The Thrust of the Gospel

Now tonight, you'll understand me when I say that I would not dare put over a fifth as much in a gospel message, preaching public services, as I'm going to try to cram into the teaching message tonight on the thrust of the gospel. This message is along the line of my ministry when I get to preach to preachers, and since all of us are preachers, I hope to be able to whet your appetite as I raise the question, what shall be the thrust of the gospel message when once we have applied the law, preached the first message of the cross, publicly or privately, this is for the public ministry, the private witness in your office or down on the street corner, wherever you are, what shall be the, what are you going to lead with? Christ fighters, Jack Dempsey said that the best defense is a good offense. The fellow never gets licks, it never gives the other fellow time to quit dodging his blows, and certainly what I want to get tonight at, how shall we lead in trying to present Christ in the gospel to men and women? I believe it's a little important what I'm going to talk about tonight, and thus I have pretty copious notes here so that we can get out at least by midnight.

That will encourage you. And I want to say in preface before coming to read from the book of Acts, chapter 5, that I do not know, while you're turning to it, listen to this word of preface, I do not know how far to make what I'm going to say stretch. I'll just give it to you, you can do with it what you please.

But I find nothing in the Bible, now I'll just say maybe I just haven't looked good enough, but I find nothing in the Bible that even resembles what we call witnessing and personal work as we do it today. I don't know how far to go with that. For instance, here I want to illustrate what I'm talking about.

There's a man by the name of Cornelius. The record of it is given, as you remember, in Acts, chapter 10. The scriptures say he was a just man who worshipped God.

He'd been praying. I'd just shut my eyes and see him. He wanted to know the way.

And over on the other end of the line, God had almost killed a Jew by the name of Peter. You remember he gave him some visions and got some of this tradition out of him and got him whittled down to where he would go over there and talk to this fellow Cornelius. Here we've got a sent one now.

That's Peter. And somebody that wants somebody to be sent to him, that's Cornelius. But when Peter goes over and gets in touch with Cornelius, you know what he did? You know how he tried to win him? He preached the gospel to him.

That's all he did. He preached to him. He began at the scriptures and he talked about this fellow Jesus.

You see, we stick out our hands and say, won't you accept Jesus Christ, but the fellow don't know anything about Christ and don't know what it means, you see. You see what I'm talking about? He just preached to him. He saw that Romans 1.16 was so.

The gospel itself. Not your winning ways, but the gospel is what? Is the power of God. He'd get that fellow over there that was in trouble to believe what? To believe the gospel.

He thought that would get the job done. I do not know, but what we could do with a little more of that. Most of us know all of the, what we've been taught about how to land the center, you know.

But we put a week on. If we get one still long enough, how could we serve him better? Well, if he's in the shape Cornelius was in, he's seeking and he's longing. Best thing we could do is do what? Preach the gospel to him.

So if we're going to preach the gospel to men and women, how shall we lead? And I take you as a text for the message tonight, the passage in Acts chapter 5. The story here is of the imprisonment of the apostles. And they were dismissed and told, verse 28. Well, verse 27.

When they brought them, they set them before the council. Acts 5, 27. And the high priest asked them, saying, like you fellows would be reasonable, didn't we straightly command you that you should not teach in this name? And instead of paying attention to us, we were trying to be nice and courteous, and we told you not to do it.

And behold, you filled Jerusalem with your teaching, your doctrine. And it looks to us like that what you're trying to do is bring this man's blood, this fellow Jesus, upon us. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew, and hanged on a tree. Him, this one that God raised up, this one that you slew and hung on a tree, that's the one that God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a savior for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are his witnesses of this action of God, of these things.

And so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him. Him, this one you slew, and this one that God raised, that's the one that God's exalted, and he's exalted him, he's elevated him. He's raised him to be.

He's given them a ministry, an office, a job, to be a prince and a savior. And in that session, what he's doing right now, he gives repentance and forgiveness of sins. That's his job.

Only he can do it. God raised him, put him where he is for that purpose, and he raised him as a prince and a savior. There are five times in the Word of God, in the New Testament, where the terms which are applied to the Lord Jesus, the two terms Lord and Savior, are used in the same verse.

