In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of truly knowing God and understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ. He criticizes the reduction of the gospel to a simplistic message and highlights the profound sacrifice made by God and Jesus Christ for the redemption of humanity. The preacher emphasizes the need for repentance and belief in the gospel, rather than relying on manipulative tactics or emotional appeals. He also emphasizes that a lack of knowledge about God and the gospel leads to a lack of power to love and serve God.

I pray, Father, that you would use what's being said here today to encourage your people and to do a work of salvation, not only in them, but in those who have yet to believe. In our weakness, you are strong. In Jesus' name, amen. Like I said, it's a great privilege to be here this morning, and I want to look at one of the most important texts in all of Scripture. It's one of the texts in which the Apostle Paul actually defines or sets out for us the gospel of Jesus Christ in no uncertain terms, but in a quite simple way, simple yet powerful. Now, let's start with our first phrase in the first verse. Now, I make known to you, brethren, the gospel. Now, this is something that seems quite strange. We usually think of sharing the gospel with lost people. But the Apostle Paul comes here and he says, now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel, the gospel which he had already preached to them, now he's coming back and making it known to them. Now, there's a great deal to be learned from this. I've said this a few times since I've been up here this week, and it's it's this many people think that there are that the gospel of Jesus Christ is something like Christianity 101. You learn the gospel in five minutes and then you go on to deeper things. They'll talk about the deep things of the book of Revelation or the deep things of the book of Daniel or the deep things of the decrees of God. They don't know what they're talking about. You see, the deepest, greatest truth in all the scripture is the gospel of Jesus Christ. As I always say, you'll understand the entire book of Revelation the moment that Jesus Christ returns, but you'll pass through an eternity of eternities and you still will not comprehend the greatness of the gospel. One of the greatest things that is needed today would seem to be one of the most simple things, and yet it is desperately needed. One of the reasons why the people of God. Suffer, weak, languish without nourishment for two reasons, one, they don't know who God is. Seriously. And they don't know the gospel of Jesus Christ, and because of those two things, they have no power to love God and no power to serve him. Let me explain to you what do I mean by they do not know God, even the people of God, even in the Old Testament, it says my people perish for a lack of knowledge. If I were to hand out right now a sheet of paper to each one of you and say, I want you to write on the front and the back and explain to me using scriptures of all the major attributes of God, define them for me and tell me who God is in the scriptures. Most couldn't do it. And yet the Bible tells us that wise men should not boast in their wisdom and strong men should not boast in their strength, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he knows me. Do you realize that Sunday morning in America is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week? The greatest hour of idolatry, more idolatry goes on Sunday morning in America, in churches than anywhere else in the world, probably. Do you know why? Because people are worshiping a God that's not the true God, since they don't know what the Bible really teaches about God, the God they worship is a God they've made with their own mind and a God that looks a lot like them. We make a God in our own image and then we worship the God that we've made. Most people's God in America looks something like Santa Claus. Or kind of a buffooned grandfather who really doesn't know what's going on. As a matter of fact, I'll have preachers sometimes tell me they said, Brother Paul, could you come and do a conference on the attributes of God? And I always say, well, you really need to pray about that because it's going to cause a lot of problems in your church. I said, what do you mean cause a lot of problems? We're Christians. You're just going to come and teach on God. I said, I know. And I'm going to get halfway through that week and your church is going to divide. People are going to be so mad they won't be able to see straight. Now, I'll come. That's fine. He says, what do you mean? So, look, when I begin to talk about the sovereignty of God, the justice of God. The wrath of God, the holiness of God, even the hatred of God. All things that the Bible speak about, a lot of your church members are going to jump up and they're going to say, that's not my God. I could never love a God like that because the God they love is a God they've made with their own mind. It's like you hear people, they'll say, oh, I've loved God all my life. No, you haven't. That's not what the Bible teaches, the Bible says that