Sermon Tone Analysis

“But now we are seeing the righteousness of God declared quite apart from the Law (though amply testified to by both Law and Prophets) - it is a righteousness imparted to, and operating in, all who have faith in Jesus Christ.

(For there is no distinction to be made anywhere: everyone has sinned, everyone falls short of the beauty of God's plan.)

Under this divine system a man who has faith is now freely acquitted in the eyes of God by his generous dealing in the redemptive act of Jesus Christ.

God has appointed him as the means of propitiation, a propitiation accomplished by the shedding of his blood, to be received and made effective in ourselves by faith.

God has done this to demonstrate his righteousness both by the wiping out of the sins of the past (the time when he withheld his hand), and by showing in the present time that he is a just God and that he justifies every man who has faith in Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:21-26, JB Phillips translation

“Without these five confessional statements – Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, and glory to God alone – we do not have a true church, and certainly not one that will survive for very long.

For how can any church be a true and faithful church if it does not stand for Scripture alone, is not committed to a biblical gospel, and does not exist for God’s glory?

A church without these convictions has ceased to be a true church, whatever else it may be.”

Thus reads a quote from James Montgomery Boice, taken from chapter one of his book, “Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace”, published by Crossway Books in 2001, just short of a year after the author passed away.

I have chosen to begin this year, A.D. 2008, with a sermon teaching these five doctrines Boice listed for us for the very reason that he cited.

I don’t know how exciting it will be for the hearer.

It will not contain fanciful illustrations or humorous stories from the internet.

I will lean heavily on this man’s book and also on the Godly wisdom and Biblical instruction left for us by such legends of the faith as Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Charles Wesley and others.

I will say at the outset that if the truths of these doctrines themselves do not excite the hearer in the spirit and in the heart then there is something the hearer has not grasped, and I will have failed in my task or the hearer will have not been paying attention or not been open to the Holy Spirit’s illuminating grace.

I strongly encourage you (the hearer or the reader) to determine at this moment to give your full attention and concentration to every part of this sermon and receive it first mentally.

R.C. Sproul, in his book “The Soul’s Quest for God” (Tyndale, 1992) said this:

“The Word of God can be in the mind without being in the heart; but it cannot be in the heart without first being in the mind.

This point is crucial to answer the question, ‘What can I do to get the divine and supernatural light into my heart?’

…The first thing we must do is get the Word of God into our minds.

That responsibility is ours, not God’s.

We are required to be diligent in our study of Scripture.

We cannot reasonably expect the Spirit to give us the excellent sense of the Scripture in our hearts if we are unwilling to get it in our minds.

A cavalier approach to Scripture will not do.

The only ‘devotional’ reading of God’s Word that pleases Him is a devout study of His Word.”

We’ll hear more statements along these lines when we talk about faith.

For now I simply ask you to make a mental note of the gravity I put on this sermon.

It is the most important information you will ever receive, and it is information that is widely lacking in today’s evangelical church.

There needs to be a revival of it in teaching, in preaching, in the understanding of every educated Christ-follower if the church is ever to regain its Godly influence in the world as we draw near the end of the age.

SCRIPTURE ALONE

Our church’s constitution under ‘Statement of Beliefs’, reads as follows:

1) We believe and declare that the Holy Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word of God and is the all sufficient rule in matters of faith and practice.

That the Holy Bible consists in its entirety of 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books.

(II Tim 3:16-17, Isa 55:11)

2) We believe and declare the historical accuracy of all Biblical accounts including: special creation in six literal days, the existence of Adam and Eve as the progenitors of all people, the fall and resultant divine curse on creation, and the world-wide flood.

What we have said here is that the Bible is the inspired Word of God given to man and that it is entirely true, entirely without error, that what it says has happened has actually happened and what it says will happen will actually happen.

The Scriptures are the only divinely inspired source from which we learn about God’s will and His ways and therefore all that we teach in regards to the Christian faith must be centered there.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says:

“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

We therefore believe that the Scriptures are sufficient for evangelism, for our continued sanctification, for guidance in all matters of faith and lifestyle, and for social reformation.

The Bible does not need defense and it does not need support from any other document.

It is for these reasons that we believe that the preaching of God’s Word is the most important part of worship.

In our day the word ‘worship’ is becoming almost synonymous with singing and music.

The so-called ‘worship leader’ or ‘worship team’ in the church consists of the musicians who stand up and lead a congregation in the singing of hymns and other music which, unfortunately in many cases, is framed with lyrics that are unbiblical.

Now I do not intend to get off track here, but I want to make something very clear.

There is absolutely no room for poetic license in the composition of music and poetry that aims to send out a Christian message.

