Christ the Lord

Now I hope that this week, I'm here as your guest, will be pleasing to the Lord. I have to answer to God for my ministry here. This, for the evangelist, is the choicest season of the year.

And I'm happy for the privilege of being here. And you'll have to answer to God for your contribution to this week. I'll find out whether I'm here or not through things about you.

You're not particularly interested in me, but I am you. I'll find out whether you've got dead organizations or not, whether you have a single organization at this church that isn't geared to get the gospel to men and women. And I want to be a favorable report because God's interested.

Women use every means at our disposal to creep up on the blinded minds and eyes and sides of men and women and get the word of life to them. So I challenge every Sunday school teacher, everybody that has a place in leadership, I'd hate to be a Sunday school teacher and not have enough influence on my class to get that class out after souls. Amen? Amen? Say, is it against the law to say amen at the end? Huh? Oh, no.

Well, bless you, dear heart. I invite you to turn tonight to the same passage of scripture we used this morning. And I wish to read the last verse of the third chapter, 2 Corinthians, and the 18th verse and down through the 6th verse of the 4th chapter.

I believe that we're there in the morning hour, beginning at verse 1 of chapter 4. But tonight I wish to read beginning at verse 18, down through chapter 4, verse 6. And I wish to use verse 5 of the 4th chapter as a text, that's a good word, for the word of the message tonight. And I'll read the text first and then read it in the context and the light of the verses above and the one verse below. And the apostle Paul says in verse 5, For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.

And ourselves, your bond slaves, your servants, your bond slaves, for Jesus' sake. That verse of scripture divides men and women. Or in the 18th verse of the 3rd chapter, we start off with the occupation, what God's people spend most of their time doing.

And then when we get to verse, to the next chapter, we are just amazed as we read what the Holy Spirit has to say about the condition of people. And then in verse 6, we have the testimony of the man who was rescued from his blinded condition and was given to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Our text tonight is the Holy Spirit's holy remedy to change blinded men who cannot see the glory of God in Jesus Christ to change into men and women who spend at least some part of every day doing what Paul says all of God's people do, as recorded here in the 18th verse of the 3rd chapter.

You can put it down that God's people practice what this verse of scripture says. But we ought, and in those words, but we ought, contrasting the old Jewish people who read the scriptures with blinded eyes and with a veil not on the scriptures but on their eyes, and thus search the scriptures every day of their life and reject it, the one the scriptures talk about when he appears. And in contrast to those people, and they still would, they read the scripture with blinded eyes and miss the Christ, the apostle Paul describes that occupation of preoccupation of all of God's people.

If we're there, this is likely how a child of God spends his days and nights reading. We ought, with open feet, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, some happens to us, are chewing into the same ash, on glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. If I'm speaking to some couple who lived in the state of matrimony, say, 40, 50 years, that's why they begin to look alike and to think alike.

Do you know that? That's the God's truth. And that's the reason there's no such animal as a person who's a Christian that isn't becoming more like Christ day by day. Because if you're a Christian, you've seen the glory of Christ, and one look ruins you, you couldn't possibly go a single day without spending some time, as the old Bible teachers called it, feasting on the blood of your justification, and just looking as in a glass, with a dim view, yes, one day you'll be with an undim view, but one day we shall see Him as He is.

And when we see Him as He is, we shall be like Him. But now, with a dim view, but it's a view, a Christian's a person who's seen the glory of God in Christ, and that look can never leave him, and he spends his days, don't tell me he doesn't, Paul said all of God's people do this, we look with open face like in a glass, by looking at the glory of the Lord. And what happens? Why, people who look often at the glory of the Lord, what happens to them? Somebody read it there.

They're what? They're changed into what? The same image from what? From glory to glory, hallelujah. All I've been able to tell, Scriptures just tell us two things about what God's people do in the glory of the Lord. Maybe others, but this is all I've been able to get, and this is another.

