From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: We're considering at the moment the words found in Paul's epistle to the Romans in chapter 10, verses 14 to 17: "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."

We are examining at the moment, you remember, verses 14 and 15, where the apostle shows us how the message of salvation becomes known to mankind. Here is what I've called the general call of the gospel, and his argument is that God's way of making this message known or extending this call is through preaching, and that to that end he calls and sends men to preach this message of salvation.

Now having considered therefore the calling and the sending of the preacher, we have started considering the message of the preacher, the message that is heralded and proclaimed by these men whom God sends in this way. And we began our consideration of the message last Friday night by saying that the message obviously is about him. "How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?" Therefore, obviously, the message of the preacher is a message about him.

And I indicated there that it means that it is a message primarily, obviously, about the Lord Jesus Christ, as to his person and as to the facts concerning him. That, of course, is what you get recorded in the gospel. That is why the gospels come first in the New Testament. "This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ," says Matthew. They all say something similar, and they start by telling us who he is, and then they give us these vital, crucial facts in connection with him.

And I do want again to underline this question of the facts: his birth, the manner of his birth, the way he was born, his teaching, his miracles, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his manifestation of himself, his ascension, his being seated at the right hand of the power of God in the glory everlasting. Now the whole of the Christian message depends upon these facts.

You may wonder why I keep on saying this. Well, I've only one answer to give. I've got to go on repeating this because people are saying the exact opposite and because they will forget the facts and because they divorce the Christian message from the facts altogether. There is a Christianity being currently taught which virtually denies the facts almost entirely. I've reminded you more than once that one of the most popular, if not the most popular, theology today on the continent of Europe, taught mainly by a man of the name of Bultmann, is one which really dismisses most of the facts.

Virtually, Bultmann says there's only one fact we can be certain of, and that is that Jesus died on a cross, and we can't be sure of anything else. But still, he claims that he's teaching all this in the interests of the Christian message. You see, that is the tragedy: that men will divide the message from the person and the facts concerning him. And that, to me, is to deny the whole of the gospel. For this is a message that is based solidly upon and deduced entirely from the facts in connection with this person. But now we shall be able, as we proceed this evening, to make that perhaps still more clear.

But there it is. It obviously starts with him. That's the whole point of the apostle's argument. But now let's take a step further forward and ask: what are the general characteristics of the message concerning him? It's all about him. Well, now what are the general characteristics of the message concerning him? And here the apostle answers that question by his quotation from Isaiah 52:7: "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things." We saw last Friday night that there probably is an interpolation there and that it should read like this: "How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good things."

Now then, that gives us the key to the general characteristic of this gospel message. What is it? Well, it is that it's glad tidings. You see, he quotes Isaiah because the prophet had been given this preview and he saw that was the thing. And his very imagery suggests it, as I pointed out to you. Here are people in bondage and in captivity, and they can't do anything about themselves. But they're waiting for a deliverer to come. They're always looking to the hills surrounding them. At last, they see the messenger coming and the excitement, the glad tidings, the feet of this man. His very feet are a joy to them because they know that he's the bearer of glad tidings.

Now, I want to show the importance of this aspect of the gospel. The word used by the apostle here in his translation of Isaiah 52:7 is that word essentially that we found in Acts 8:4, you remember, where we are told that the people who were scattered abroad from Jerusalem, the early Christians scattered abroad by the persecution, they went everywhere preaching the word. Not the word that's used about Philip when he goes down to Samaria, but this other word. Very well, well, that's the word here because the apostle is anxious to bring out this element of good news, this element of glad tidings. It's the announcing of good news.

And what I'm trying to emphasize at the moment is this: that the one test which we must always apply to the preaching of the gospel, once we've applied the main test about the person and the facts concerning him, the moment you've done that, then the test to apply is this: is this good news? Is this glad tidings? It's a most wonderful test, this, and you will find that it will never fail you. And it will help you to discriminate when you're listening to a sermon or when you're reading a sermon between what is true and what is false. It's the most wonderful test, this. The gospel must always be glad tidings, good news.

Now, it was never perhaps more important than that we should be aware of this particular test than just at this present time. And that is why I'm going to stay with it for a while this evening. The state of the country demands this. The state of society, the moral condition of this country and of the whole world, demands that we should be absolutely certain as to what the gospel message really is. Because there is nothing that can deal with the situation apart from the gospel. Everything else has been tried. Everything else is failing before our eyes. We can't go on repeating that too often. This is perhaps, in many ways, the most educated, cultured century that the world has ever known, and yet here we are with this problem staring us in the face in a most terrible form.

