished. That is, either in the person of a substitute or else in our own person. And we accept God's definition. of sin, and so we hate it and repent on the account of it. In the third place, then, the death of Christ not only presupposes that God has judged us worthy of death, and that because of the sinfulness of sin, but His death presupposes that there is nothing, absolutely nothing in all our doings, nor our sufferings, that could furnish a ground of our salvation. Now, it's a whole lot harder to get men to see that than it is to see sin, because people everywhere are in trouble. But people, no matter how much in trouble, don't want to give up their own righteousness, their own goodness, their religion, their false gods. Therefore, we must hammer away. And if you're ever saved, you'll come with nothing in your hands, clinging only to the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. You could save yourself if God regarded your personal doings. Why should Christ have ever come? With the Apostle Paul, we count all things lost. We might win the righteousness of the Son of God. Therefore, we are conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ when we accept this principle, not only that we deserved to die. Not only that we deserve to die because of the sinfulness of sin, not only that sin is a guilt and rebellion deserves the full wrath of God, but when we accept the fact that we ourselves cannot please God, we cannot save ourselves, and so we renounce all our own righteousness to be found in His righteousness as His gift. And then, fourthly, The death of the Lord Jesus Christ presupposes that for mercy to be exercised in a way consistent with the honor of God, it required the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. Now, God is absolutely and unconditionally sovereign. I believe that with all my heart. I believe that God is so sovereign and self-sufficient and independent that he doesn't need a single one of you, nor me, who are here in this place tonight. I believe that God in his self-sufficiency did not need to create the world, but he did so out of his own will. But once God had determined to save A sinner, one single sinner. Because God is infinitely holy, that sinner must be saved consistent with his own holy nature. Therefore, God could not save him short of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. That's vitally important. That does not limit the sovereignty of God. Now that sweet-scotch Puritan by the name of Rutherford, along with that Puritan giant of theology, Thomas Goodwin, were so careful to protect the sovereignty of God that in their writings they advocated that if God had chosen to save sinners other than through the sacrifice and substitutionary work of Christ, he could have done so. It's not a matter of what he could have done, it's what's consistent with his own nature. Then his work on the satisfaction of Christ later changed to the title The Atonement. Author W. Pink, in his early chapters, picked up this theme only to bring him to confusion where you feel him bouncing back and forth in those early chapters until later he settles down, shows the absolute necessity of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the salvation of sinners. I believe that God in His sovereignty knew what His justice demanded in the salvation of the sinner. Therefore, willfully and deliberately choosing to save a people, He moved in terms with the demands of that justice, and sent forth His only begotten Son to satisfy that justice by His own obedience and His death. Therefore, to be conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ means that we accept the substitutionary sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary as the only means whereby God will save sinners. Any person who does not bow the knee That gospel principle has not been conformed to the death of Christ and is a stranger to salvation. Now secondly, and lastly, very hurriedly, let's look not only at the principles of the death to which we can be conformed, but the ends which Christ accomplished to which we also can be conformed. Now there is that which is peculiar and unique to the Lord Jesus Christ in his death, but much in that which we ourselves can be conformed to. For example, in the first place, the Lord Jesus Christ satisfied divine justice and so secured the salvation of his people. You and I cannot do that. With all our sufferings and the combined deaths of all, God's creation could not bring about one iota of satisfaction to His infinitely holy justice. But we can be conformed to that by believing that truth. In believing that truth for ourselves, propagating that truth unto others. Therefore, we are conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ when we ourselves receive that blessed truth and then are shut up to it to propagate this as the gospel of salvation. Secondly, the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil. He alone can effectively do that, but in so doing, he reinstituted, according to Hebrews chapter one, along with a great commission, the original creation mandate or charter that was given to man originally as the image-bearer of God to subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it. Therefore, as Adam I was created God's prophet, to think God's thoughts after him, to name things and classify them scientifically in terms of God's creative classifications. As Adam, as the prophet, was to deliver God's message to the whole of creation, we as prophets under the covenant of grace now labor to say what God has said in every area of life, leaving no area of life neutral, but saying in our declarations, And this belongs to Christ. So we set out seeking to interpret our own personal lives in terms of God's pre-interpretation. And then we seek to branch out from that to interpret our family life in terms of God's pre-interpretation of the family. Then we move out into other areas, the system of education, to interpret that in terms of God's truth. and then into the realm of business, and into the realm of politics, and into the realm of the church, and into the realm of personal relations, never leaving any ground neutral, claiming all for the Son of God. And secondly, we have been reinstituted as priests, wherein we are to lift up all things to the honor of God in worship of Him who alone is worthy of that worship. On one occasion someone approached John Calvin and said to him, Mr. Calvin, if it should be revealed to you that your name is not recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life and that you're not among the elect of God, then what would you do? And John Calvin replied by saying, I would continue to serve God as zealously as I have ever served Him and that He alone is worthy. Then God has made us His vice-regents or His under kings in this world, to branch out in terms of divine truth, to exercise dominion. And as Adam was to use the Garden of Eden which God gave unto him as the model and the workshop and the blueprint for the exploitation of the rest of the creation prior to the time of his fall, so we are to look into God's holy word, regulate the whole of life. in terms of biblical truth. For there is nothing that God is silent upon, for all things have been created in terms of His in-created meaning for that existence. Therefore, we are conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ when we move out in terms of His conquest over Satan in that death, not willing to surrender this world unto Him. And then finally, in His death, the Lord Jesus Christ died to save sinners. Paul says this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Now, you and I cannot save sinners. But it does mean that, first of all, we can search our hearts, make our own calling and election sure, and therefore make certain our own salvation in terms of the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus. Then, once we have certified our own faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, move out with that gospel bearing witness to those round about us, inviting men to flee from the wrath to come. Run to the Lord Jesus Christ and find in Him a refuge from that overwhelming judgment that is just yonder before us. And oh, may God give us the grace to do that, and may God give to you that are yet outside of Christ an open heart to receive His message, that you might look away from yourself, away from your feelings, away from your doubts, away from your unworthiness, and look to the worthiness that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. You shall never be worthy. Only Christ is worthy. There's a man in our congregation there in Birmingham who has faith for me. He's on the very verge of death, and I have witnessed to him until I have nothing else to say. He has faithfully sat under my ministry and supported it for twenty years. He's yet unregenerate and lost. When I talk about Christ and salvation personally, he says, well, preacher, I'm just not worthy. I cannot get him to see that man's worthiness is in Christ, for Christ alone is worthy. Therefore, when I come before the Lord God Almighty, I plead his mercy, not on the account of my worthiness, but on the account of my sin. I say, Father, look at me. You know more than anyone else in all the world what a great sinner I am. Look how great my sins are. And then I plead like the psalmist David. It's on the account of these sins. It's because of their greatness that I ask for mercy, for salvation. If I'm not a sinner, I don't need mercy. If I'm not miserable, I don't need God's favor. Look at me. You know. And then accept me, not because of who I am. but because you're so pleased with your son, and you love everything that he's ever said, and everything that he's ever done, and everything that he is in the essence of his being. And I cling to him, and I plead my acceptance on the grounds of his acceptance. For the Apostle Paul has said that we are made accepted in the Beloved. Our Father, we thank Thee for the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ. Speak to the hearts of sinners, show them their lost condition, bring them to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as they turn outside of themselves to a righteousness yonder gained by His obedience rather than theirs wherein they are saved by Thy grace and not by their merits. Lord, strengthen the faith of Thine own people through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.