There are very many songs out there, on the radio, in churches, wherever so-called gospel music is heard, that have no biblical foundation and in many cases violate scripture for the sake of a rhyme or a clever line.

I make this statement here, because in so many of our churches the music and singing time has become the central focus and preaching is diminished in the minds of both leadership and congregation.

It is something to be endured, and unfortunately much of it is barely endurable, because there has been a drift away from sound, Biblical preaching that would ever stir the heart and speak to the spirit in a way that has any eternal value whatsoever.

Christians, the Holy Spirit does not use music, He does not use charismatic personalities, He does not use cutesy internet-surfed illustrations or the teary-eyed testimonies of celebrities to accomplish His regenerating and saving work among sin-ruined mankind.

He uses the Word of God.

That is why Jesus put preaching above healing, it is why Paul said “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel…” (1 Cor 9:16), and it is why God has raised up so many men through the ages who have literally felt they would wither away and die if they could not preach.

“But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: “DO NOT SAY IN YOUR HEART, ‘WHO WILL ASCEND INTO HEAVEN?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), 7 or ‘WHO WILL DESCEND INTO THE ABYSS?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).”

8 But what does it say?

“THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, 9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; Romans 10:6-9

That is why we say Scripture alone is sufficient to complete the saving work of God; regeneration, justification, sanctification, glorification, and it must be preached with reverence, with clarity, with authority, with finality, because all else we do in the framework of worship is secondary and useless without it.

CHRIST ALONE

A document called the Cambridge Declaration, the complete text of which can be found at www.AllianceNet.org,

makes this statement:

“As evangelical faith has become secularized, its interests have been blurred with those of the culture.

The result is a loss of absolute values, permissive individualism, and a substitution of wholeness for holiness, recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope.

Christ and His cross have moved from the center of our vision.”

The focus on Jesus in many evangelical churches has turned to a false Jesus who coddles and pampers, meeting our perceived needs and comforts, boosting our self-esteem, helping us climb the ladder of success and helping us keep a good mental and emotional attitude about life.

Boice declares that ‘evangelicals have fallen prey to the consumerism of our times.

A therapeutic worldview has replaced the classical Christian categories’ of sin, hell judgment, the wrath of God, and the doctrines of grace, redemption, atonement, propitiation, justification and faith.

He finishes, ‘To the extent that Christ and His cross are no longer central, modern evangelicalism has become a movement shaped only by popular whim and sentimentality.”

The cross of Christ is the hinge upon which eternity turns.

His work of atonement there is the very center of both history and theology.

There He satisfied the Holy wrath of God against sin.

Martin Luther wrote: “Since all of us, born in sin and God’s enemies, have earned nothing but eternal wrath and hell so that everything we are and can do is damned, and there is no help or way of getting out of this predicament…therefore another man had to step into our place, namely Jesus Christ, God and man, and had to render satisfaction and make payment for sin through his suffering and death” What Luther Says; An Anthology, comp.

Ewald M. Plass (Saint Louis; Concordia, 1959) vol 3, 1423

This is what is meant by Jesus’ own words when He said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” Mark 10:45

On the cross Christ was our substitute.

He bore the punishment for sin in our place.

He paid our debt in full by taking in His body the judgment we deserved so that all who believe in Him can look forward with confident assurance to Heaven.

Calvary is the very center of Christianity.

There can be no gospel without it; there can be no Christian life without it.

Christ alone is our salvation and He alone deserves our adoration, our worship, our very life, nothing held back.

As Watts so aptly wrote:

“Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all”

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross – Isaac Watts

GRACE ALONE

Sinners have absolutely no claim on God.

The only thing God owes man is punishment for sin, and the only fit punishment for sin is death.

Let me say that more clearly.

Sin brings both spiritual and physical death, and the final consequence of sin is eternal death.

That does not mean oblivion, it means eternal separation from God in a place of eternal torment and misery beyond description.

Many of today’s evangelical churches avoid that topic.

They teach a doctrine that humans are basically good and that they are saved because they make a wise decision to ‘receive’ Jesus into their heart.

By the way, there is no New Testament text that admonishes anyone to receive Jesus into their heart.

They teach that because God is good the only right thing for Him to do is eventually save everyone.

Quoting Boice again, “If God were motivated only by what is right, without any consideration of a grace made possible by the work of Christ, all would be condemned and all would spend eternity in hell.

This is because ‘there is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God’.

(Rom 3:10-11)”

Another section of the Cambridge Declaration I quoted earlier says:

“Unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of fallen human nature.

This false confidence now fills the evangelical world – from the self-esteem gospel to the health and wealth gospel, from those who have transformed the gospel into a product to be sold and sinners into consumers who want to buy, to others who treat Christian faith as being true simply because it works.