The only hope is the gospel. Well, very well then, that makes it doubly important that we should know what the gospel is. The state of the world, the state of the country, the state of society demands this. But the state of the church also demands it. Why is the Christian church so ineffective? Why is it that only 10% of people go to a place of worship? Why is it that the Christian church counts for so little in this country? Now, many answers are being given to that question. For myself, I've only one answer to give to the question. I believe that the state of the churches is to be explained by one thing only, and that is that the message of the gospel is not being preached and hasn't been preached for a number of years. I believe that the people were more or less driven out of the churches by false gospel, by false preaching. And that is why all this is so important, and that we must be clear concerning it.

Now, let me say this: there is nothing that I dislike so much as having to be controversial. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than just to be able to give you a positive exposition Friday by Friday and nothing else. But, my dear friends, I have no choice in this matter. The apostle tells us that we are set for the defense as well as the propagation of the gospel. And if you see the moral state of the world, and if you see the state of the church, well, then it behooves you to discover the cause of the trouble and to correct it. I would to God that I hadn't got to do these things. But I would regard myself as a very poor teacher if I didn't warn you against error, if I didn't show you how to detect the error and how to differentiate between the true and the false. The gospel is to be applied. And the tragedy today is that Christian people don't seem to have any sense of discrimination any longer. They judge by men's appearance. They look at a man like the late Pope and the wireless, and they say, "He looks such a nice man, and he seems so pleasant. Therefore, he must be right." Well, now, there's only one thing to do with a condition like that, and that is to instruct. It is children who are carried away by every wind of doctrine. It is children who can be taken in by a kind, nice, plausible man, as it were. And therefore, the only antidote is teaching, in instruction.

We can't afford to be sentimental, my friends. We are living in a momentous age. The whole future of morals in this country depends upon these matters, and indeed, even beyond that, the whole state of the Christian church really depends upon our understanding the nature of this message. Now, here I say, the apostle at once gives us a general test. Whatever else the gospel is, it is glad tidings. It is good news. Here's the comparison: how beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of great joy. Did some of you think that I'd suddenly gone mad and I'd given out two Christmas hymns before Good Friday and Easter? Not at all. It was done deliberately in order to introduce this very theme. And why shouldn't we sing these hymns all round the year? Why should we leave them only to that particular time of the year? The gospel in its fullness should be constantly in our minds. Very well then, I say, here's the test: glad tidings, good news.

Now then, this is so important that I've got to give you some negatives. Let us then, in the light of this definition which tells us that it's glad tidings, see what the gospel is not. It's very important that we should know what is not gospel. The mere fact that a man gets up in a pulpit which is called Christian and preaches does not mean that he's preaching the gospel. This thing is really almost too pathetic for words. People seem to think today that the way in which you define an evangelist is this: he is a man who speaks in the open air. If a man preaches in the open air, he must be an evangelist. It isn't where a man preaches that decides whether he's an evangelist; it's what he preaches. And a man can preach a lie in the open air as easily as he can in a church building. But that is the kind of loose, sentimental way in which people think today.

Now then, I say negatively first of all, that the message of the Christian gospel is not merely a message about morality and ethics. I start with that because that's the commonest misconception of all. It's a very old one, of course. There's nothing new about it, but it is very popular at the present time. It was popularized mainly in the last century by the famous Dr. Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby. He was the man who gave this particular emphasis its greatest currency. His idea of Christianity was that it was that which produced good little gentlemen. It's that which makes a man a gentleman. So his message was one purely of morals and of ethics. And there are large numbers of people who think today that that is the Christian message. It's a message to tell us to live a good life and to encourage us to do so. So you get your little homilies or addresses just to urge us to be good and to help one another and so on. Now, all I'm saying is this: that that cannot be the gospel for this reason. Where is the element of glad tidings in it? If I came here and simply Sunday by Sunday and Friday by Friday urged you not to drink and not to smoke and not to do this, that, and the other, and stopped at that, where would the glad tidings come in? You see, that's the way you test.

There must be the element of glad tidings, good news. And if it's merely moral, ethical teaching, there is no glad tidings at all. So that cannot be the gospel, and it isn't the gospel. That's going back under the law. That's the very thing Paul is denouncing in the whole of this epistle and particularly at this point in this tenth chapter. It is almost incredible that anybody could ever enter into this confusion, but that's where the devil comes in, you see. He robs the gospel of its glory; he turns it into nothing but a new kind of law. And so it is no longer the gospel.

