Gospel—Bob Thonney
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I'd like to start this evening with two verses.
That are in the first epistle of John. I'm just gonna quote them, don't have to turn to them both.
Are three words long.
Chapter one, verse four. God is light.
Chapter 4, verse eight and verse 16 God is.
Love.
Let's pray.
Thanks, blessed God our Father, for the opportunity to be here and to open Thy precious Word and to speak of the fact that thou art light and that thou art love. Wonderful realities, unchangeable realities. And so we pray this evening as we're here, and speak from Thy Word.
That thy spirit may have liberty to press at home.
To those who are present, who are not ready yet to meet Thee, we pray, Father, for blessing upon Thy precious word in that most wonderful name of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Let's say number six on our hymn sheets.
God in mercy sent his Son to a world by sin and done Jesus Christ was crucified.
To us for sinners, Jesus, God.
Immersed me and his son to our world.
By sin and done, Jesus Christ was crucified.
Umm.
Oh my great joy.
To our Savior's face.
The Holy.
Saver.
From the last.
And God is 1.
Write the Lord's welcome again.
Once will reign.
Every.
Song Hotline will.
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Be nice this morning.
All the glory.
Oh, the great.
Giant.
Savior's Place.
Holy Spirit.
Problem of God is life and God is love.
What an honorable message to speak about our God. And that's where we're gonna start. Start by speaking about who our God is. And so we've had two short statements of who He is in his very being. God is light. You know what the light does? It shows.
Everything that is to be seen, you know in the darkness you can hide.
But not in the light. And if there's something, if I had a big splot on my shirt up here and you were all looking at me, I'd get pretty uncomfortable. The light manifests all that there is to be seen. And so you cannot hide one single thing from our God. You know, I don't know.
The majority of you that awful well.
But there's a God who looks at you and He knows you exactly. He knows every thought you've ever had. It's all recorded in his book. But you know the wonderful thing. Even though He knows everything about you, He loves you with a love that is unchanging. There is nothing that you can do to change the fact that God is love.
Sometimes people refuse to accept.
The offer of God for salvation. And they will go to a lost eternity, but they will never be able to say nobody ever loved me, because there was a God who loved you so much that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
But let me tell you a little bit more about this God we're talking about.
He is an amazing God. He is a God that is eternal. And that in itself just blows my mind to think that he never ever had a beginning. He always was there.
I can't understand it, but that's the revelation we have of God in the Scriptures. Not only is He eternal, but He is all powerful.
And he is all knowing, and he is everywhere at the same time.
This is our God. To me it is amazing to see the demonstration of His power and His wisdom in the creation that we live in. And I love to talk about the universe that we are part of. We live in what is called the Milky Way Galaxy.
Which is a Galaxy of approximately 200 billion stars.
Many of whom which are much greater than in size than our sun. And astronomers tell us that there are at least another 250 billion galaxies in the universe. And how did he make all this? He spoke and it was done. He commanded.
And it stood fast. Can you get a grasp of the power of this God we're talking about?
You know, people think that they have a right to set their tone of judgment with God. Let me tell you, you do not have that right. You will be judged before God if you do not accept His forgiveness, His salvation, but on His terms, you do not have the right to set the terms.
Upon which you will be judged.
No, that's our God. Another thing about our God is holy. What does holy mean? It means he is completely separate from sin. There is nothing that can compromise his holy character.
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Sometimes we call it intrinsic holiness, uncompromising holiness. And so if you're going to go into God's heaven, you're going to have to go there without one single sin on your conscience absolutely gone past to be.
These are amazing things to think about, but they are what Scripture reveals to us about God. Now, it seems like it would be almost completely impossible for us to come up to the standard of this God that we are talking about. And it's true by the works of the law.
No flesh shall be justified in His sight. I'm amazed at what people say.
And so yes, I've seen a few times, but I'm basically a good person and I think God will take my good deeds and they will outweigh my bad deeds. Tell me, does human justice here in the United States work that like that? If you're arrested for something you've done that's against the law and you get before the judge and you said, I'm sorry, really. I, I recognize I did wrong, but you know, I did a lot of good.
Can't you just kind of take that and let me off? You know, nobody goes by that.
Are you attributing that God's standard of just judgment is less? No, God is perfectly just, and so I'd like to read 2 verses in the scriptures that tells us how God has made available the salvation.
That we proclaim first of all, in first John chapter 2 There's a verse that talks about the Lord Jesus Christ and notice what it says. It's in chapter 2 and verse one, right at the end of the verse it says Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the propitiation.
For our sins.
And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
He is Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Now let me read you another verse in First Corinthians chapter.