men are born haters of God. No, I loved God. No, you loved something you made with your own mind. But if someone were to have come to you with the scriptures and said, this is how God is, you just said, no, that's not my God. You see, so many people worship God on Sunday morning, but they don't even know what they're worshiping. Their God looks like Santa Claus, you see. And so how can we love a God we don't know? How can we be empowered by that love of a God we don't know? And how can we even know that we know him? So there's a great need, you see, you think, well, I know all about God. You see, it's just taken for granted. Everybody knows about God. No one knows about God. I could tell you things here in five minutes about God that would make your head spin, that would frighten you, that would terrify you about what the Bible says about the one true God. And then let's go to the gospel. Paul here preached the gospel to these people, but he comes back and he says, I'm going to preach to you the gospel again and again and again and again. You see, we've reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ down to four spiritual laws. God loves you, has a wonderful plan for your life. You're a sinner, and because of that, there's a great abyss between you and God. But if you ask Jesus to come into your heart, everything will be solved. That's not the gospel of Jesus Christ. No more than if you're baptized as an infant, you'll be saved. We people are not excited about the gospel. Are you mesmerized by the gospel? But see, when you begin to look at the gospel in the scriptures, spend 10, 15, 20 years of your life studying only one thing, the gospel. It becomes everything to you. When you start to understand what it means to say that the son of God died, that he died bearing sin, that he had died accursed of his own father, that he died slaughtered by God in order to satisfy justice. When you begin to look at those types of things, you begin to say, oh, what a price that was paid by both father and son to redeem me. The blood of Christ becomes precious. We are in constant need of hearing the gospel, but the gospel today is some slick shoot evangelist who comes in telling all kinds of stories about how much your grandmother, who's already in heaven, is weeping because you're not there giving invitations, manipulating people. That's not the gospel. The gospel is what God has done in Christ, and even after a million eternities, you're still going to say, I haven't even reached the foothills of understanding the grace of God in the face, person, cross of Jesus Christ. And so what is our great need to understand the gospel? Now, don't be angry. I haven't looked in your heart, and even if I did, I wouldn't say anything because I'm not a prophet. But if you're like any other group, there are some people in this room right now and you could care less about Jesus Christ. The only reason you're here because someone made you come here, you're bored out of your mind and you just can't wait to get out of this door. You're going to hell. Do you realize that you're going to hell? And you can say, oh, no, no, no, I know I care about Jesus. Your life doesn't reflect anything. You're going to hell. You say you're very angry, man. No, I'm very loving, man. You know how much it costs me to tell people these things? I travel around this country and there are a lot of people hate my guts. But if Jesus and the gospel doesn't excite you, you are going to hell. You can't look in my heart. I don't have to see it in your face. The way you walk and the way you live and the way you talk, Jesus has nothing to do with you and you have nothing to do with him. But the true Christian, the more he hears about the gospel, the more he is excited by it. The more he rejoices in it, the more he says, how can it be? And so Paul comes to them in order to make known to them the gospel because the gospel is the great motivation for the Christian life. Matter of fact, it's the only biblical motivation. Why do I love my wife? Because Jesus died for my sins. Why do I seek not to lie? Why do I congregate? Why do I worship? Why do I try to serve other people? Why do I do anything I do? Because Jesus Christ died for my sins. If there's any other reason, it's wrong. It's the great motivation. You know, amazing. We send all our children out to all these conferences and camps, acquire the fire and this and that to get them all psyched up about Jesus. And they go and they get psyched up because they've got a bunch of 40 year old preachers there with moose in their hair trying to act like they're 15 and just pitiful. And everybody gets all psyched up and everything else, and those kids come back talking about Jesus. It lasts about a week and a half because the only biblical foundation for zeal is Jesus Christ shed his own blood for my soul. And the more a person begins to understand the price that was paid and the love of God, the less they need to be psyched up with a football rally in Jesus name. It's just a settled, growing zeal. He died for me. He died for me. And so I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you. Now, I may be trying to promote