Or another way—and I'm being as practical as I can in order to help, help you to discriminate at this present time. Other people seem to think that the main business of preaching is just to answer people's questions and to help them to live as the result of answering their questions. Now, I think you'll find that this is becoming increasingly popular. People are saying the days of preaching are gone, and it's no use preaching to people. The thing you must do now is get the people to bring their questions and you answer the questions. And that is regarded as preaching at the present time.

Now, I want to give you an example of this which came to my notice actually during this past week. It puts it so perfectly that I'm going to read it to you. Here was an interview in a religious paper with a well-known preacher—at least, preacher in inverted commas—in this country on the subject, "Can Christianity survive?" That's the question: "Can Christianity survive?" So an interview took place. And the man being interviewed said that he during recent years, "I've visited many parts of the world, and I've made a point of trying to discover the reasons why the masses of the people are indifferent to the Christian church." That's the question: "Can Christianity survive? The churches are failing. Why are they failing?" And this is his answer: "Almost unanimously, there has come the criticism that what the churches say has no bearing upon the kind of lives which ordinary people lead and the problems which they encounter."

That's the trouble, he says. Then says the interviewer, "I asked him for an example." And here is his reply: "Well," he said, "one example is sex." And all the higher critics now will know who the famous preacher is. Sex, you see. Here's the thing always. "Well," he said, "one example is sex, one of life's most important activities. And yet many people are bewildered by it. But if a person is troubled by a sexual problem, it is unlikely that you will help him by telling him to seek guidance from the church. The subject of sex is hardly ever dealt with from the pulpit. The church is out of touch with people."

You see the idea? Well, then he goes on to say this. When he was a minister—he's now retired, and sex was very prominent, as you gather, in his ministry and really accounted for its popularity—he then says when he was a minister, "One experiment which achieved some success was that part of some Sunday evening services was devoted to a question time. The congregation were invited to write down any question that they wanted to ask, and the slips of paper bearing their questions were collected and brought up to me in the pulpit. In this way, I found out the kind of things which were troubling people, and by basing subsequent sermons on those issues, I felt that I was saying something relevant."

See, that's his conception of preaching. He hasn't been given a message by the risen Lord. He isn't a herald of good news. He's got to find out from the people what he's to preach about. What is preaching? Oh, it's nothing but answering people's questions. Now that is not glad tidings. Here is a man who's not sent as a herald, and you see him coming across the mountains with this tremendous thing to announce. No, he's got to ask for questions, and Christianity is nothing but an answer, a particular answer to the questions that you ask, particularly these problems like sex and so on. These are the things people are interested in. So your message is what they're interested in. You don't go to them and tell them what they ought to be interested in. No, you start with them. The pew determines the message of the pulpit. And there you are, just answering questions. Now that is, I say, a complete travesty of what is conveyed to us here by the apostle at this point in his teaching.

Now there's, then, the second misconception. It isn't just answering questions. Thirdly, it isn't a series of discourses on political and social matters. It isn't the enunciation of a kind of political or social program to improve the world. I needn't stay with this, but this is very common, as you know again. They always talk, these people, about the kingdom of God. Their teaching is entirely removed from the New Testament, but that's what they're always talking about: that the business of Christians is to bring in the kingdom of God. And you do that by taking an active part in politics and in social matters, and you must urge people to improve and to reform and so on, and you enter into it with them.

Now, there was a great example of this. I happened to be on holiday a few years back and was listening to a broadcast sermon on the wireless. And I heard a very well-known preacher, who was once the moderator of his church in a given part of the British Isles, saying this quite deliberately. He said, "Missionaries must get rid of this notion that their business is to go and what they call preach the gospel to people." He said, "That isn't the thing to do." He was talking in particular of Africa. He said, "This is what you've got to do," he said to you missionaries. "You've got to go and live amongst those people. You've got to enter into their politics. You've got to share their problems with them and live the Christian life amongst them, especially in this political-social environment. And if you do that," he said, "there may be some hope that the grandchildren of the people with whom you are living now may become Christian."

Now that was said by the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland a few years back. And that is regarded as the way of propagating the Christian message. And of course, we're familiar with others in this country who teach a similar kind of teaching. Just political-social and nothing else. Now all I'm asking is: where's the glad tidings? Where's the good news? It just isn't there. It isn't there at all.