And they're repeated five times only in the New Testament, where the term Lord, talking about Jesus, and the term Savior, talking about Jesus, occur in the same verse. In each one of the five times, the order is always Lord and Savior. Now, that's not accidental.

There in our text, God has said to have exalted, with his right hand, this one, for to be a prince, a sovereign, a king, a ruler, a despot, for to be a sovereign, for to be Lord, Master, and Savior, for to give repentance and forgiveness of sins. Now, I wish to ask the question tonight, in order to introduce my subject, in order to get at how we shall present Christ. Say, we're going to preach the gospel to a sinner that wants to hear it.

He's in the shape of Cornelius. He's in the shape of the man in Acts 16. An earthquake came.

He sprang out, trembling, scared half to death. He said, what must I do to be saved? In order to find the right answer for that, I want to ask this question. I ask it from the divine and from the human side.

Now, listen carefully. How is Christ made manifest to the hearts of men? Now, you're not hearing the flesh. How is he made manifest to the hearts of men? When do men come to see Jesus Christ in true faith? That's looking at it from our side.

How does a man, when does a man come to see, for salvation is a seeing, Jesus Christ in true faith? Or, to ask the same question, looking at it as God looks at it, when is the Lord pleased to reveal himself to a man? That's the same question asked from God's standpoint and yours. When does a man come to see Christ in the truth of him? From God's standpoint, when is God pleased to reveal Christ to a man so that he can see? When does God please to open a man's heart so that he may see and receive Christ in the truth of him? What's the proper order? How does all this come to pass? I insist that this is a subject that every child of God must be deeply interested in. What's the proper order? How shall we preach Christ? How shall we present Christ to the faith of men? I insist, if you're not interested in this, you have no right to claim to be a child of God.

I insist that if you think that this business of being a Christian is just being fixed up so you'll go to heaven, you've missed it. I insist that you can't have my Christ without being commissioned by him. I insist that he makes servants, bond slaves out of everybody he brings to themselves.

I insist that every child of God on the face of the earth is divinely commissioned as a sent one to represent Jesus Christ. If there's anything on earth that we dead sure want to be definite about, it's how to present the Lord Jesus Christ to men and women that we have an opportunity to preach to. Now this is an important question for six reasons.

I mention it in passing. Any and every person who accepts Christ in the truth of it, that's the only way you can accept Christ. Not by a vision, not by a physical act, but in truth.

How can a fellow get to Christ? He can't get to him except in the truth of it. That's clear to me as it is to you. You wouldn't be near Christ if you moved physically from where you are now to somewhere else.

We understand that, don't we? Christ can be accepted only in the truth of it. That's the only way you can get to Christ. When he says, come to Christ, well, he's not here in the flesh.

There's no way on earth to get to him in the flesh. How can you obey his command? Come on back! Well, the only way you can do it is to come in the truth of it. But sad to say, the popularity of Jesus in the last 60 years can be attributed almost solely to the fact that we've taken the truth away and we've preached a skeleton, doctrineless Jesus, who's an awful nice fellow.

He wouldn't harm a flea, and he couldn't save a gnat. For all the saving power is wrapped up in the truth of it, and we've left that out for the most part. Anybody who accepts Christ in truth, in true faith, of course, he's saved.

But to receive one of the offices of Christ is not salvation. Now, don't throw me out. Don't throw me out, but hear me.

How many people are going to split hell wide open who have accepted Jesus as their Savior, they say? They've picked out one of his offices and said, flurry on the other two. That's dangerous. I'm here in the South where everybody's Christian, do just the please.

It's just about like that among you Yankees. Everybody in the South has accepted Jesus as Savior from one to a dozen times already. But you can't find salvation in any or all three of the offices of Christ.

Salvation is not in Christ as Savior. Salvation's not in Christ as Lord. Salvation's not in Christ as Prophet.

Salvation's in Christ, who happens to be God's Prophet and God's Priest and God's Lord. But you can't pick out one of the three offices and say, I'm trusting in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. That'll never get the job done.

For salvation is not in one of the offices of Christ. It's in Christ. And that's the reason some of us do not shrink too much when they call us Calvinists.

We follow no man, but it is true that we owe to a man by the name of John Calvin the restoration of the fact that a fellow can't get saved apart from the Holy Spirit and that Christ must be received as Christ, God's Prophet and God's Priest to die in your stead and God's Lord to bring his government and set it up in your life. You can't divide Christ up into sections as we've done. It is still true now, beloved.

