Gospel—Bruce Conrad
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Well, if you've just joined us here for this meeting.
My privilege on behalf of the believers here in Addison to extend you a warm welcome to the Gospel meeting.
Unless I forget, if you have questions this is probably not a group you're just going to raise your hand, but that I really would be fine with that, but it's probably not going to happen. If you have questions or want to speak to someone afterwards, just catch someones eye where you're sitting or find me if you'd like, and we'd be delighted to address any questions you may have that we may be able to answer.
I don't know most of you, my name is Bruce Conrad. I'm from I live near Denton, TX.
The message I have for you tonight is not from Denton, TX.
From heaven itself.
The scriptures speak about good news from a far country.
And the privilege weighs upon me tonight to speak to you.
On behalf of God.
To give you good news.
But the gospel message is kind of.
It's kind of strange, I know Paul speaks of the mystery of the gospel.
It would be certainly a delight.
If you and I could reminisce someday and you say you know that night.
And wherever we are.
What neighbor village in Naperville I.
Accepted Christ that night. That would be wonderful.
But I really don't want to be the one.
When you stand before God.
Which you will.
And he just looks at you.
And says, son, remember.
The horror of that.
Is beyond our thinking.
Tomorrow morning, Lord willing, there'll be probably this room filled and we'll have the privilege to remember.
The Lord Jesus and his death, as he's asked us to do.
That's a happy thing to do. The memory of the just is blessed.
But it just staggers our minds to think if you should be like that rich man.
Who woke up in a place from which he would never escape?
That was so horrible.
In eternal judgment.
And God had to just say, Son, remember?
And so, with God's help, let's begin our meeting. I know we've all mostly been sitting today, so let's stand and start with hymn number.
25.
We'll sing this hymn and then take up some things from the scriptures and if we have time, sing one more at the end.
And that's the way we'll go, God willing, if some brother could start hymn #25.
Life at most is very great, like the falling of a leaf, like the binding of a shame.
Bleeding, never telling fast, Let the light will soon make us and the vagal light be passed.
I bring, I make.
My voice again.
What you consider, do not wonder, all last you steal your orchestra.
Big time.
May I Make Heart.
You on your way, you make my.
Trust today.
It's fine.
We turn to John's Gospel first, chapter 3.
Really was thinking.
To read just three passages.
Before I do.
This hymn we sang about life at best being very brief.
Was speaking with somebody near where I was sitting and saying how it you go to work when you're young and you're the youngest guy there and everybody's older and you blink a few times and you look around and you're the oldest guy there.
And older ones are kind of nodding their heads. That's the way it seems. Life is so swift.
I think it's in job. It says it's like a Weaver shuttle just.
And it's gone.
And we have a quick, a quick time here, a short time here.
And the opportunity, the wonderful opportunity, is now and this time to make a decision that effects our eternity.
I'm old enough when I was saved to remember reading the scriptures for the first time.
And I found it so striking when I finally got up to the book of Job, which took a while.
And to read all these questions that different ones in the book of Job were raised.
When I was a little boy.
Raised in Pennsylvania before the days when air conditioning was everywhere.
In the very humid, hot summer nights and diligent parents back then put you to bed at a certain time no matter what was going on outside in the street or how hot it was.
And after staring at the ceiling a little while and it would get dark a number of times, I don't know how many, I'd sneak out. Don't. Don't you do this.
I would sneak out the window onto the roof and I'd climb up and there was a flat spot up there in my pajamas in this little development of little tiny brick houses. I didn't know if I was six or seven or eight or I think it went on a number of years. And I can remember like it were yesterday, asking these questions.
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What am I doing here? What's the purpose of all this?
And you see the stars and you say.
What's this all about?
Look down who made me? What am I made for?
And I found it so striking that 15, some 20 years later and I get to the book of Job and all those questions are there in the Scriptures. Why did you bring me forth out of the womb?
What is my? What is my strength that I should hope? What is my end?
Can a man be profitable unto God?
And then as you get a little older and it doesn't take you to be very old before you have a sense of sin and of guilt.
And you say?
In a little boys mind, the equivalent of how can a man be just with God?