my own position here, but I think not, not as I've studied history. He doesn't say that I shared with you, he said that I preached to you. The greatest need in this country today is not a better president, it's not a braver or wiser Congress, it's preachers and they're hard to find. They're hard to find. I walk into a church and I hear a preacher stand up and say, I'm just I'm going to share from my heart today. I'll walk out. I care less what's in his heart. I don't want to know what's in his heart. I want to hear a word from God. I don't want to know the way he feels. I don't want to know stories about his life. I don't really want to learn from him. I want someone to open up this book and say, thus saith God. And I don't want anything other than their work in interpreting the thing correctly. I want to hear from God. I need to hear from God. I am desperately weak. Without a word from God, I perish. We need preachers. Do you realize that the great majority of the missionary force in the world, the great majority of them are not preachers? Do you realize that they're administrators, facilitators, sharers, bridge builders? They're not preachers. When I interview a missionary in our mission, only thing I want to know, will you walk into the middle of the square, open up a Bible and preach? Because that's how the gospel travels throughout this world, through preaching. And men ought to give themselves to preaching. And I can tell even you as a church, even though I'm no apostle, I've read the Bible. The most important thing your preacher ought to be doing for you is preaching and preaching because he's studying. And if you want your children to be saved and you want to grow, then tell the man to study four hours a day and then protect him so he can do it. Preaching. I don't know why God chose preaching, except it's the weakest form. It's the most foolish thing, but he chose it so that the power would be seen not in a man or in a medium, but in God himself, that through the foolishness of preaching, he would save men. Paul was a preacher. Let me share something with you. We're all about Sunday school. That's fine. We're all about personal one on one discipleship. It seems to be that's the thing, man, we've got to do personal one on one discipleship. The reason why the church isn't well, I want to tell you something. I do personal one on one discipleship, but I want to tell you some Sunday school and personal one on one discipleship and the rest of it is just a secondary thing we have to do because we're not being fed in the pulpit or we're being fed in the pulpit and we're not paying attention to it. At our church, we invite men to come and study in our intern program, but the biggest part of our intern program is Sunday morning and Sunday night when the preacher gets in the pulpit. Well, you can't train men in a pulpit, that's how men are trained in a pulpit. They listen to our preacher and there's enough truth in those two sermons to make them ravel for about two weeks. We do so many things because we have so diminished the pulpit, but the pulpit ought to be the place where we learn. It ought to be the Alexander McLaren, one of the greatest preachers who ever lived, not as good as Spurgeon, but he was good. Even Spurgeon said he was good. He was known to study 60 hours for one sermon, that amazing. Preaching the gospel, I preached to you now, he goes on and he says the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, and this is very important, you received. See, preaching is very, very dangerous thing, it's extremely dangerous, it's dangerous for me because if I preach something that's not true, I will stand before the throne of God and receive greater condemnation. But preaching is extremely dangerous for you, you see, for some of you, it would be better that you hadn't come today, to be honest with you. As a matter of fact, you may pass all of eternity wishing you had never come here today because you see, if I preach and what I preach is not true, then you're free. There's no bond on your life, you're absolutely free, you can do what you want because what I said is not true. But if I correctly interpreted the scriptures and clearly proclaimed it to you, you're in bondage, you will be held accountable on the day of judgment for what you've heard. Preaching is extremely dangerous, you see, there's a lot to talk today about authority, all these TV evangelists saying they've got authority and all this stuff, and they talk about some special anointing. But if you look in First John, all the believers have been anointed. Do you know where authority comes from? Authority comes from this, I have authority only to the degree that I correctly interpret and clearly proclaim what the Bible says. But if I do or your preacher does, that's very dangerous because that means you're bound by it. You've heard truth. You're to be a steward of it, to receive it. Now, here's something else here today. Look what we've done to this word receive. Have you received Jesus? You know what that means in America? Have you prayed a prayer? Mainly, have you repeated a prayer and asked Jesus to come into your heart? Do you honestly