It's still true that the gospel for the last 60 years, now listen to me, has presented one-sixth of the Bible Christ and one-sixth only. I'm not a crank, but I'm serious about this. The teachings of Christ have not been mentioned in connection with gospel preaching hardly for 60 years.

And thus, down south, in order to build up big Sunday schools, we have what we call the six-point record system. We give you 20% if you've studied your lesson and 10% if you're on time enough and 20% or 10% if you bring your Bible. But us southern people, we got way beyond the Bible a long time ago and so we had to buy Bibles and keep them in the church and pass them out.

Our folks ain't got no use for the Bible. We graduated from that a long time ago. We have faith.

God knows what to or what from. But see, we don't need anybody to teach us. We don't need to hear from God, so we've ignored that.

And then the Lordship or Kingship of Christ, we don't have no time for that. You Yankees, you settle that by your higher life and you're going to camp and surrendering to Jesus as Lord and surrendering to be a missionary and all that sort of folly, getting a second word for a third or something, when you never have got the first. No, all of these movements, you see, are trying to fill in the gap of the fact that for 60 years we've just presented one-sixth of Christ as the gospel.

And that's it. We've presented one-half of his work as a priest. We make much of what he did on the cross and thank God we ought to.

But don't none of you people need him now at the right hand of God, do you? Can't you get along without him praying for you, brother? You don't need a high priest at the right hand of God, actually, do you? All of you good bastards, you're going to go to heaven whether he prays for you or not, aren't you? Aren't all of you going to keep saved? Didn't you get saved with a no-soul salvation you can't lose? And you don't need the ministry of Jesus Christ at the right hand of God making intercession for you. Yes, you do. But we don't hear much about that.

That ain't the gospel. And so our people, they say we trust in Jesus' blood, but we don't need him to pray for us. We're dead sure not going to have him to rule in our lives.

And if you want us to study the Bible, you'll have to buy one for us. We haven't got the money. That's what we call Christianity today.

Now, we're living in a day when we're having great revivals which don't revive, and we've got wonderful evangelism which don't evangelize, and we've got a Bible salvation which don't save anybody. There's something wrong. There's something dead wrong.

And to make it still more tremendously important, that Christ is being preached on every side in some measure of truth. You'd have a hard time finding anybody preaching now that isn't preaching some truth about the Lord Jesus Christ. But there's dead sure something missing in the gospel preaching of this day, for it isn't bringing men and women, boys and girls into a new realm of life.

It isn't changing men. Just now and then, as if snatched out by fire, you see somebody who gives some evidence that they've been changed, that they're not the same person. They're changed.

But most folks get converted today, and from then till the day they die, the only way on God's earth, you can have the slightest suspicion they're children of God, you'd have to ask them. No change. People pass from a life of year-old no chance into a life of death without any change.

And that's a tragedy. There's something dead sure missing. Now, ladies and gentlemen, listen to me.

A man must be mortified and brought to worship God in Jesus Christ, and nothing short of that is salvation. Nothing short of a heart brought to worship God in Christ is salvation. Worship Him.

Now, our methods may be debatable, but our message must not. And whatever we do, we must preach Christ and the truth of Him. We mustn't try to conceal any of the truth of Christ.

We must preach Him and accept Him as He is. And so my subject's interesting to me. How shall we present Him? Mind you that there are three truths of the Bible, all of them in connection with the center and the Christ whom we preach, that we must not skip over lightly.

I mentioned them, I think, in passing, or one of them last night. One is the absoluteness of the centerhood of man. And I stress the word absoluteness.

Everybody agrees that we're sinful people. But the absoluteness of a man's center, he's plumb a center. He's absolutely ruined from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.

He's one mass of putrefying soul. And the offensive word in that expression, the absoluteness of man's centerhood, is the word absolute. And then the second truth that makes me want to be dead certain, I want to get to it in a minute, I show you how to rightly preach Christ, is the absolute Saviorhood of Christ.

Now nobody objects to Christ the Savior. Everybody thinks that's nice. Everybody thinks that's nice.

But the word of a centurion is, again, the word absolute. He is the absolute Savior. There is no hope for anybody except all of that hope is in the shed blood of another.