And strangely enough, we'll do in the glory land exactly what we've done down here. The Scriptures tell us that God's people, what we call Heaven, will serve Him and look on His face. Oh boy, if we change just a little bit, from day to day, as looking through a glass with dim view, with eyes that can't see as clearly as they ought, if we start to look at the glory of the Lord for the display of His love, God created this world and has ordained that everything that God's born of, in God's love, shall be down to the glory of God's Son.

Boy, just imagine spending a few billion years in glory, looking with envy and doubt at the glory of Jesus Christ. I'm telling you, get along just fine, thank you. That's a wonderful prospect.

But then the scene changes, and in verse 1 of chapter 4, that we're seeing we have this ministry. What a ministry it is. Not doing, but looking.

We've got this ministry, praise the Lord. As we receive mercy, we never lose hope. We think not.

But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness or handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Where does our gospel be hid? It is hid to them that are lost. And there is the most terrible verse of Scripture in all of the Bible.

This describes lost people. You know the most terrible thing about lost people is? The devil has blinded their minds that they cannot see, and the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ can't shine under them. In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.

And fixed them, he's blinded them. He had to. If he didn't, just preach one gospel sermon in the anointing power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit would take the center words of the gospel, and men and women would see the glory of Christ. See it? And if you ever see the glory of Christ, you'll be his forever. Thanks be unto God.

But men's eyes and minds are blinded by faith. And he's done it deliberately, under the permission of almighty God. That's too deep for me, I know it so.

Men are blind. So they do not see the glory of Christ. Bless the gospel of the glory of Christ.

Change the King James Version there, please. It says the glorious gospel. I don't mean much.

But it's the gospel of the glory of Christ. The glory of Christ. Watch it! There's a child of God.

He spends a lot of his time doing what? Beholding. Beholding what? The glory of Christ. And as he does it, it gets gooder and gooder and gooder.

And he inside is changed and changed and changed and changed and changed into the glory of Christ. Praise God. The poor lost man doesn't see the glory of Christ.

You talk about God reigning from the cross and peace. That's dirty. Maltreatment.

Sacrificial love. God hanging on a golden tree. Lost men don't see the glory of God there.

Why? Satan's blinded their minds. Bless the life of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Who is the image of God? Should shine under them.

And then verse 6. Our text this morning. A man's evil attempt to describe what happens when a person gets what we call S-A-V-E-D. Verse 6 says what a contrast.

Verse 4. The devil's blinded people's minds. Bless the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Who's the very image of God.

Should shine upon them. But Paul said praise God. Something happened.

He said there's a difference between me when I was killing Christians and when I'm preaching to you. Something happened. What happened? I made the decision to accept Jesus.

No, no. For God who commanded the light to shine in the darkness has shined in our hearts. What for? Would you turn on the light for us, Lord? To give the light of the knowledge of the goodness of God.

Who? In the face of Jesus Christ. The difference between a saved man and a lost man simply is if a man ever gets saved, he'll get saved. When almighty God, as it pleases him, turns the light on, the light of the gospel, and the darkness goes, and that old sinner sees the glory of Christ, lost man, going on a blinded way.

I wish you'd believe what I'm telling you. Oh, if I'd go up and down the country, I'd give a nickel and a half and a cow and a calf. If I could find a church that knew how to pray for the work of the Holy Spirit, who alone can dispel the darkness and turn the light of glory into an old sinner's heart, is this generation going to go to hell, unwept over, unfaithful? Or do you folks know how to pray? Do you know what intercession is? Huh? I wonder.

Or there are just two things that God uses in this matter of the difference between a blinded mind cannot see the glory of Christ and a person who spends a lot of his time beholding the glory of Christ, head over heels in love with the lover of his soul. There are just two things. God uses the foolishness of preaching his son, and God uses the intercession of the saints of God.

That's all. That's all. We can talk all we want to, but there's never been any way to improve on God's message.

And under God, if there's a God, a Christian God, who God professes such as tonight, it must be us again that we thank Jesus Christ the Lord not ourselves, not from persons of protest, not from shit pockets. We give his experiences, but if God certainly needs to get out on people who may be together and call themselves churches of the living God, not who preaches there, but who accepts there. And what of the people who stand in the queue and the man who stands behind the sacred dish? Know what they're talking about when they say, When we gather, we shall praise Jesus Christ the Lord by our accomplishments.