15.
And.
Verse 3.
Before I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
So the first verse we read speaks about the Lord Jesus as the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. But when we come to 1St Corinthians chapter 15, it says Christ died.
For our sins that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day.
According to the scriptures. So I'd like to speak on the Lord Jesus as the propitiation for our sins and as our substitute, taking our place as our sin bearer. Now I'd like to explain a little bit what propitiation means.
You know, when Adam sinned, Adam was.
A marvel of God's creation. Amazing. In those days that Adam was created, he lived up to 930 years old before he died. One of his descendants got up to 969. Pretty impressive considering what we live up to today. A few make it over 100 years old.
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Quite few in number really, but Adam sinned.
And in the course of time he died because the wages of sin is that. And you know, sin has called in question God's holy character. Did God make that creature that sinned? How is that possible that God made that creature like that?
And so Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins.
He has satisfied God's holy character as to the whole question of sin.
So that God with can be righteous and at the same time justify the ungodly.
Sometimes I give the illustration. Supposing there's a judge here in Seattle.
And every time a criminal is brought before him, he says, we're just going to forgive you. Here's your paper, you can go. Doesn't matter what the crime is, we're going to forgive you. You can go.
How would you consider that judge? I'm sure you'd say he's not a good judge. Why not? He does not take the laws of the land seriously and so how can God be just and at the same time justify the ungodly Sinner? How is that possible?
Because of what the Lord Jesus did when he died on the cross, He is the appropriation He vindicated publicly.
The Holy Claims of God Southern that God is not compromised in His character when He comes out to to forgive the guilty Sinner. Wonderful truth of the propitiation for our sins.
My late father-in-law used to put it this way, and I think it's helpful when we talk about propitiation, he said. Christ died for God.
And that's true, but when we speak about the Lord Jesus as our substitute, as we have in First Corinthians 15.
Christ died for our sins. It doesn't say for the sins of the whole world.
This is Christ dying as our substitute. Christ died for us. So keep those two things in mind. Christ died for God. That's propitiation and he saw settle the issue with God's holy character that God can be just in forgiving the whole world if they would only come to repentance.
And God wants that. And we preach the gospel to every creature on the face of planet earth because.
God wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Tell me, are you saved? God wants you saved. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. We were speaking a little bit about the Lord Jesus and the work of redemption on the cross.
And I want to take you to the cross this evening.
To speak about what took place there, it was the most amazing event that has ever, ever happened. God's beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is born into this world without sin. The Angel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to be the mother.
Of that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called.
The Son of God, he was holy at birth. He had no human father, He had no sin. He was holy at birth and in all his life down here He passed through this life. And you know, you never find Jesus laughing in the Scriptures.
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It does refer to the fact that he had joy.
But it doesn't say laugh. How could he enjoy the fact that his creation had become so decrepit? When he stood outside the tomb of Lazarus in Bethany and he saw his two sisters weeping, Jesus wept. Why did he weep? He knew he was going to raise him from the dead because he felt.
Awful degradation that sin had brought into this world.
And so through all his life there was one completely perfect life. At the end of that life, they took him and condemned him. The Jewish tribunal and then the Roman government. The pilot was the Roman governor at that time. Finally, even though he declared he was, he found no fault in.
Said he could be crucified, and he delivered him to the Roman soldiers, and they took him and gathered the whole band of soldiers, and they hit him in the face. They crowned him with thorns. They took him.
Let him outside the city of Jerusalem and stretched out his hands and nailed them to a cross, and there he was, lifted up outside the city of Jerusalem on that cross.
And they passed in front of him, and they mocked him, and they jeered him. The Lord Jesus says prophetically. Reproach has broken my heart and I'm full of heaviness and I look for some to take pity in their respect.
They said if he's the Son of God, let God deliver him. If he has delight in him, let him deliver him.
Did God deliver him?
That reproach broke his heart.
You know, if you would have delivered him.
We would be all condemned to hell forever. No one would have ever known how deep the truth that God is love and that God is like. Now we know because God didn't deliver him and so he suffered not only physically, but he suffered in his soul.
The reproaches that broke his heart.
But we want to come to the part that we were talking about this afternoon in the reading when scripture tells us that 12 noon, it all got dark for three hours until 3:00 PM.
And what happened in those three hours of darkness? That's when the Lord Jesus made propitiation for our sins. That's when he was our substitute. Isaiah 53 puts it so clearly. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our equities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him.
And with his stripes we are healed all we like sheep have gone astray.
We've turned everyone to his own way the Lord has laid on him.
The iniquity of us all.