There is no hope. There isn't a minute of an inch of ground that's safe for anybody to stand on in hopes of eternal life, apart from the life laid down of the Lord Jesus Christ, the utter absoluteness of his Savior. And then the third thing that we dare not leave out of our presentation is the absoluteness of his Lordship.

Now everybody believes that Jesus is Lord. Everybody. Everybody.

You can hear the most evil-minded unbelievers today talking about the Lord, the good Lord. Good Lord. He's awful good.

Awful God-read. Drunk or sober. Be the good Lord with him.

He's awful nice. He ain't drunk. He's hardly ever sober.

But drunk or sober, be the good Lord with him. Everybody has found out that Jesus is Lord. But again, the word of a centurion is the word absolute.

He is absolute in the claims of his Lordship. There was never a dictator like him. There was never a despot like him.

The scriptures go so far as to say he's Lord of all. And somebody says he'll be Lord of all, or not Lord at all, and that's exactly it. And the man or a woman that faces that can never do anything except say, depart from me.

I'm a sinful man. If you have a good opinion of yourself and of the kind of nice little life you live, you haven't killed anybody, the mountain thing lately, it's a good evidence that you do not live fronting the demands of this one who claims absolute allegiance, absolute obedience. He's absolute in his Lordship.

Nothing on God's earth that a human being can do except to shut his eyes to that and refuse to face it, or take the position of Peter, depart from me. I'm a sinful man. And be able to say he's precious, but I'm vile.

The absoluteness of the Lordship of Christ, there's where the offense is. Now we mustn't hide this from men, for now I'm going to make a statement that sounds like it's the statement of a cranky old preacher, but it isn't. If you'll take away these three things, the absoluteness away from men being sinners, they'll admit they're sinners.

If you'll take the absoluteness of the saving work of Christ away, men will agree with you. If you'll preach a Christ that wants to be and ought to be, but not a Christ who isn't an absolute Lord, men will accept Him. When I face these things, I almost am able to stand before a congregation and say, I think at last, I understand a little bit about what Paul meant when he reminded the people over at Corinth about when he came to them.

He didn't come to them in excellency of speech and so forth, but he came to them standing in prayer. He was literally standing in prayer that somebody was going to profess to get saved. Now let me repeat it.

He was standing in prayer that somebody was going to profess to believe and put their trust in the demonstrations of men instead of the power and demonstration. You say, didn't Paul love soul? Yes, he loved them so much, he sure didn't want any of them to put their faith where it wouldn't do any good. He prayed for that there'd be enough excellency in his speech and so forth that somebody would make a move because of that great confidence in what he had to say.

He wanted it to be in the demonstration and in the power that man's faith should be put in God in Christ. Thus I can understand a little bit of Paul's theology. Ladies and gentlemen, in your personal work, in your private, in your public preaching, never forget this.

If you preach a gospel that can be received apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, it's not the gospel of God Almighty. It just cannot be accepted by anybody apart from the work of the Holy Ghost. All of the way we try to trend it and make it attractive and whittle it down and pervert it is a shame and makes us butchers of souls.

I'm interested in this for thirty-some odd years. I've been studying what little sense I've got to try to find a way to present Christ in such a way that somebody to transform, made a new creation. I've been trying to find out what is the matter with this so-called preaching of the gospel today that is failing to turn out true converts of the Holy Christ.

Now, let me say two other things and then the introduction is gone. It's a whole lot better, longer than the message. I'm leading up to how shall we present Christ.

I'm trying to whet your appetite. You're lazy. You're lazy spiritually.

Now, you are. I know you are. You came to me.

And just any old way of talking about Jesus is all right. No, it isn't. No, it isn't.

Just any old way of preaching is all right. No, it isn't. If you can get a peculiar whine to your voice or something, it's all right.

We're living in a day now when we must, in our personal lives and our toting of our end of the blanket, take seriously this awful truth that there's something dead sure missing in the way we've been presenting Christ. There's something dead sure missing. There's something wrong with it, brother.

I may not have sense enough to know what it is. But if you think you know, I'll sit at your feet. Because if there's anything that's the only thing between the two eternities, it's to know Christ in the truth of Him.