But the only remedy God's got for the blinded condition of men who cannot see the glory of God, the only God's got to turn the life of the gospel into a man's soul is by the faithful proclamation of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Where as Christ says, We preach not ourselves. I am I. This is God's will.

I can't bear the wall on my shoulders too big for me. Paul said, If anyone can do, we can't. We can't unblind people, but they are what can do.

We can preach Jesus Christ the Lord. We can preach Him. And there never has been and there never will be any movement of God in unstopping the waxed ears of men and women and opening the blinded minds of men and women.

Never has been in a way apart from the proclamation of the Lord, Jesus Christ. May I say three things right quickly? I seek not your own. It's my great privilege to go from place to place.

I've done it many years. I'm just as much a member of this congregation as I am the one I'm supposed to be a member of Winston-Salem. I've been brought with a price.

I'm not my own. I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. I've been baptized into His precious body.

Yes, I have. Yes, I have. Every blood-bought child of God is my brother, sister, and the Lord.

And I am going up and down the country doing my little best to scream out that the time has come when we must preach the whole gospel once again. And the whole gospel is just to preach the whole Christ, Jesus Christ, God's anointed Lord, into whose hands, in virtue of His death on the cross, Almighty God has given every human being and to whom God Almighty has promised that everything that breathes for the wind of tongues will bring glory to His precious name. The initial confession of the early church was that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Romans 10 and 9, this is the word of faith which we preach unto you that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead thou shalt be saved. The early church, the ones nearest the Lord, they went up and down the country and didn't try their deadliest best to talk somebody into accepting Jesus as the Savior. They went up and down the country and proclaimed that God Almighty had exalted Him and had declared Him to be Lord over all.

And the watchwords and the battle cries of the early church they went everywhere and said, Hasten, Jesus is luxurious and demanded that men and women bow down and come under the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, your churches in America are fixing to go out of business unless there's enough people in them and men demand the pulpits and teach the Sunday school classes that will come back to preaching Jesus where He is now. He's on a throne.

He's on a throne, brother. And if you want to have anything to do with Him, you'll have to approach Him on the throne. And the subject bows to the sovereign and surrenders his rights and becomes a loyal subject or he's not received.

Jesus Christ has been declared by Almighty God to be Lord of all. One of the most damnable things that has been preached in America just about turned our churches, I hope there isn't a couple accepted, I don't know you, it just about turned our churches into where they are just nearly as nice as the average Kiwami or Rotary or some kind of club like that. They haven't got as much influence as those clubs.

And I don't want to do as much good or not, but they've gone all over this country and filled out such rooms full of people who think that they in their wonderful generous hearts have made Jesus Christ the absolute Lord of their lives. But I tell you, that's a lie crying in hell. No one else ever has the option or the privilege of making Jesus Christ the Lord.

God keeps it all. God made Him your Lord. And He's your Lord.

Whether you're in rebellion or in subjection, you can bow to Him. You can recognize Him. You can see Him on the throne.

You can be glad He's exalted. You can rejoice in His glory. Or you can bow to Him.

But God Almighty has decreed and declared it and ordained that because Jesus Christ poured out His blood, God's made Him Lord. Down in our country, we southern Baptists have to have our our annual encampments and summer Bible conferences. And I think you have some of them up here.

That's to give the unseen church members a chance to walk down one more time and surrender to the Lordship of Christ. They say, Well, in fact, I'm not taking Him as my Savior. And now I'm going to let it.

Well, bless your sweet little heart. I think that's nice of you to permit the Lord of glory to do something so nice to the low, bitter, concealing Christ that you have to permit to do something. Ladies and gentlemen, you'd better listen to me.

Jesus Christ is your ordained Lord. God made Him that. The difference between the man who's saved and the man who ain't.

The man who's saved is just tickled to death. That Jesus is on the throne. And the fellow that's not saved, he wants to push Jesus off so he can run things.