Then another one, the fourth, which I would mention is this: the idea that the message of Christian preaching is to urge people to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let me come back again to this interview which deals with the subject of "Can Christianity survive?" and listen to this. "Christianity to me," says this man, "is a way of life. A Christian is someone who believes that Christ's way is the supreme way of life, who tries to follow it and who tries to respond to the demands of life in a Christ-like spirit." That's his idea of Christianity. "It is utterly wrong to tell a man that he cannot be a Christian unless he declares unconditional assent to a set list of theological propositions." You see, this man in a public interview, published in a religious paper, is denying and attacking what I'm trying to tell you Friday by Friday. That's why I'm driven to reply to it.

He says, "It is utterly wrong to tell a man that he cannot be a Christian unless he declares unconditional assent to a set list of theological propositions." In the course of a recent television interview between Malcolm Muggeridge and a distinguished ecclesiastic, Muggeridge said that he was greatly attracted to much of Christ's teaching although he had reservations about, amongst other things, the Virgin Birth. Muggeridge then asked this ecclesiastic where in his view, where in view of these reservations he stood. To which came the reply that he was "out." "Jesus," says the man being interviewed, "would never have said that."

"I asked him," says the interviewer, "to elaborate on this line of thought, and here's the result: well, Jesus never demanded intellectual assent to a statement of doctrine. It is quite alien to the spirit of Jesus to tell anyone that such relatively unimportant matters as the Virgin Birth should stand between a person and his coming to Christ. There must be thousands of thoughtful men and women I've met some myself who are put off the church because they cannot subscribe to some of the so-called fundamentals of its theology. Take the doctrine of the Trinity. How can you believe that it expresses all the fullness of God, the infinite creator of all things? How can you put into a creedal tape measure, how can you put a creedal tape measure around his august being? Professor Lovell of Jodrell Bank says he thinks it likely that other planets are inhabited. How then can I honestly repeat the creed which speaks of the 'only begotten Son of God'? How do I know that far from three persons in one, there may not be three thousand or three million in one?"

Now this is, you see, the thing that is so popular today. Then he was asked another thing: whether he thought that the people outside the churches had a wrong mental picture of God, and here's the answer: "They can hardly fail to have when so many church-goers seem to have. Can you blame people for not wanting to worship a God who is supposed to give people cancer or who subjects to eternal torture those who during their earthly lives have rejected him? God is mirrored in Jesus. Indeed, the Master said so. Nothing can be true about God if it obviously conflicts with the spirit of Jesus, not even if it's in the Bible. We must judge the Bible by Jesus, not the reverse."

Now, I don't want to weary you or waste your time, but I've put all that before you to show how essential it is that we should work out these statements of the great apostle. You noticed the incredible muddle in that last statement. Here is a man who's not going to believe anything even though the Bible says it if it's in conflict with the spirit of Jesus. But what does he know about Jesus apart from what he finds in the Bible? Nothing at all. Nothing at all. He knows nothing about Jesus except what he finds in the Bible. And yet he's going to judge the Bible by the spirit of Jesus. In other words, it comes to this: it's what he thinks that matters, neither the Bible nor Jesus. But you see, my friends, this is the position at which we've arrived. And I don't hesitate to say that is why the churches are as they are. It's very difficult, isn't it? But I've been criticized in the past for not belonging to the same union as this man. How can I belong to the same union as such a man? This is a lie. This is Antichrist. And though I were alone, I would never join with such a man nor have anything to do with an association of churches that can tolerate such a man. This is a denial of the Christian message. Not only is there no good news in it, it goes out of its way to attack the good news and to attempt to make fun of it and to pour scorn and ridicule upon it. Very well, all that talk about the imitation of Christ, "This is the best teaching, I try to put it into practice," and so on. Sentimental.

Very well, let me take another. What is this message that the preacher is to preach? Well, it isn't either—and we're going up the scale, intellectually at any rate we're going up the scale—it isn't merely a philosophical view of life and of Christ. Now, I've got to put this again before you. All misconceptions of the gospel are not as crude and as unintelligent as the one I've just been reading to you. That sheer sentimentality and psychology and sex and so on, very popular, of course, with a certain type of person. But now here's, there are other people who of course are too intelligent and too intellectual to believe that kind of thing, but can be equally wrong. And they so intellectualize the gospel that it is no longer the message. Now let me read to you a review, a portion of a review at any rate, of a book recently published under the title, "The Secular Meaning of the Gospel." And this is how it's put.