think that's what Paul meant? Do you honestly think that's what John meant in chapter one of his gospel? Did Jesus ever come to Israel and say the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand now, who would like to pray and ask me to come into their heart? Did he do that? No, he said, repent and believe the gospel. What does it mean to receive Jesus? I hate yes, I use that word, I hate the Type of preaching. That says to a congregation, oh, you have a wonderful life. You have a wonderful life, you have a great job, you have a beautiful family, you have a wonderful home, three car garage, everything's going right for you, you just lack one little thing to make your life perfect, and that's Jesus, that's blasphemy. The truth about it is your life is rubbish. You have nothing and everything you have will perish. And the only thing that can save you is not a thing, it's a person and his name is Jesus. Jesus is not a cherry on the top of your already wonderful life. Jesus is not a belt or an accessory that you add to the main part of your clothing. Jesus is everything or Jesus is nothing, and to receive Jesus Christ is not to repeat a little prayer to receive Jesus Christ is to open up your life to him, to surrender your life to him as savior and Lord. And it's not just to bow yourself under his lordship or to receive his salvation, but he becomes your life for this reason. Jesus said, unless you drink my blood and eat my flesh, you have no part with me. He becomes the very sustenance of your life, not a part of it, but the whole. He's not something I do on Sunday. He's not something that's just a part of me. It's not a segmented section of a detailed life. No, Jesus is my life. I am hidden in him to receive Jesus Christ. Now, that's amazing. Now, he says the gospel, which you also received in which also you stand. Here's the idea of conviction. The idea that you stand upon this promise, Christ died for my sins. As one old North Carolina preacher used to say, I expect to swing out into eternity on that scarlet thread. That Jesus Christ shed his blood for my soul, it's my one boast, my one glory, my one hope, my one everything. Christ died for sinners, among whom I am foremost. In July, I preached my mother's funeral and she walked with the Lord for about sixty five years. Her mother was persecuted for the faith were Croatian, actually, and my mother set out quite a detailed thing on what she wanted preached because she knew what would happen. So she told me. And it was just like she she spoke. People would come up and I'd stand in front of the the casket there for visitation and people would come up and go, oh, she's resting now because she was such a good mom and she raised you children even without a husband when your father died and worked that farm all by herself. She was a good wife. She is a good friend. She's in heaven. That kind of language made my mother so furious. She couldn't stand it. And this is what the orders my mother gave me. She said, Paul, when you get in that pulpit, you look down and you point to that casket and you say this woman here was not a good woman. And she said, watch all those false religious hypocrites. Watch their face just twist. Those moralists who believe they're going to heaven because they're nice people, she goes, you point out that casket and you say this woman is not in heaven today because she is a good woman. This woman is in heaven because Jesus Christ shed his blood for sinners. But if I'd had a camera, I'd love to take pictures of people's faces. And then I told him, I said, my mother told me to say that because she knew and my mother wasn't one of these people that wanted you to say she knew that certain people would say no. She said because she knew that many of you sitting here right now would come with some ludicrous idea that she's in heaven because she was a good mom. And she wants you to know something you must know to be saved, that she's in heaven because Jesus Christ came to this earth to save sinners. You think I'm bold? You should have met my mom. I remember one time this man came to the house, Terminix man or something, and my mom just literally just man backed him out the door and she came in and she goes, well, this is a 70 year old woman. She goes, well, he knows where he's going. And I said, mom, do you think it might be a good idea to tell him where he could go? But it's something that you stand upon. I always say this. Jesus Christ is the rock. If you're standing upon him and you fall, he is such a rock, you can only fall upon him and never fall off of him. He is such a rock, but it also is this idea of conviction. Conviction. There was this man in my community, his name is Ed Douglas, he's gone on to be with the Lord. When I was a little boy, he died about, I guess, about two years ago and I knew him up till his death, one of the godliest men I've ever met. But when I was a little boy, unconverted and we'd be baling hay and my father was infamous. My father could lose his temper and kill a fifteen, break the neck of a fifteen hundred pound cow. I mean, he was a he was a tough guy. And boy, when that baler would break down, I don't