How can he that is born of a woman be clean in the sight of God, even the heavens?
Are not pure in his sight.
And so when I finally got to the book of Job.
I was so fascinated to see that I wasn't the only one, that God had worked and works in so many hearts.
And he oftentimes doesn't give answers, he gives questions.
And whether it's in the workplace or in spiritual things, it's always so encouraging when someone asks the right questions.
When you ask the right questions in spiritual things with an honest heart, God will answer every question.
You'll notice the Queen of Sheba, when she went, it says that Solomon told her all of her questions. And so these are good questions. And this precious book, the word of God people call the Bible.
It has every answer we need and more to all of the good questions in life.
You know what I was wondering sitting in my chair today and somebody, I think it was Bill mentioned and when he read in the book of Acts, Paul speaking about coming amongst them and speaking or testifying the gospel of the grace of God. And that's what we have tonight, the good news of God's graciousness and goodness to you and me.
But it also he also calls it the mystery of the gospel.
And it's not my purpose to take that up tonight, but there is a sense in which the gospel.
Is the secret in plain daylight?
And the brothers were praying before the meeting about this gospel hardened land we live in.
And to you and me, it probably see who our believers. It probably seems like everybody has heard the gospel 1000 times.
Not so it's not so I don't think. I know this deluded 22 year old. 23 year old. I walked right past it.
When I was saved, I was just shocked. How could I have missed this? Does everybody know about this? This is a this is a secret in hiding in plain sight.
But it's not the Gospel that's hidden, it's the God of this world hath blinded the minds.
Of them which believed not.
The veil is on our heart and in our minds.
And God is able to take that away and He did for me. And so many in this room, they will for you.
So with God's help, just take up a few verses tonight, the 1St in John chapter 3.
And verse 16.
A verse that has probably been translated into every language.
On this Earth, and there's probably a lot of languages.
For God so loved the world.
That he gave his only begotten Son.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now let's turn for just a SEC over to Romans chapter 5, where we work today.
Romans, chapter 5.
And verse 6.
For when we were yet without strength.
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In due time, Christ died for the ungodly.
And then in verse eight, what God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We'll get to the third verse later, Lord willing.
It is my great privilege to be able to tell you, with all the assurance I have about anything I've ever known, that God loves you.
I don't have to know a thing about you. I don't have to know how good you are, how bad you are, how smart you are, how rich or how poor.
It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever learned.
Is that you have the authority from this book to be able to walk up to anybody in any country at any time. Look them right in the eye. Sick person in the hospital prisoner Brother ****.
Slide that little thing that some of them are in behind. Sir, God loves you.
That's an amazing thing.
The brothers were speaking today about our attitude and our emotions.
And oftentimes we feel a little bit like it's a struggle to control our thoughts.
To have right thoughts and a right attitude.
To have right emotions and right feelings for the that are appropriate for the time, for the person, for the situation. God speaking reverently.
Can be anything he wanted to be.
You think anything he wants to be. He's God and he chose to love.
The world, you and me.
Could have been anything.
And he has characterized himself and told us about it, that he loves us so much that the scripture says God is love.
And God is light.
God didn't just love the church. He didn't just love the believers.
But God so loved the world.
There was a sacrifice that God made in the very beginning.
Of this world, when he provided a sacrifice for a man and his wife.
That was an act of mercy and of love.
He made a sacrifice for a family later on.
And then he widened it to a whole nation.
There was a lamb for a house and then goats in atonement for the whole nation.
But today is for whosoever, it's for the world.
All different. There's so many people in so many languages and so many countries. Doesn't matter. On the behalf of this book, you can say, my friend, God loved you and Christ died for you.
We we can easily take love for granted, I suppose, and we throw the word around kind of lightly.
But I'm sure there's a lot of people in this world that have never, ever been loved by anybody.
Sometimes you read about things happening where.
It just reminds you of that scripture.
Can a woman forget her sucking child? Yay, they may forget.
A woman that just delivers a child.
And I don't mean to be callous or disrespectful, but they throw the jaw in the trash.
And there's people if they.
Places of poverty and the stress of a world that has been contaminated and corrupted by sin.