"The author then tackles the Easter event." Now, this is appropriate. Easter Sunday's coming. "The author then tackles the Easter event and concludes," then he quotes from the author: "Jesus of Nazareth was a free man in his own life, who attracted followers and created enemies according to the dynamics of personality and in a manner comparable to the effect of other liberated persons in history upon people about them. He died as a result of the threat that such a free man poses for insecure and bound men. His disciples were left no less insecure and frightened. Two days later, Peter and then other disciples had an experience of which Jesus was the sense content. They experienced a discernment situation in which Jesus, the free man whom they had known themselves and indeed the whole world, were seen in a quite new way. From that moment, the disciples began to possess something of the freedom of Jesus. His freedom began to be contagious."

That's the resurrection, my friends. That's the resurrection for you. And so he ends off by saying that mission, the business, the mission of the church, is not the conversion of unbelievers, but the practice by Christians of Jesus's contagious liberty. You see the idea? That Peter and then the other disciples had some sort of an experience. It's not the literal rising of the Lord Jesus Christ in the body from the grave; they had some sort of an experience of which Jesus was the sense content. They had some feeling of exaltation and it came to them in terms of the person of Jesus. "They experienced a discernment situation in which Jesus, the free man whom they had known themselves and indeed the whole world, were seen in quite a new way." And from that moment, the disciples began to possess something of the freedom of Jesus. "His freedom began to be contagious." Well, all I'm saying is that if that is gospel, I have no idea what the gospel is, and I shouldn't be standing in a pulpit.

But let me come to the last of the misconceptions. Or if you prefer it, let me give you the sixth negative as to what the content of the message is not. And it is not the message of Roman Catholicism. What I mean is this: I'm not going into Roman Catholicism, but the essential message of Roman Catholicism is this: believe in the church and her teaching. It'll include teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ, I know, and many other things that are right. But the essential teaching is: believe in the church and her teaching and submit yourself to it. That is their essential message.

And I'm putting it down amongst these negatives. Why? Why am I putting these six negatives before you? Here's my answer. They're not true to the New Testament teaching. You don't find any of them in the New Testament. Secondly, none of them can be gospel because they leave it all to us. They're all telling us to do something: to live a good life, or they're helping me to live the good life and asking me to ask my questions in order that they can help me. But still, I've got to put it into practice. When I put my question to the great preacher and he answers, I still got to do it. He doesn't believe in anything else; everything is natural and left to me and so on with all of them. They all leave it to me. But this is my main reason for rejecting them all: where are the glad tidings? Where's the element of good news? Where's the notion of a preacher being sent to herald and to proclaim, running across the mountain tops and the people seeing him? Where's, where's that element? It's absent. Take that last quotation that I've read to you. Did you understand it? I don't think you did. I don't blame you for not. But where are the glad—where was the glad tidings? What is this "sense content" of Jesus? What's it mean? What is the resurrection? Now, you see, these things have got to be rejected for that reason.

So let me leave those negatives and come to the positive. What is the essence, what is the main chief characteristic of the message of the preacher of the gospel? I say once more, it is good news. Listen, my dear friends, having listened to those quotations I've put before you, listen to what I read about the preaching of the Son of God himself: "The common people heard him gladly." What do the common people know about this sense content and about this freedom of Jesus becoming contagious, this odd, strange experience which these disciples had? "Two days later Peter and then other disciples had an experience of which Jesus was the sense content." The whole genius of Christianity is the common people heard him gladly. And the common people can't hear this sort of thing; they don't know what it means. These men themselves don't know what it means. It's words; it's verbiage. It's all so involved philosophically that it's almost impossible to understand what some of them are trying to say. The common people heard him gladly. And if the common people can't hear gladly the message of the preacher, he is not a preacher sent by God. He is not a preacher of the gospel.

Or take the other word of our Lord, when John sent his two disciples asking the famous question, "Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?" You remember our Lord's answer? "The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf are made to hear, the dead are raised and finally," climax if you like, "unto the poor the gospel is preached." This is the differentia of the Christian gospel. You see, our Lord is contrasting it there with Greek philosophy. The Greeks, the Greek philosophers, had got nothing to give to the poor. Nothing at all. The poor were barbarians and they called them barbarians. They divided the world into Greeks and barbarians. And the barbarians, the poor, the illiterate, they'd got nothing to say to them. Why? Well, because they didn't understand their categories, they couldn't enter into their great involved arguments and these great thought, they couldn't follow. And the poor were utterly neglected. Nobody had anything to say to them. But when he comes, he says, "Go and tell John this is what we've been seeing and above everything, unto the poor is the gospel preached." The poor. That's his emphasis.