know if anything, any of you guys know anything about baling hay, but you can fix a lot of things. But fixing a baler, they are from the devil. I can tell you that right now. And that thing would break down and storm clouds would look like they were coming and my dad would be punching tractors and tearing trees out of the ground and everything. And he'd say, call Ed Douglas. And I used to, little boy, and I'd sit there and I'd watch that man when he would come and I couldn't figure it out because I didn't know anything about Christ or anything, but I just couldn't figure out that man. My dad would scream and holler and cuss and Ed, for no money at all, would come out there, stop his own hay baling, come out there and fix that baler. And when other men did things, you could just see this, he was a thin man, tall, thin man, he just lock his jaw. He had such conviction, such strength of conviction, such strength in doing what was right, and it wasn't until later when I came to know Christ that I realized this man stood upon Christ when everyone else made false professions and big words and all such. But this man stood. Christ is everything. Do you realize that there will be a thousand Christians today who will die as martyrs around the world? Do you realize that? Because they will stand upon Christ, it's estimated 50 million men and women have lost their lives. Because they stood upon Christ since the resurrection of our Lord several years ago, a boy that was associated with one of our churches, he was a member of one of our churches in Africa. The Muslims pulled him out of the church one day. They brought him out into the sidewalk and they said, deny Christ. And Andrew said, crying, look, I'm not brave, I'm scared to death, I'll do anything you ask me to do, don't kill me, but I can not deny Christ. I don't know if any of you deer hunt, but the one thing you don't want to do to a deer is shoot him in the gut. He'll bleed for could be more than a day and he'll suffer like nothing you could ever imagine. They got shot him out there and left him to die like a pig. But he never denied Christ to stand upon the gospel of Jesus Christ, that it is actually something that is a part and parcel and whole of your life. Look what we've done to Christianity, can't you see it? It's the cycle that occurs all the time and it's only brought out of the cycle by revival and reformation. It is this cycle Christianity starts out hot and real and then eventually it's turned into a creed or a certain thing that you must believe. And then eventually you're a Christian. If you've been baptized as an infant, you're a Christian. If you've gone through confirmation or if you're a Baptist, you're a Christian because one time in your life you prayed a prayer, but it affects no part of your life. Yet you believe yourself saved. And these silly little preacher boys running around here tell you you are. And yet Christ means nothing in reality to you. But then revival comes and reformation. Where people start realizing that when the Bible says you must be born again, it means more than you made your decision at a Billy Graham crusade. It means that God has come down in your life, has been transformed, remember what he says, very important to the church in Galatians, he said, circumcision means nothing and uncircumcision means nothing. All the religious things you do, all the things you boast of have absolutely no proof that you are saved. There's only one evidence that you are saved, that someone can look at you and realize you are a new creature. You are a different person from when you met Jesus Christ. That's the only evidence I hear people say, well, I know I'm a new creature, not because I act like it, but because I prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to come into my heart. I believe I'm a new creature by faith. That's absolutely ridiculous. We know we have faith because we can see we're new creatures, folks, listen to me. Isn't it true that we could dismiss right now, go to every bar in this county and find them full of Baptists, all of them praying prayers and Lutherans and everything else. They're all in there, as we say down in the south, and they're as saved as an Alabama dirt clod and their hearts just as stony and cold and full of clay. You said, Brother Paul, do not judge, my friend, do not twist scripture. Paul said, examine yourself, test yourself to see if you are in the faith, look for evidences, real evidences. And our farm in Illinois, we have such a problem because people from the larger cities want to come hunt deer. Problem is they don't know the difference between a deer and a Hereford. So we have these classes we give them. This is a deer. It has horns. It does not say moo. This is a cow. He has horns. We go on and on, not really, but we probably should do that. And someone goes, oh, look at that beautiful buck. No, that's that's a charlotte. That's not an albino whitetail. That's a charlotte. No, it's a buck. No, it's a charlotte. Don't you dare judge me if I say it's a buck. It's a buck. No, sir, if you shoot that, you're going to get arrested. You can say you're a Christian all day and you can say