And how shall men believe unless they hear? How shall they believe in the Christ of the truth of Him? Unless there shall be a revival even in our day, and God knows it's needed, of preaching the truth of Christ. The truth of Christ. This generation's dead to the glory of the cross of Christ and the throne of Christ.

And I maintain we've almost left out both of them for 60 years in our preaching of Christ. I know we've left out the throne. I actually have had the experience of going up and down America, both south and north, and preaching to congregations and have them flock to me and say they had never heard in all of their lives that God Almighty raised Jesus Christ from the dead and put Him on a throne and put Him in charge of everything that wiggles and declared Him to be Lord of all.

I have had people mock me at the close of the service, soccer school teachers and deacons, as I have dared to go into Baptist churches against this poor little old preacher. And I make the solemn stand that no man has made Jesus Christ the God of each church, the God of the family to be Lord. And that He's Lord both of the dead and of the living.

He is heckler's Lord. He is crucifix's Lord. He's every man's Lord by God's appointment.

And that takes it so great big men couldn't make Jesus their Lord and they fought me over it. I say it with a sob in my heart that the great truth of Christ's present Lordship, not future, but now, He's Lord now. Not dead, not killed, He's now.

The reins of the hearts of men are in His hands now. He's the one who will dispose of sin. He's already entering into that.

And He's the only one that can give repentance. And He's the only one that can give forgiveness of sin. That's now.

That's what He's doing now. And I found that a whole generation of people have been read in our churches all over the land who think that's a strange gospel and a new gospel. It's as old as the appointments of Almighty God.

I know this generation has heard not the truth of Christ as to its own. And I'm pretty certain that I'm not just being full of sour grapes when I tell you that the kind of cross most of these generations heard is something very nice and sweet. And you can hang it around your neck as it were.

But it's not that offensive, that awful, bloody, that terrible tragedy that took place outside of Jerusalem. It's the nicest, sweetest little thing you've ever heard. But that ain't the kind of death my Lord died, not by our guilt.

Now, you can't divide Christ. You can't divide His cross and His throne. He came to die, saved from hell.

Having died, God raised Him and sat Him down as Lord. And you cannot lay hold of Him where He is now on the throne without coming by way of utter dependence on His shed blood. You can't have any entrance in His shed blood unless you're joined to Him.

Your pastor spoke on union with Christ Sunday. Did you get it? That's the heart of the Bible. No man saved unless by faith he's utterly been married and united in Bible union to a living person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But you can't be united to Him by ignoring the blood. But you can't have the merits of the shed blood apart from being united to Him. And this isn't a vicious circle.

This is just the one Christ of a bloody cross and a glorious throne. There's not one Christ apart from a cross and another who's now on the throne. It's the same person.

And the Gospel of Jesus said it's the sons of Christ and the glory that shall follow. And John 3.14 says as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish. And so forth.

The phrase is even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And the Greek on it even is but put in the grave. Crucified, put in the grave.

And what is that? The one Greek word demands a death that demands a resurrection. And when God raised Him, He put Him on a throne. And He's there until He leaves it to come back and close up God's business.

You can't divide Christ. I'm not preaching to Christ, one who died and now one who reigns. It's the same Christ.

It's the same Christ. And you can't have one without the other. I think the old song goes what is it? You can't do it.

You can't have Christ on the cross without knowing Him on the throne. And you can't get to Him on the throne if you come there any other way except by that bloody cross. Did you get it? It's not being smart.

They say, well now we preach the gospel so simple. Yeah, I know it's been so simple because we've left out this awful bloody cross and this glorious woman. But the Christ of the Bible who must be believed and received must also be preached and all the truth of Him that bloody cross and that glorious woman.

And I come to tell you that it's not enough just to say you accept Him. You must accept Him in such a way that you come to worship Him. You come to worship Him.

The thrust of gospel preaching then I'm about done but I've spent all this time to get to my subject. How shall we lead? Do you ever play checkers? A good checker player makes the first move and that move determines every move he's going to make. But the other fellow on the other side he's fixing to block everything.

A good checker player don't move but one at a time and he goes in a certain direction and knows where he's going. Two advancing armies, advancing army and here's one in defense. The advancing army has got a good general.