All those sins of ours were all laid on Him in those awful hours of darkness, and then God poured out the fury of His wrath for three solid hours.
You know there is no cry through those three hours until the very end.
And there's the most awful cry. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
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Why did God forsake his Son in that awful, awful moment?
You know why? Because he didn't want to forsake you in the light of fire forever. This is the only way it was possible.
That propitiation could be made that God's holy character could be vindicated so that now he can come out and offer you a full and free salvation simply by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then he cried. It is finished.
And the Spanish, it says that it's consumed. All that judgment that was against you and me as guilty sinners was consumed. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.
Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful salvation.
And then Jesus bowed his head and gave up his life.
A soldier came with a spear and pierced his side and outflowed blood and water. The only thing that can remove sin from the eye of God is blood, blood of an acceptable sacrifice, and God accepted that sacrifice.
He shut his blood. There was no more blood in that battered body that hung on that cross.
They took him down.
They buried him. The third day. The women came to the tomb to anoint his body with ointments, and they found the stone that was over the opening of that tomb taken away, and he was not there.
He had risen. God has shown that he has accepted the work of Christ because he raised him from the dead. And where is Jesus now? He is there in the glory of God after 40 days of appearing to his disciples so that they would know that yes, He was a real.
Living man.
He was with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, and he went back into the glory of God. There is a man on high in the glory.
He's powerful to save you tonight, but I want to speak to you very directly because it concerns me in our American culture how sin is accommodated even by those who say they're Christians.
Scripture speaks of repentance toward God.
And faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance is necessary for salvation, even though repentance in itself does not save. It says in Luke's gospel, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. And when I see people who say that they are sinners, yes, but that's the way I was born and that's the way I am, and they accommodate it and they do not.
Pinned of it, I say, if you don't repent of those sins that Scripture speaks so clearly about, you will all likewise perish. Jesus paid that awful price on the cross and you think you can accommodate those sins? You cannot do that. And if you're here with that kind of thinking in your mind, I ask you tonight, repent.
You know what repent means. Change your thinking about it.
Vent is a word in the Latin to think. Repent means to rethink.
You're trying to accommodate your sins. Rethink it all. Repent. Oh how important it is.
And then what says is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? How important it is repentance?
Toward God.
Faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. You know there was a man in the book of the Acts. We're not going to go to read about it tonight because I want to read some other verses before we get to the end of our meeting.
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Called Simon the Sorcerer. He was a great man in Samaria and he did magical tricks.
And then a greater power came to scenario, the power of God in the gospel.
And so I'm in the sorcerer said I'm outdated here, I'm going to have to join this movement. And so Scripture says he believed and he was baptized even.
Was he saved?
You go a little further down in the chapter. Peter and John come down from Jerusalem to Samaria to see what the Lord's doing in that city. Many were being saved, but when they came to Simon the sorcerer, the way he talked to them showed them very clearly that the only thing he wanted is to be a great one in the church now.
That he had been displaced as a sorcerer.
Why he wanted to be a great one in another sphere. He had never truly repented. Oh, how important it is, those sins of yours. And I marvel at how God works with souls to bring them to repentance. Sometimes it takes a long time. We have the history of a man in the Old Testament called Nebuchadnezzar.
He was the king of Babylon, a tremendously powerful.
Dictator of that time.
In his Kingdom there were Jewish exiles that were trained in the wisdom of the Babylonians.
And what happened with those Jewish exiles was incredibly interesting, and Nebuchadnezzar was tremendously impressed. But being impressed is not repentance. And he continues his same path, making himself the center of his world.
And that's what I see in our American culture. I'm the center of my world. I decide what I want to do, and don't you judge me for it because I have my rights. You might have your rights as an American citizen, but when you talk about God, let me tell you, God is the one that has all the rights.
Anyhow, God continued to work with Nebuchadnezzar, and finally he loses his reason and he becomes like an animal, a beast of the field.
He ate grass for seven times, it says. His hair grew like Eagles feathers. His nails grew like birds claws.
I wouldn't want to met up with Nebuchadnezzar in that condition. He was a beast.
And if you don't know how to recognize your God and what He is in His own being, let me tell you, men.
Become beasts. But you know what? The end of the fourth chapter of Daniel Nebuchadnezzar in that condition, lifts his eyes to heaven to glorify not himself anymore. There was a change. There was repentance. Thank God.
And he glorified the God of heaven, and God gave him his reason back. When I see people here in the United States, I saw.
A UMM survey done in one of the universities here in Washington, I think it was the Seattle area, I don't know which university in which they asked the students what's the difference between a man and a woman in your mind? Over 50% of them answered.