And the apostle, of course, takes up the same statement when he writes to the Corinthians dealing with this very point and he puts it like this, you remember, at the end of 1 Corinthians 1: "You see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." That's it. The poor can understand this. This is a message to all. This is a message even to the ignorant and the unenlightened.

And so, when you read the beginning of the gospels about how the good news has come into the world, you find the first man in a sense who really put it all in a nutshell was old Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. He'd been pretty dull and pretty slow, but now you see he's inspired. The Holy Spirit has enlightened him and he cries out and he says, "God hath visited and redeemed his people." None of your abstruse philosophy, none of your trying to understand the spirit of Jesus or exhortations to men and women to do this. God hath visited and redeemed his people. Here's the message. Here's the content. Or take it as we had it in the reading at the beginning: the message of the angels to those poor, ignorant, illiterate shepherds watching their flocks by night. "Fear not for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, which is Christ the Lord." And then you remember the angelic host bursting forth: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." And the shepherds, we are told, went back rejoicing in their hearts. They've heard the good news, they've found their confirmation, and they're filled with a spirit of joy and of exaltation.

You get exactly the same thing in the message of John the Baptist immediately before the beginning of our Lord's own ministry. John says, "I'm nothing," he says, "but a voice crying in the wilderness." What's he crying? Well, he tells us what he's crying: "Prepare ye the way of the Lord. He's about to come." He's quoting Isaiah 40. He says, "I'm nothing but the forerunner. Make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways shall be made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." It's come over the mountain tops. It's arrived. Here's this tremendous thing. "Listen," says John, "I'm merely the announcer, a voice crying in the wilderness making a proclamation." That's the character of the gospel.

In other words, you see, the essence of this message is this: it is glad tidings. Why? Well, because it isn't a call to us to do anything; it is a proclamation and an announcement to us of what God has done about us men and our salvation. And that is the gospel. That is the message of the preacher. What God has done. No man could do it. "What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit" (Romans 8:3 and 4). Here it is, you see. What God has done. "When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law." It's God. God hath visited and redeemed his people. This is the great characteristic of the message and you don't find it in these false gospels. There's no good news; there's no thrilling joy; there's no acclamation. It's all man and man's power and what man is being exhorted to do. But the essence of the gospel is that it is an announcement, I say, of what God has done once and for ever for us and our salvation in the person of his dearly begotten Son.

And so it goes on like this: "By grace are ye saved, through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus." You see, my dear friends, this is the very essence of the gospel. I remember when we were back in the third chapter I spent some time in emphasizing that tremendous break that comes halfway through that chapter. Let me just read some verses to you. Listen, here's, here's how the gospel comes. I begin to read at the 19th verse of the third chapter of the epistle to the Romans: "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Oh, for the voice of an archangel! "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

That's the gospel. That's the glad tidings. That's the good news. That's the thing that makes Charles Wesley cry, "Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king. Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled." Why, you see, this is a gospel that makes a man shout. Those other teachings, there's nothing to shout about. And they don't shout; they mince their words. They're polite. That's not gospel. There's no abandon, there's no liberty, there's no glory, there's no praise, there's no thanksgiving, there's no joy, there's no rejoicing. It isn't a gospel. It's the Antichrist. It's a false gospel that is not a gospel and we must reject it with the whole of our being.

Well, my friends, we've got to leave it at that for tonight. God willing, in three weeks' time, we'll go on with this. We are still dealing, remember, with the message that God gives to the preacher to proclaim, to herald and to pronounce. Whatever else you may hold or forget, hold on to this: if the message that comes to you is not one of the most thrilling good news you've ever heard, reject it. It's not the gospel. The gospel is glad tidings of good things.

Let us pray. Oh, Lord our God, we do indeed come to thee to praise and to magnify thy great and holy name. Oh, give us, we pray thee, a thousand tongues to sing our great Redeemer's praise, the glories of our God and King, the triumphs of his grace. Oh Lord, open our eyes that we may be living witnesses to the true gospel and make all else to appear for the nothing that it is. Lord, deal with us thy people and so fill us with thy spirit and with understanding that we shall see it and know it and believe it and live it, be mastered by it and ever be worthy representatives of it, holding forth the word of life in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Hear us, oh Lord our God. And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now this night throughout the remainder of this our short, uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage and evermore. Amen.