that no one can look in your heart and judge you. And you can say that in your heart of hearts, you really know you believe. But all of it is just wash. Do you know what your heart is? It's the very center of your being, the core of your person. Now, you're going to tell me that Jesus Christ has the entire center and core of your being, but it doesn't affect the way you walk, talk or think. No, to receive him is to take him as savior and Lord to stand upon him. Is a mark that the Holy Spirit has truly regenerated your heart and that you really do belong to him. Now, look at this, he says, by which also you are saved. Now, my dear friend, I get so angry. When I hear preachers say, come to Jesus and he'll fix your marriage, come to Jesus, he'll balance your checkbook, come to Jesus, he'll heal your body, come to Jesus, he'll get you a Mercedes, come to Jesus, he'll do all these wonderful things. Since when did. Salvation. Since when did it so diminish that it's no longer enough for a man to come to Jesus? Come to Jesus and he'll save you from God's wrath and hell for an eternity. Are we really so insensitive to spiritual things and dull that health and a car means more to us than eternal salvation from a hell whose torments go up beyond description? Or what about this come to Jesus? Not just because he will save you, but because he's worthy. A girl I was dealing with a while back, about a year ago, a year and a half ago, and she couldn't get any assurance. And I finally told her something that the old preachers used to tell people. She said, I just I've got to know if he saved me, I got to know, I got to know if he saved me and we go through promises and scripture and everything, and finally I looked at her and I said, you need to repent and believe in him and serve him even if he sends you to hell. She said, what? I said, because he's worthy. He's worthy, and I've never met a person who adopted that attitude that didn't after a while gain tremendous assurance of their salvation. And she said, then I shall, I will. I will repent because he's worthy. I will believe because he's worthy, and even if he sends me to hell with the rest, I'll raise my hands and say the judge of all the earth is done right. Well, you won't hear that on TV, will you? But of course, if one does repent and believe, God will save. The invitation is wide and gracious, all those who come to him now, she's a vibrant, growing young Christian, praise the Lord. He goes, by which you are saved, my dear friend, don't you realize as a believer and as a believer, you ought to be able to concur, to agree that if right now. My body was struck down. My tongue was ripped from my mouth. My beloved children and wife were all destroyed in one blow and an accident, my body was rocked and riddled with pain. I still must praise him. Because he shed his own blood for my soul. I don't need him to balance my checkbook. He shed his own blood for my soul. Do you see why any other motivation? It's just horrid. I used to so, so just bother me, the people who would follow Benny Hinn and the people who follow Joel Osteen and it break my heart that these people are following these great deceivers. And then I realize. Praying one day. They're following these deceivers because they want the same thing, they want prosperity and they want this and they want that more than they want any other thing in their life. And in a sense, these deceivers are nothing more than God's judgment upon them, says, by which also you are saved if you hold fast the word which I preach to you. Now, look at this, Baptist. Look, look at this extremely important. He says you are saved if if when was the last time a preacher told you that? Someone comes forward and says, I've trusted in Christ, you are saved if you hold fast the word. The logical opposite is you are not saved if you do not hold fast the word. Now, some of you get a little spooky and you're saying, doesn't he believe in security of the believer or grace or anything? I believe in grace in such a way that it would offend most of you. I believe so much in grace. Do I believe in the security of the believer? Absolutely. But you've got to understand what scripture is really saying. Again, we've taken a wonderful doctrine and reduced it down to something that gives us license for sin and unbelief. What he's saying is this, you are saved if you hold on to this gospel and you continue growing in it. But if you do not hold on to this gospel and do not continue growing in it, it's just some decision you made. You are not saved. And he's not saying that you were saved and you lost your salvation. He's saying by not holding on, you are proving that you were never saved. Never. You see, that's what the Bible speaks about when he speaks about falling away in all these other things, passages, Baptist churches never talk about. You ever notice that? Never talk about people in the congregation falling away and being lost forever. Why? Because we don't understand it, but we don't preach it either. And it means this, if a person let's say that a person comes and they make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. All right. They make