They're not so much.
Brought up as they just grow up.
Women taken as wives that are never really loved.
Children and families, they're just one more mouth to feed, one more number.
And I'm sure there are countless people who have never been loved by anybody.
But think of the message that you could walk up to a person like that.
And say maybe your father never knew you never cared to.
But God loves you.
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God loves you.
Is a staggering thought. We just breezed through it so much. God loves you.
And because God so loved the world, as it says here, he gave his only begotten Son.
Now many of us in this room have had sons born to us.
And they've had a beginning when they were born. They have a history.
God's Son is eternal.
The Son of God was with the Father before the worlds were made, Proverbs 8 tells us.
His delights were with the sons of men.
And in the habitable parts of his earth.
And God so loved the world that he's decided to send his only begotten Son.
And so you say, well, what makes you me qualified?
To speak here about what I'm speaking about tonight, I have no theology degree. I can say, as it says in the Scriptures, I believed. Therefore, am I speaking or have I spoken? That's my qualification, I believed.
The Son of God came into this world.
As one with God his Father throughout all eternity.
God, in his love to man, said. I want to communicate to man so plainly, so clearly.
All that I am nothing left out.
And so he doesn't send or raise up a profit in this case.
He doesn't send an Angel.
He sends the darling of his bosom, His own and only begotten Son, into this world.
We read in John's Gospel.
In chapter one.
Let me just turn back to that. It was about 6 verses crowding my mind, but I'll read verse 14. The Word was made flesh, or became flesh, and dwell among us.
And we beheld His glory, the glories of an only begotten, of a Father full of grace and truth.
Had it only been that God?
Sent his son to display all that he is, in love and in holiness and in every moral beauty.
In all wisdom, that in and of itself.
Would have been.
The most dramatic, amazing thing that had ever happened on this earth.
If he had just merely come and displayed everything that God is.
I love that.
Him, I think it goes.
Come dwells in his bosom, knoweth all that in that bosom lies came to earth to make it Tim known that we might share his joys.
The son's knowledge of the father is perfect and intimate and complete.
And he could stand in front of Pharisees and Sadducees and everyone else and say, I and my Father are one.
He could say to the disciples, If you have seen me, you have seen my father.
It makes the hair stand up on your head to consider the import of those statements.
This is God come forth in human vessel form.
Displaying all that God is and Paul could write later on, in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
All of it, nothing left out.
And if it had stopped there, that had still been the most amazing.
Event that had ever taken place on the Earth, but it doesn't stop there, as you know.
When it says He gave his Son, he gave him as a sacrifice for sin. He gave him as the Lamb of God's own, providing that he may take up the question of sin.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
We're on that, Lord willing, in a minute.
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That whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
And you say, if you haven't heard this before or haven't considered it, perish. Now where does this come from?
I'm good with God loving me.
You might say, but perish. Why would I perish?
And so in the gospel, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is, my friend, that if you haven't accepted Christ.
You're on a broad Rd.
That could end at any moment and it leads to destruction.
That's the facts of the matter.
The facts of the matter are that you were born in sin and that's why you started to sin before you can remember. The scripture says man is born into trouble like the sparks fly upward.
And that's your history and mine.
God is light and Him is no darkness at all, as we consider today.
And yet you and I were born as an unclean thing. Vain man would be wise though man be born like a wild ***** cult.
And what our brother was describing today in the flesh, That's the wild ***** cult.
That you and me by nature.
The nature that produced those sins is obnoxious to God.
And the fruit that you and I have produced.
That bad fruit?
Is obnoxious to God.
The soul that sinneth the scripture says it shall die.
You say, well, yeah, that's what I was, but can I tip the scale a little bit? I haven't done X or Y for a long time, and I've done AB and C too.
I can remember the first time I read this verse after I was saved as I was reading my way through the Bible. God requires that which is past.
I said man.
Every religion in the world.
Is kind of turning its back on the past and looking forward and saying, well, let's do some good things. The law has so many flavors and so many religions, but it's all the same. It's do good and get good.
Do bad, get bad? That's religion. Every religion man invents is some variation on that theme.