He's mad. He's mad. I'm going to tell you that now, my friends.

In the early days, they went everywhere and said, If you care, Jesus reigns as Lord by day. And people didn't do it lest they meant business. Because to call Jesus Lord for a Jew meant to actually believe that Jesus was God.

And the Jew believes it wasn't God. And he lets you pull his tongue out at the worst before he'd rather accept anybody except God. And for a Jew to call Jesus Lord meant that he had to say goodbye to the synagogue and the temple and mom and papa and everybody else.

And for a Gentile to call Jesus Lord in the early days meant that if Caesar found it out, for Caesar was the curious, he was Lord. Over in Japan, it's getting back that way. During MacArthur's reign for a little while over there, it was eased somewhat, but before the Second World War, the Emperor of Japan was the God of Japan.

And you could believe anything the Lord God said you wanted to in Japan, as long as when the time came, you called him your Lord. And a lot of preachers went over from the United States, they're used for Christ preaching, they about got everybody in Japan converted one night. The Japanese are mighty, mighty courteous.

They won't think of refusing you anything. And they went over and said, wouldn't you please take Jesus? They said, well, we'd be glad to. And they took him, put him up on the shelf with the rest of their gods.

But they kept on worshiping the Emperor. And I was sitting in Chicago at a Christian businessmen's meeting, and some folks had been over there, they were criticizing some of the Christians who weren't sent to consecration camps when the Second World War broke out, because they compromised a little bit. And when they came to arrest them, the man that they give their worship to, the Emperor, they crossed their hearts, crossed their fingers, knocked on wood, and wasn't going to do it in the heart, but they would with their head.

And this missionary was criticizing them. He said, no, not today. And I said, put it safe.

He said, oh, we had a nice place in Chicago on State Street, and Victor's Center, around the elaborate dinner with Christian Fellowship, and talk about what we wouldn't do. Put it safe around there. But when they come to you like they did many missionaries and people in Japan, and said, it's worship, it's fall down to Hiyorita as your Lord, or to go to a concentration camp, that'd be a white horse for different color.

But Brother, when the Apostle Paul said, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, stand upon your hind legs, let this world know it, here is one person who recognizes Jesus Christ as God's Lord, and He is Lord. He's in the advance. Stand up! Be counted! Brother, when Paul preached that, if the Emperor found it out, it is cursed.

And the old Coliseum, you can still go and see where thousands of Christians were fed to the lions, because they would not deny Christ and call Caesar Lord. And the battle still goes on. And this world still has its Caesar.

And this book still presents Jesus Christ the Lord. And it's still Caesar or Christ. But it's never Christ and Caesar.

For so hurtful a man cannot hold that one Lord at a time. And the choice is still to be made by men and women now. And the Church of Jesus Christ must ring with no uncertain trumpet call and say, Jesus Christ is God's Lord.

Bow down to Him. You didn't become a member of the New Testament Church unless before this world, by your actions, by your manner of living, you said, look at me. In second place, the only authentic confession of Jesus Christ is His Lordship.

In 1 Corinthians 12. Verse 3. You've quoted it many times. I believe I'll read it, so I'll be sure to get it right.

There are two dynamic statements that we need to give heed to often. Verse 3 of chapter 12. 1 Corinthians.

Wherefore, he makes two statements. He said, I'm going to tell you something. No man can do.

I give you to understand that no man, get over your ears, no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus anathema, a curse. Holy Spirit not in a man that calls Jesus a curse from God. Then he makes another statement.

And that no man can say. No man can say. Not willed by other, but can.

No man can say that Jesus is Lord. You can call Him Savior till you're doing the service. But no man ever yet been able to stand up and tell the truth and say Jesus is Lord, but not a Holy Spirit.

This can't be done. Did I, was it too plain to you, think I was meddling? When I asked this church, do you know what intercessory prayer is? Don't you tell anybody. But down our way we have to have a Bible study on prayer meeting night.

We can't even meet together one night a week just to join hands and hearts. About ten minutes of it and we'd all go crazy. God help us.