a profession of faith and they begin to walk. In the ways of God. And they step off the path and God disciplines them and brings them back on the path quickly, not after 20 years. And they go two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, four steps back, two steps forward, and they're growing and struggling just like some of you do. And when you step off the path, you know God comes running as a father and disciplines you in love and puts you right back on. And when you sin and do foolish things, God is on you. Like the Alabama boys say, he's on you like a rat on a Cheeto, then bless God, it's evidence that you belong to him. But there are so many that do this. They make their profession of faith, especially because our Sunday schools are so wicked the way they evangelize children. They make a profession of faith because the teacher said, how many of you love Jesus? Little kid goes like this. Well, how many of you want to pray, pray and that's it? And the preacher baptizes them. And then when they're 16, they backslide. No, they don't. They just show what they are. They start rebelling against their parents, drinking, immorality, fornication, everything. They have backslidden. They're lost. And so if you make a profession of faith and then you turn away and stay away and God's not disciplining you, you could live in sin and just go, go, go, go, go. That's because you're lost. You've done exactly what it said here. You haven't held on. It doesn't mean you were saved and you lost your salvation. It means by your life you're proving you were never saved, just like in the parable of the sower. But there's something even more deceptive. It's when a person makes the profession of faith. And then they simply adopt a Christian religion and they come to church every Sunday faithfully, they might even be a part of a Sunday school thing, but outside of that realm, Christianity has no effect on their life. The word of God means nothing, prayer means nothing, growing in grace is just oblivious to them, and they're the most dangerous kind because they got just enough religion to kill them. Now, he says, by which also you are saved if you hold fast the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as the first importance what I also received. Paul received this gospel. And why is he saying that? Because people were always attacking Paul's apostleship. They didn't like what he said, so they attacked his person. They didn't like what he said. And so they attacked him. You're not a real apostle. You didn't walk with him when the others walked with him. And he was constantly having defend to defend his apostleship. But he says, look, this gospel that I gave to you is not man made. I received it. And he did not receive it from Peter and he did not receive it from John, he received it from Jesus Christ, but Peter and John offered him the right hand of Christian fellowship because he received the same gospel from Jesus. That they received from Jesus. I want to submit to you today something about Christianity and I want you to hear me, I have friends in other denominations, I preach in other denominations, I I'm not sectarian and I don't want to divide everybody in the world, but I want to tell you something. What's going on in Christianity today is terrifying. Because anybody who says I believe in Jesus, well, then you're just all right with me. But the Mormons believe in Jesus. The problem is he is not the son of God. The Jehovah Witnesses believe in Jesus, but he is a created being there, Jesus. And then but they're not the most dangerous ones, it's the ones within evangelical Christianity that are sending the most people to hell. I'll give you a perfect example, a while back in a church where I was from in Illinois, a notorious drug dealer. Died. And so they had the funeral. At this at the big church there in town, Baptist Church. Everybody was there, all the drug dealers, this, that everybody was there, people who needed Christ and the Southern Baptist preacher stood up and said. A wayward sheep has gone home, this conservative man, a wayward sheep, he's just doing the theology and the evangelism of of the Southern Baptist today, and this is what he said. He goes, praise God, I know this this wayward sheep did a lot of things, but. When he was nine years old, I remember I was his pastor and he asked Jesus to come into that little heart of his and now he saved and all that multitude of bikers and drug addicts and everything else walked out of that building saying, well, I did the same thing when I was nine. He sent more people to hell than all the Jehovah Witnesses in that town do in one year. We've turned the gospel of Jesus Christ into a creed and a weak one at that. It's not even a good creed. My dear friend, I want you to know. That I would not be a preacher and I would not be doing all these things, if if all this is true, it's true, if it's not true, let's just go home and go fishing or elk hunting or something. But if it's true. If it's really true. Paul said that to some, he spoke like a madman. Well, how else should we speak? Should we be calm? Should we not have tears? Should we not be angry? Should