Really, there's no difference. It's all in your mind. I said. Come on, these kids are losing their mind. They don't even think straight. And it's true. If you don't have God in the picture, you can't think straight.
It's tragic if that's the case, so repentance is extremely important, but I want to get around to the fact that Jesus is.
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The propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world. God has been vindicated in the work of the Lord Jesus so that God could forgive the whole world if they would repent.
But when we talk talk about substitution, it never says that the Lord Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. He died for the sins of many. Or as we read in First Corinthians 15 here it says Christ died for our sins. It would not be just if God put into hell a person.
If Jesus had.
Already suffered for His sins, That would not be just. No, He is the substitute for those who will accept Him as their Savior. And I'm here to ask you tonight, if you haven't done it yet, to do that very thing except Him. He is offering you full and free salvation. God is just.
And the justifier of him.
That believeth in Jesus. But supposing you do not accept the salvation that is being offered to you tonight, what then? God is still just.
And it would not be love on the part of God to let evil run its rampant way through.
History. God is going to intervene.
You see how kids, little kids are slaughtered over in Syria and other parts of the world, the the world where there's warfare.
If God is a just God, He is not going to allow that to continue that way. He is going to intervene and we are getting down to the point when he will intervene directly. Jesus is coming back again to this world.
We had it this afternoon, but I don't think we touched on this part of it. In Matthew chapter 25, we have the judgment.
Of the nations, Of the living nations, when Jesus comes back again. Notice how it puts it. Matthew chapter 25 and verse 31. When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divided.
Sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on the left. So here we have the judgment of the nations, all the living nations. When he comes back at the end of the great tribulation period, all the nations are going to be gathered before him, and he's gonna separate them one from another.
The sheep on the right and the goats on the left.
And the sheep are those who have heard the gospel of the Kingdom in the time of the great tribulation, that didn't have a chance to hear the gospel of the grace of God. But notice talks about the goats. And the goats, who are they? Verse 41? Then shall he also say unto them, on the left hand, These are the goats.
Depart from me.
He cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Oh how awful the end of those that refuse. It may be somebody sitting here in this audience tonight you refuse the offer of salvation.
And when you have heard that message clearly?
And you've taken a decision? No, not yet. Maybe later on.
Or maybe you just say an outright no. Then when Jesus comes, you will be sent strong delusion to believe a lie and you will end up here. If you're alive at the end of that great tribulation period. I ask you to think seriously about this because Scripture speaks so clearly that the time.
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That is coming, and that great tribulation period will be the most awful time of affliction on the face of this world from the beginning of time, and there will never be another time like it afterwards. It's just right ahead for this world.
That's what you're facing if you do not accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior. Notice he says.
Everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. He did not prepare it for mankind. He doesn't want anyone going there. He wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. He went to that cross to suffer that sin for that sin, so that you could have a way to be in that eternal home in heaven.
But those that reject will have for their company the devil and his angels and everlasting fire. God did not prepare it for you, but you will end up there if you continue to refuse the message of salvation. One other part, because there will be many in that great tribulation period after the Lord takes His people.
Out of this world there will be many that will be slaughtered. It'll be terrible, the awful slaughter of humankind. And if you die, will you escape that judgment?
You will not escape that judgment if you refuse that salvation. Revelation 20 tells us about the resurrection of the dead because you know every.
Humans cemetery on planet Earth is going to be totally vacated of its bones. Not one bone is going to be left behind.
I saw chapter 20 of Revelation verse 11. I saw great white throne and him that sat on it, upon from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them, and I saw the dead.
Small and great stand before God, and the books were opened, and another book was opened which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.
And they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. How awful the end of those who refused and perhaps have died. People think that death is the end of their existence. Not so.
No, God is going to raise them from the dead. They will stand before God in judgment, and they will be cast into the lake of fire. Awful to think about. I just trust with all my heart that there's nobody here. You know, I look at you and I can see some of you are more interested in the message than others, but God knows what's going on. Have you gotten real with God? Don't.
Make it with him. You can fake it with me and get away with it. Don't fake it with him. I'll be the worst mistake you ever make.
Be real with God.
Repent of your sins, believe the gospel, receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior tonight. There's any question that you might have that we can answer after the meeting. We'll be here for a few minutes. Please come and talk to us. Let's just pray. Father, bless thy precious word. We confess.
How feebly we can proclaim this tremendous message of the Gospel blessed. We pray wherever it's gone out. We pray, if there's anybody that still hasn't gotten the questions settled, that they might get it settled tonight before it's too late. We pray and give thanks, Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Amen. Amen.