He don't fight on 40 fronts. He fights on one. How are you going to have some barbed wire in your presentation of Christ? How are you going to present Christ to men and women? Well, bless God.

I thank God for two things the scripture says. He's knowable. He was taken from among men.

He won't run from you. Praise God. He's not hard to get to, brother.

Awful simple. He's approachable. Ah, he's approachable.

The violet center out of hell. You can get to him. Amen.

Praise the Lord. Well, how are we going to present him? We're going to preach his lordship. That's our thrust.

We're going to preach him where he is now. Where is he? Reigning on God's throne. Where is he? Giving repentance.

Where is he? Granting forgiveness of sin. He put him on the throne and made him to be a prince and a savior. What for? What does the text say? For the express purpose.

Huh? Giving repentance and permission. You want your sins forgiven? You're going to have to get in touch with him where he is now. That's what he does from the throne.

Amen. You want to be brought to repentance? You're going to have to do business with him where he is now. For he grants repentance.

One of the most difficult things in the Bible is this simple little thing. God's not going to repent for you. But you can get the job done by yourself.

Yet you must do it. But if you need any help in this matter, if you'll quit listening to the preachers, just listen to this. God exalted him, put him up there, made him a prince, and a savior.

What for? You need repentance. I know somebody can fix it so you can. Get in touch.

Amen. That's the only way on earth. Otherwise you'll just have a little reformation.

You can reform, can't you? But under God. This isn't trying to be smart. God Almighty commands you to repent.

You're going to split hell wide open if you don't. And yet God had to put his son on the throne. Put him to work.

Giving repentance. Granting the forgiveness of sin. Oh my.

Get me. You know where all of that which God requires from you that you cannot do, you know where you can get the ability? Somebody on the throne. He's put there for a purpose of giving it to you.

Now I bring, and do not elaborate on them, but very briefly, three reasons. Why I believe you're going to present Christ properly to men and women. You'll present him where he is now.

In the first place, I believe that this is the way, this is the thrust of gospel because it was the way it was done in the Bible. Now I take as much time in my preparation. I'm not going into these scriptures.

If you're interested, and you are if you're Christian, or if you're not. I hope you are. If you're interested in doing something about what's missing.

Brother Riesinger, there's something dead sure missing and we've been going at it. I declare to you people get converted now. Something's wrong.

And we've got a nation full of Christians who are in terrible rebellion against everything that the Bible teaches that can't be salvaged in the Bible. You want me to tell you how Abraham got saved? Well, turn to the second chapter of Acts. Don't do it now and read the first verse and the second verse and the scripture will tell you exactly how Abraham got saved.

I don't believe everybody ever gets saved. God gets saved exactly like Abraham did. And you know what happened to Abraham? It says, The Lord of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.

He was confronted by the Lord. That's what wrought the change in him. The Lord of glory appeared.

How do Isaiah get saved? In the day. Isaiah chapter 6, in the day. That continues on about what Isaiah says.

I saw the Lord. Salvation to see Him, beloved. I saw the Lord.

When John the Baptist came to make a people ready for Christ, what did he say? Repent! Why? Heaven's rules here. The kingdom of heaven's at hand. You can't go this way.

He's here. When my Lord was here, He preached His death in many places, but He demonstrated His Lordship. Demonstration is always the best sort of preaching.

The whole advertising industry now has been revolutionized since the day of television. They don't tell you so much now as they show you. When my Lord was here, He demonstrated His Lordship.

He demonstrated. He spoke. The way is required.

He spoke! The dead man came out of the grave. He spoke! The demons ran and got in the halls. He demonstrated His Lordship.

Now, I'm going to give you something that I don't know how far it will go, but we're dealing now serious matters. Listen to me. Not a single one of the disciples understood the death of Jesus Christ, but they were all saved.

Not a single one of them understood. But I'll tell you one thing they did know. They knew who Jesus was.

I say I don't know just exactly how to handle that, but I read the old Puritans and the old men of God, and they don't say much about the Lordship of Christ. It's all on their theories of the atonement. And I wonder what Peter and John and the brethren, none of them were straight on the atonement, but they knew who Jesus was.

Did you get it? Did you get it? Every one of them, when Jesus was crucified, old Peter said, Well, get back, fellas! We trusted that something would fix that, but we just had a curse shot to us. Isn't that right? Old Peter said, I'm going fishing. The rest of them said, Well, just a minute.

