The Recovery of the Gospel

There is a passage of scripture which troubles me, friends. It bothers me especially when I look around and see what's going on in our churches today in regard to preaching a diluted gospel message. The passage is found in the Gospel of John in chapter 2 and verses 23 through 25, which declares, now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover in the feast day, many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did.

But Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man. And that passage disturbs me because it goes against the evangelism of our day. Let me explain it to you this way.

I was sitting in a Baptist church listening to a well-meaning pastor who made the following comment during his gospel invitation. He said, just open your heart to Jesus, friend. Just open your heart and accept Jesus, and you can know for sure right now that you are going to heaven.

But the problem was this pastor was asking his hearers to do something that was impossible for them to do because man cannot open his heart and come to Jesus on his own. Only God can open the heart of sinful man. Jesus said, no one can come to me except the Father first draw him.

This is seen in the book of Acts and the salvation of Lydia, where it states, and a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, which worshiped God, heard us whose heart the Lord opened that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And that's the dividing line between the gospel of our day and the old gospel of our Bibles. The gospel of our day proclaims that salvation is in the hands of men.

God did his part, and now it's up to you to do your part. Jesus is a helpless bystander waiting at the door of the sinner's heart, watching to see just what he'll do. Will he open the door of his heart and let this poor, pitiful Jesus in? Or will he shut him out? Jesus is powerless to do anything but stand outside the door of the sinner's heart, waiting for him to open his heart to let him in.

That's what we preach today, friends. That's the gospel in a nutshell in this country for the last hundred years. Like that Baptist pastor told his hearers, just open your heart to Jesus, friend.

But the problem is, man has no power to open his heart to Jesus. Only a work of grace upon the sinner's heart will draw a lost man to Christ Jesus, for saving faith comes from God and God alone. A man cannot produce it.

And now I have a fight on my hands with that statement. The good deacons will come after me to wring my neck because that goes against what we heard in this country for the last century or so. But listen, friends, I've come before you today not to be popular with you, but to be honest with you and inform you that many of you have never heard the true gospel in your entire lifetime.

Many of you sincerely believe yourself to be a saved individual on your way to heaven. But in reality, you were greatly deceived. You sit upon a false bottom of carnal security and your salvation is merely sinking sand.

You made a decision to become a Christian in the past and you tried to live your life for him ever since. And you faithfully attend your church and give to it as best as you can with your time and your money. And you have a pretty good opinion of yourself.

And you can tell each of us about your long track record of service. But the problem is you're not saved. You swallowed a diluted gospel, which had no saving power.

You made yourself a Christian and God had no part of it. You believe the text or a fact with your mind and decided it was time to become a Christian. So you walked an aisle and repeated a prayer and joined the church.

And your name is on the membership roll. But the problem is your name's not on the lambs roll book, which is the book of life. And if you died suddenly right now, you would drop into a burning hell of endless misery because you are a lost church member who swallowed the perverted gospel of your day.

I can prove it because you're not a changed individual. You've cleaned yourself up a little through some self-reformation, but you've never been the subject of grace upon the heart through a supernatural act of God, which is regeneration. You've never been awakened to your lost condition.

You've never been convicted of sin and you've never been born again through the new birth. You are an unchanged individual who still drinks iniquity like it's water. And you sit on the throne of your heart and rule there.

Jesus is your savior, you claim. But Jesus has never been your Lord. Listen, dear friend.

When someone is saved, something happens, a self is dethroned and another is enthroned there. The Lord Jesus Christ, to be truly saved, you must throw down your shotgun of rebellion and surrender completely to the king of kings. He is a risen Lord who sits at the right hand of the father.

And he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. He must reign in your life for you to be truly saved. A self must be crucified for you to follow a crucified savior, friend.

All sin must be hated and loathed like a poisonous snake. You must pursue a life of holiness for my Bible declares a holiness without no one will see the Lord. And that means you, friend.

That means you. If Jesus Christ is not your Lord, you are not a saved individual. No matter what your pastor tells you, the evangelists have fed you a false gospel and deceived you.

His name will be your curse word in hell. Now, some of you don't like that. Some of you are upset at me.

I didn't come here before you to gain your approval. I came before you to warn you of your great danger of dying in your sins. Your problem is you've never heard the real gospel before.

Consequently, you have never found Christ savingly. Your heart is still unchanged. You see, dear friend, when Jesus was here in his earthly ministry and he passed through a village or town, those who encountered him experienced change.

Listen, friend, there are only two types of people in the world, not rich and poor, not black and white, not healthy and unhealthy. But two types of people only for a person is either dead in sin and lost or dead to sin and saved for a person to be truly saved. Christ must be a complete master.

Your life is not your own. Your body is not your own. Your money is not your own.

Your time is not your own. Christ must rule in your life as a sovereign Lord. But many of you cry out, oh, we will not have this man reign over us.

Then you will die in your sins. For my Lord declares, unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish. And that means you friend, even if you're the chairman of the deacons, our churches today are filled with men and women and teenagers who mistakenly believe themselves to be saved individuals.

But they are merely lost church members on their way to hell because you do not possess the power to make yourself a Christian, even if that's what you've been told by countless evangelists and pastors in your lifetime. A fallen man in his natural state is helpless and powerless to believe the gospel and come to Christ. He cannot open his own heart to receive an impotent Jesus who waits helplessly at the door of the sinner's heart.

If you get saved, friend, it's because God came in with power and majesty and authority and gave you saving faith to repent and believe God is sovereign and salvation. Friend, it is he who gives saving faith to a person and he can give it and withhold it and still be a holy and just God. The most important issue facing the church today is the recovery of the gospel, the gospel that is God centered and not man centered, the gospel which places its emphasis on God and his glory in the recovery of lost man, not the perverted gospel of our day, which places man at the center and his happiness as its end result.