But it doesn't take up yesterday or last week. God requires it of you, my friend.
It requires your little 4 year old sins and your 6 year old sins, or your 12 or 16 year old sins. He requires it of you.
And on God's behalf, I warn you tonight.
And God misses nothing.
There is wrath, and beware lest he take you away in his stroke.
And even a great ransom cannot deliver you.
Tonight, there's a ransom.
Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all. There's a ransom tonight.
Now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. There was a time God winked at men's ignorance, but now commanded all men everywhere to repent.
Maybe you're invited somewhere to buy something, or to buy Tupperware or buy a mutual fund or buy whatever they say. Oh, buy this thing. But if you don't, OK.
It's a free country, right?
God loves you so much He's now commanding you to repent than to believe the gospel.
God requires that which is past.
And so God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
I.
The thought.
Is there any Wakefield used to say?
God blocks the path of every Sinner with a cross.
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Of Christ, you're going to have to walk right by it.
You see people out on the street in the violence situations and you say I wonder if that person has ever heard the gospel. I believe God is faithful.
God is faithful.
And he puts those outstretched arms before you.
And God so loved the world that He gave His Son, not just as I was saying, to display all that He is in His nature to man.
But he provided him as a sacrifice for sin. We read in Romans chapter 5 that he died for the ungodly and he died for all. And so again, on the authority of this book, I can say to every man, and so can you.
You can say on the authority of this book that God loves you and Christ died for you.
You can say that because that's the truth. God loves you.
Christ died for you.
But we need to be clear about something.
And that's this word. As we used to tell our children when they were little at the table, we called it the B word.
Believe.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
If we were to turn to 1St John chapter 2 and I think maybe I'll just quote it.
It says there that he referring to Christ as the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only.
But for the whole world.
And again, I think it's in the 4th chapter of First John here in his love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation from our sins.
That's a word that we don't commonly use, propitiation. I think it's only in our English Bible. Three times. Once you kind of have to look it up and it's there, but two times it's out there playing in the King James Bible. And I just quoted both of them.
But propitiation is that side of the cross which really is Christ laying the foundation before God, before a holy God, to establish the foundation where God can come out and bless the vilest Sinner and still be just in doing it.
Let me use an illustration we sometimes use with the children.
And suppose you, you go away, you've come away to this conference. You left your home in your neighborhood.
And a boy comes from down the street and he totally trashes your home.
You don't know who it is, but somebody just totally trashes your home.
Almost unlivable defiles, it defaces it. Everything you can imagine, just in sport and in mischief.
But before you get home, a close friend of yours realizes what's happened and he just drops everything and diligently goes to work and not only repairs your house, but uses the occasion to make your home so much more beautiful and glorious than it ever was before.
And you hear on the phone what has happened and your intrepidation, and you come back not knowing what you're going to find. And you have that sense of being violated. And someone broke in and it's such a horrible feeling. And you come back and you see your home in a condition beyond the way you left it by a long shot.
That is a feeble illustration for this aspect of the work of Christ on Calvary's cross, where Christ Jesus came in and laid down his life, offered himself as an offering for sin for God.
And by doing that, as John could say in the very first chapter, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
And it says of the Lord Jesus worked prophetically in the Psalms. Then I restored that which I took not away.
In the Old Testament, when you stole something, you had to add the 5th part.
And the Lord Jesus not only restored that which He didn't take away in this world, but He added the 5th part so to speak, in that He glorified God in the putting the way of sin.
In such a.
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I don't have an adjective.
But that's what he did.
When the Lord Jesus and the majesty of that man Christ Jesus could look up to God and say, I have glorified thee on the earth in anticipation of going to Calvary's cross, laying down his life, offering himself for the ungodly, for you and for me.
And so that's God's side of the cross. That foundation has been laid in God. God's holy claims have been met.
By the glorious work of his son on Calvary's cross. But what about the boy who did it?
What about that boy?
Is the fact that your friend came and rebuilt the place? Not only rebuilt it, but.
Refurbished it into a condition beyond what it was before. Does that take away that boy's guilt?
You think it does?
We still have an issue here, don't we?
We still have an issue.
I was in a gospel meeting once, put on by a.