I'll get my pole and I'll join you. Didn't they? I do not understand, if I'm not right now. Every one of them knew who Jesus was, and that's the heart of the matter.

Who am I to tell you that I am? Well, Peter answers, Thou art the Messiah. We know who you are. The Son of the living God.

Now, lest you think I fall into heresy, the Apostle Paul preached Christ where He is now. The famous text in 1 Corinthians 2 and 2, I determine not to know anything among you save Christ and Him crucified. If you read that carefully now, he identified the Christ he was preaching.

You know who he was? He's the same one that was crucified. One the different one. But he didn't preach the death of Christ.

He preached the living Christ who had died. He didn't start with the virgin birth and work up to the throne. He preached Christ where He was right then, the living God, and identified Him as the same one they took and nailed to a tree outside the city of Jerusalem.

Paul's a pretty good preacher. He preached Christ where He is now. He didn't preach just the death of Christ.

He preached the Christ who's now on the throne, who got there, bless God, by way of a cross. He preached the person of Christ, the one who died on the cross. And when you come to the epistle of John, who has life? He that hath a good, solid doctrinal interpretation of the atonement of the Lord.

He that hath the Son hath life. And he that hath not the Son hath not life. You see, we're to preach Christ.

Who's He? He's sitting on the throne. How'd He get there? He got there by way of a cross. That's the Christ we preach.

But the only Christ we've got now is the living Christ, thank God. Amen? And if you want to have a part in what He accomplished on the cross, you have to believe in Him, the living Lord. In the Bible, they presented the Lordship of Christ.

In the 2nd place, and my time's gone, but tenor women are the men to do. The very logic of redemption demands it. Now, you who are trying to get back to the old doctrines, listen to Brother Barnes.

The basic proposition of the gospel is Christ is a lovely Lord. Now, don't you throw me out. Nowhere in the New Testament? Nowhere.

And we ought not to do it now. Are we to go out and tell sinners Christ died for you? That is not gospel preaching. Because nobody can know whether Christ died for you until after you're saved.

You'd better believe me now. You can't know that Christ died for you. That's a matter of assurance, Brother.

Paul could stand up, but he is already saved. And he'd say, he loved me and gave himself for me. That was his assurance.

Listen to me. Don't get in the theories of atonement. Don't try to prove the limit of atonement with anything else.

You ain't smart enough. The old timers, they tackled it. They couldn't handle it.

Don't try to defend some man-made propositions. They're just men. Here's one thing that the New Testament preachers did.

They preached Jesus Christ is Lord. He got to be Lord by dying on a cross. Bow to Him.

And you can tell every human being that ever lived and tell them the truth that God Almighty has made Jesus Christ Lord over that man. And you can command him to repent of his rebellion and bow to that Lord. You don't have to try to explain your theories.

The New Testament preachers didn't. They preached the living Lord, not apart from His cross, but in view of His cross. And said, sinner, bow down.

Bow down. You can preach that to all men. You'll never be the man that you can't say Christ is your Lord.

God made Him your Lord. He turned you over to Him. You're in His hands.

God commanded you to repent. He used to wink at it, but He don't now why. He's ordained the dead and He's given assurance by that man.

What did He do to that man? He raised him from the dead. Do you see it? Bow down. Repent.

Repent. Repent. And I close with this word.

They preached Him as Lord, who became Lord by way of a cross. Long winded tonight, but this is vital to me, and I've got another minute. We preach Him as Lord.

We preach Him wherever He is now. We preach Him wherever He is now. We do not work up our theories and try to support them.

We preach the living Lord. We present this truth that every man is expected to determine that God Almighty has made Jesus Christ your Lord. Do you see it? Who is that Jesus Christ? He's the one that died.

What did He die for? It's all in there. But where is He now? He's sitting on the throne. Who put Him there? God put Him there.

Made Him your Lord. And thus, we preach the Lordship of Christ because repentance demands this order. What is repentance? It's bowing to the sovereign rule of Christ.

God put everything in the hands of Christ. You'd better quit booking Him. God's turned you over to Christ.

You'd better get to where you're glad of. When rebellion against the claims of Christ are gone, that's repentance. Now, be a believer.