The old gospel proclaims that Jesus, who came to seek and save the lost, and he is actually doing that very thing. Listen, friend, he just didn't make salvation possible by his death on the cross, by doing his part. And now it's up to you to do your part.

Rather, the old gospel teaches election by the father, redemption by the son and calling by the Holy Spirit. Salvation depends on the work of God, friend, not on the work of man. You cannot save yourself any more than a dead body can rise from a grave on its own accord.

But modern evangelism has taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of men. But man can't save himself any more than he can wave his arms and fly away. Your trouble is you've never heard the great truths of the gospel by the preaching of the law.

God's law is strict and severe. And God requires perfection to get to his heaven. And your trouble is you're not perfect.

Your sins are stacked up against you. Listen, friend, you are not a sinner because you sin. Rather, you sin because you are a big sinner.

You are a guilty rebel who has broken the strict law of God. And you will be held up against the strictness and severity of God's holy law to future day. And you will fail that test.

God will have no rebels in his kingdom. You deserve hell. But you've never seen your sins before you in a real way to mourn over them.

And you cannot stand in your own merits against the strict law of God and pass that test. I know I am a sinner and I need a sin substitute in the person of Jesus Christ. And so do you, friend.

So do you. I know of which I speak for I was a lost church member for years. I swallowed the diluted gospel of this last century and believed myself to be a Christian.

But I was still an unchanged man. When I became a subject of grace, God transformed my life. I was awakened to my lost condition and shown my great peril of dying in my sins.

I saw that I was guilty as charged. I had no excuse before a holy and just God. I saw that I not only was on my way to hell, but that I deserved to go there.

I was shut up to God and his mercy alone. I became a seeker of God. I saw true repentance of my sins.

My wife was away on vacation at the time I was saved. I did not tell her for about three weeks. One day in her kitchen, I addressed her as follows.

I said, I want you to know that while you were out of town, God saved me. I wasn't a true Christian before that. My wife was silent for a few moments.

Then she replied, since I've been back, I've noticed that you have changed. Let me ask you, friend, can your family say you that you are a changed individual? Or are you one person at church and quite another when you are at home? The main problem in our churches today is a lack of preaching the great doctrines of the Bible, which are redemption, repentance and regeneration. Pastors have gotten out there, my buckets and cleaned up all the blood and gore around Calvary and made it so appealing and pristine that you can sit there and have your lunch.

But listen to me, friend, that cross had Christ's blood all over it because of sin. Your sins and my sins are wretched, rotten sins. I was having lunch with a pastor one time.

He'd read my book on revival and telephoned me and asked me to have lunch with him. He was a man in his late 70s. He asked me to help him have a revival at his church.

We were sitting in a local restaurant and I looked him in the eye and told him, I can't help you. If you want revival to come to your church, you have to repent of your sins first. He was silent and we departed with just a goodbye.

I received a phone call from him the next week asking me to meet with him and some pastor buddies to pray on a regular basis for revival. And would I be willing to do that? I said yes. And we met for a month or two on a weekly basis.

We would arrange our chairs in a circle and pray. I'll never forget what happened one day as we were praying. This older pastor had asked me to lunch and pray for revival.

While we were sitting there in a circle praying, he jumped out of his chair, fell to his knees in the middle of us all, and cried out with a loud voice, Oh God, forgive me for my wretched, rotten sins. I want to see revival. Let it begin with me.

Now that man got serious with God and God got serious with that man. God says return to me and I will return to you. How serious are we? How sincere are we? The apostle Paul has a clear warning to everyone who names the name of Christ.

It's found in 2 Corinthians in verse 13, 5, which declares, Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith. Prove yourselves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates. Let me ask you friend, can you really say that Jesus Christ is in you? Maybe you did what the evangelist told you and you opened your heart and accepted Jesus, but eternity was never impacted because you were never truly converted through a supernatural act of regeneration upon the heart.

George Whitfield, the great British evangelist, was an unconverted church member who relied upon his life of self-denial and good works to be saved until he read a book called The Life of God and the Soul of Man. And as Whitfield read that book, he realized that being truly saved meant that the life of God became real in the soul of man. There had to be a change inside for the life of Christ to be seen on the outside through evidence of salvation.

How about you? Only God can open your heart, friend. Only God can save you. Cast yourself upon his mercy and seek him with all your heart.

Ask him for the grace of repentance and faith. I implore you, listen carefully to the following verse of scripture. Look unto me and be ye saved of the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else.

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him.

And to our God for he will abundantly pardon. Listen, dear friend. A guilty rebel needs pardon to be set free.

Jesus came to save his people from their sins. The gospels for the hungry, the weary, and the thirsty. Are you hungry for God? Are you weary of your sins? Are you thirsty for Christ? Then come and I can promise you this, friend, from the words of the Lord Jesus Christ who says, All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

It is my prayer, dear friend, that you do not hear the voice of this poor preacher, but that you will hear his voice as it comes to you in power and majesty and authority. Listen to the invitation of the gospel to sinful man. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him that hears say, Come, and let him that is a thirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the waters of life freely.

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Come to him, friend, and throw down your shotgun, and let rebellion submit to his lordship. He gave his all for you. How can you keep back anything from him? He is a risen Lord, and if you want him, you must come to him there and bow to him in complete surrender.

He doesn't want your money. He just wants you, all of you. I leave you with this invitation.

In the last day, that great day, the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.