we not be screaming? Should we not be something of a madman? How would you address the issue if you saw a little child playing on the railroad tracks with a train coming? Would you meekly send them a letter? This is either true or it's not. Christ is either God or is not. You see that, but then again, let's finish here. He says, I present the gospel to you, and it's wrapped up on two great columns, the death of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the middle, he speaks about the burial because the burial is so important only in this. It is a testimony to the fact that he died. And it is a validation of the resurrection because only dead men can be resurrected. He had to die. He had to die. But he had to die, and I know I sound like a broken record, but he had to die. Carrying the sins of his people and becoming accursed of God, and he had to die under the fierce, holy hatred of his own father against evil. Was on a plane a while back when Mel Gibson's film was on and sitting down beside this boy from the University of Miami and he was reading, it was pornography, actually, he was just looking at pornography there on the airplane. And so I struck up a conversation with him and he said, oh, you're you're one of those Christians. I said, well, I'm a Christian. And he goes, well, this thing about the Jews killing Jesus and Mel Gibson's film, I said Jews didn't kill Jesus. He says, oh, I know. I remember what was it? We all killed Jesus. We didn't kill Jesus. Well, who killed Jesus? God killed Jesus. God, why? Because he should kill you. Somebody has to die. Somebody has to die and they have to die under the full force of God's displeasure against sin. Tonight, wherever I don't know exactly where I'm preaching, but tonight I'm going to teach on the hatred of God. Maybe you've never even heard of it before. Are you as one lady who stood up and said hatred of God? God doesn't hate. God is love. No, ma'am. God is love. Therefore, he must hate. If you tell me you love Jews, but you're neutral about Auschwitz, you don't love Jews. If you tell me you love babies, but abortion is no big deal, you don't love babies. You see, if you hate, if you love that which is right, you have to hate that which contradicts the right. And so we're going to talk about that a bit tonight. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is that God became a man and walked on this earth as a perfect man. And then according to the foreordained plan of God, he went to that tree and on that tree bore the sins of his people. And then the judgment that should have been poured out throughout all of eternity in hell. The measure of it was poured out on Christ and it pleased God, his father, to crush him. God should crush you under the full force of his wrath in order for his justice to be satisfied. He stood in your place and was crushed in your place, and he rose again from the dead in your place. And now God commands you to do something, to repent and believe. That's amazing. Just I'll close with this, you have no idea. Some of you, how wicked you are, even at this very moment, how rebellious and God hating you are. You have no idea because even though you hear this and then you hear that God after giving his son commands you to respond by repenting and believing, you're just sitting there going and you'll say, well, I'm not against him and it's just not for me. You're going to hell and when the last thing you will hear when you take your first step into hell is all of creation standing to its feet and applauding and thanking God because he's rid the earth of you. You see, this is a serious matter. It's not about your best life now. It's about being saved because an hour comes. When the great captains of this world will cry out and beg mountains to rip themselves up from their roots and with the full force of their infinite weight come crashing down upon their heads just to hide them from Jesus Christ, the one that you just yawn about. All men should consider two great days, the day when Jesus Christ hung before all men and the day when all men will kneel before him. One guy said one time, I won't yield. I said, young man, you will melt before him, you will melt before him like a tiny wax figurine before a blast furnace because every knee shall bow and every tongue confess and some will bow by the grace of God and some will bow because their kneecaps have been broken with a rod of iron because it says for no for no reason except that it is true. That he will rule over the nations with a rod of iron. Remember what I said, if I came and preached on the attributes of God, most people would get up and say, that's not my God. I never heard of a God like that. Yeah, but let me ask you a question. When was the last time you studied God in the Bible? You see, that's the most deceptive thing is to give you a God that's just half of a God. Give you half the picture, one side of the coin, it's dangerous. Let's pray. Father, I come before you, Lord, and I ask you that you would work in the hearts of men, women and children, that you would grant them repentance unto life, that they would believe in Jesus Christ. In his name, amen.