Young fellow. We were both young and he was in the next town for me in Massachusetts, and I don't know How I Met him. He was a believer.
And he was having a gospel meeting in his home.
And invited me down, and I took one of the boys and went down and sat in the living room and listened to his gospel message with, I don't know, seven or eight of his neighbors.
And the man I was sitting next to, after it was done, I stood up and he stood up and I said.
So what do you think?
He said. I don't see what the problem is.
He said from what I got tonight, God loves me, Christ died from me. I don't see that there's a problem.
And I learned a lesson from that.
And I learned a lesson that I think is taught in the scriptures.
That we just read that the Word of God carefully distinguishes propitiation, what Christ has done to glorify God with respect to the outrage of sin.
Is different than the transfer of guilt.
And so to repeat myself again on the authority of this book.
Without knowing who you are, I can say God loves you. I can say Christ died for you.
I can't say he took your guilt away or he bore your sins in his own body on the tree. Let's turn to that in First Peter chapter 2.
First Peter, chapter 2.
Who when he was reviled? Verse 23 reviled. Not again.
When he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him that Judith righteously, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live under righteousness. By whose stripes you were healed.
Let's turn back to Isaiah 53.
For a similar passage.
Isaiah 53.
In verse 6.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us.
All.
Further down in the same chapter.
Verse 11. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied by his knowledge. Shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.
Verse 12. At the end he hath poured out his soul unto death. He was numbered with a transgressors, and he bare the sin of many.
You'll recall how in Leviticus chapter 16 there are two goats.
One goat.
The Lord's lot falls on that goat. The other goat is the scapegoat.
One goat is kind of like I think represents what propitiation speaks about its God's side.
God is the one who made this world.
Everything belongs to God.
God is the one who all sin ultimately is against God.
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And that goat dies for God.
The other goat is interesting, The sins are confessed on the head of that other goat and it's taken by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness, never to be seen again. I think is what it says, a picture of the other aspect of the work of Christ.
That only a believer can say he bare my sins in his own body on the tree.
So perhaps you can fill this in for yourself.
I give you the first part. God loves you. You know that there's many other scriptures that tell you that God loves you because God has loved and that's what he chose to do.
Christ died for you because God loves you.
And he sent.
He sent one like no other, his own and only son, to accomplish a work that he alone was qualified and willing to do, laying down his life as a sacrifice for sin. On Calvary's cross, the foundation is laid.
Christ died for the ungodly.
What about the last part?
Whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
And perhaps that boy in that figure who trashed out that house, if he's found out he's taken, injustice will be served.
Because it's a separate thing.
Are you able to say that he bore your sins in his own body on the tree?
Have you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? You say, well, this is complicated. I hear the brothers speaking about his death and the shedding of his blood and propitiation.
And this one brother I read.
He said.
Don't get your head all hung up and trying to understand all the details of the work of Christ. You've got time for that.
Believe on the person, on the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows what He did, and when you believe on him, when you put your trust in Him, even if it's just the hem of His garment, all the value of all that He's accomplished on Calvary's cross is made good to you.
And you can say God loved me. Christ died for me, and he bore my sins in his own body on the tree. He was my substitute. I was the guilty one. I'm the one who deserved the wrath of God. I'm the one who deserved those stripes. I'm the one who deserved eternal punishment.
And Christ was willing to take my guilty place and to die for me, the just, for the unjust, to bring me to God.
I can't promise you, no matter who you are, that that's true of you, but you can take it for yourself.
By what we used to tell our little kids is the B word believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And thou shalt be saved, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord.
Shall be saved.
He runs to and fro throughout the whole earth, anxious and desirous to show himself strong on behalf of any that would call on him, the young, the old, the rich, the poor.
He bear our sins. I can say He bare my sins in his own body on the tree.
Let's sing in closing.
Hymn #24.
If some brother could start #24.
Oh, there's a bright and a glorious.
Heart where all are really being held with you. So slow. More brilliant.
With everyone.
Singing.
That was was.
Made my favorite.
God.
If you take.
A.
Call.
When he die.
All the way.
When he gathers his own.
Way.