Don't you know a man can't call Jesus Lord except in the power of the Holy Ghost. That's what's said, don't you? You know what's said? Anybody can say, yeah, I'll take Jesus as my Savior if you can cut Him up that way. No man can call Him Lord.

That's what God calls Him. Says this same Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised and made to be both Lord and Messiah. You know what's said? The one thing that He'd like to give us is in the power of the Holy Spirit to be able to call Him Lord and means for it.

You know what I mean? Lord. In the 14th chapter of Luke, three different times my Lord used the expression cannot. Cannot.

If a man doesn't do this, he cannot be my disciple. If a man doesn't do this, he cannot be my disciple. And the third time, if a man doesn't do so himself, he cannot be my disciple.

For too long we've tried to say that you can deceive and not be a disciple, but can't be. You can pretend to make a profession, be serious about it. But Jesus says if a man don't be business, don't mean business, he doesn't see he can't be a good disciple, he can't be a disciple at all.

I think we'll read it. Verse 26 of the 14th chapter of Luke. It's familiar.

I trust what I read to get. My Lord said, ain't a man come to me? Ain't not his mother and his father and wife and children and brothers and sisters give his own life? He cannot be my disciple. I'll separate men from boys.

That's what Jesus said. And verse 27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot You can be a lot of other things, but you can't be a disciple of me, said the Lord. And then verse 33 So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath he cannot be my disciple.

There's about a million questions I'd like to ask the Lord about those. And I don't expect I could answer them. But I got sense enough to know this, brother.

Man, if you don't mean business about this business, if this isn't wholehearted, you just well forget this stage business. You can't be any kind of a disciple unless it's all out. And it goes against the grain to surrender yourself and your family and your money and everything about it to the Lord Jesus Christ and just be a good steward, just a good handler of something he owns.

You ain't gonna do that, bud, without the Holy Spirit. You know that? You're not gonna do that. Not gonna do that.

Don't tell me I cut out the same cloth you are. I'm a member of Adam's ruined fallen race. Give me a nice little free ticket to heaven.

Don't have to follow Jesus, don't love him, nothing else. Let me talk about how much money I give and how much money I do and what I do. I don't have to do nothing.

Sure. But come around and let the Lord say, Hey, bud, it's all or nothing. It's all or nothing.

I'll be ahead of your papa and your mother and your brothers and sisters. I'll be first. I won't play.

When I was a kid, we played choose-em-up, you know, one-eyed cat, I think we called it. And the boy had the ball, he's the hero, and the fella had the bat, he's second in command. And we choose sides.

See, who's bat first? And the fella who had the bat, he didn't get the bat first, he owned it, he'd take his bat and go home. The Lord said, You won't play me, I'm going bat first. Amen? He got a right to do it.

Nobody else has. Ladies and gentlemen, went out from the church doors one more time, walked men and women with the mark of discipleship to the rule of Him whose right it is to reign at the glorious day. The glorious day.

And then there's the last thing. The only remedy changed by men and the men who see the glory of Christ. This don't work, this nothing will.

Just keep on proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the only way into His body, into His salvation. It's the only authentic confession Jesus is Lord.

God made Him Lord, I sure am glad He did. I bow at His shrine. My Savior, divine, my wonderful, wonderful Lord.

But thank God there's one last word. The confession of the Lordship of Him who bought this world with His precious blood. That'll be the ultimate confession of all mankind.

You know, I like people to agree with me. Don't you kind of like people to agree with you? I've been going up and down this country and not everybody agrees with me. But one day every human being is going to say, Oh, Rothbard is right.

Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord. I've been telling this generation of people if they preach it, I trust in my Savior and I go up and down the country and people say, Well, I never heard about Him being Lord.

Well, that's what's been in the book all time. And God says He's Lord. And God says that He's turned everybody over to Him.

And God says that as your Lord He'll be your Savior. Or your Judge. So you're going to be one or the other.

And the book says that one day everybody is going to stand up and confess that Jesus Christ is a Lordy Lord. Yes, I don't believe in that. One day be.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made Himself made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant and was married to God.