In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that the true message of the Gospel has been distorted. He argues that the belief that Jesus will save people in their sins is incorrect. Instead, the Gospel teaches that Jesus will save people from their sins. The preacher highlights the importance of repentance and letting go of sin in order to live a life aligned with God's will. He also criticizes the lack of action and hypocrisy among Christians, stating that their failure to live out their faith has led to a negative perception of Christianity in secular society.

Mary will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now would you just look at your translation there, and would you notice the preposition? The preposition before the phrase, their sins. The preposition is from. He will save his people from their sins. That's what God has promised to do for us in Jesus. And could I push you again by pointing out to you that there's a great difference between the word for from in Greek and in. Just in case you think Matthew could have fumbled over the spelling. To live for God, all else for sin. My greatest joy, my greatest joy, my greatest joy, my greatest joy. To please the Lord in all I do. My only hope, my only hope, my only hope, my only hope. We translate that verse, not as it is. You'll call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. We translate it as if it was, you will call his name Jesus, because he will save his people in their sins. Now, loved ones, that isn't the gospel. And yet, brothers and sisters, that is what the great majority of us who think of ourselves vaguely even as evangelicals teach. Now really, if you're honest with me, I think you'll have to admit that the great majority of us believe that A may sin and B may sin. But A is a Christian, so he knows that Jesus died for him, and therefore Jesus' blood covers his sins. So he may be sinning like mad and beating his wife every night, but yet he's a Christian, and so his sins are forgiven. And so he's saved in his sins, or despite his sins. Whereas B is a miserable old wretched pagan, a non-Christian, and he beats his wife every night. But he doesn't believe that Jesus died for him, and he is going to hell. And that's normally the way we all interpret the gospel. We really, in other words, say that the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is one can sin with immunity, or with impunity, without being punished. And the other can sin, but is punished. Now, loved ones, that is not the gospel. The gospel is not, Jesus will save you in your sins. The gospel is that Jesus will save you from your sins. I don't think there's one person here that won't see what the outcome of that has been. The outcome of that truncated version of the gospel has been a name for Christianity which is pitiful in secular society. Because secular society will say the same thing about Christians again and again if they practice what they preached. They talk big, but they don't do big. They talk about what they should do for God, but they don't do it. Indeed, I put it to you, what has put you and me off ordinary church life and ordinary Christianity? I am finished with the lie that my life is my own. I can't rule wisely, oh I've tried. Lord come and sit upon your throne. I abdicate authority, I abdicate my rights. I abdicate the power to decide. Taking my eyes off of thee to keep you in my sight. Beholding you, the antidote for crime. We've perverted the gospel. We've made it mean Jesus will save us in our sins, not from our sins. That's why we get the bumper sticker, Christians are not perfect, only forgiven. To give my life, my all for him. My deepest love, my deepest love, my deepest love. Matthew 1 and 21, Jesus will save us from our sins. He says, the Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins, while yet those sins remained. The Lord never came to deliver us from the consequences of our sins, which is usually in our mind hell, while yet those sins remained. And then I'll read it slowly because the logic is a little tricky. That would be to cast out of the window the medicine of cure. And he regards, you see, the punishment as a medicine of cure. While yet the man lay sick, to go dead against the very laws of being. And then he says, yet men have constantly taken this verse, Matthew 1 and 21, to mean that Jesus came to save them from the punishment of their sins. This idea, this miserable fancy has terribly corrupted the preaching of the gospel. The message of the good news has not been truly delivered. And loved ones, do you see what really he and countless others are saying? That death is the wages of sin in order to destroy sin. Death is not the wages of sin that somehow you have to try to get somebody else to pay for you. Death is the wages of sin in that it destroys sin. God is not sitting up in heaven saying, how will I show these miserable creatures that I made that I'm real mad. I'm just real mad with them. And I just am real mad with their sins. I know, I'll roar and I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll kill my own son. It's not so. The very picture of it seems ridiculous to us. The father hates and detests sin and has to destroy it and has to burn it out of existence. That's why he said the wages of sin is death. That's why the Bible says, he who has died is freed from sin. Not from the consequences of sin. The consequences of sin is death and death is there to destroy sin. That's the very purpose of death. And the purpose of Jesus' death is to free us from our sins. To destroy sin in us. To free our lives from sinning. It isn't so that we'll be able to go on sinning in this life and yet have the feeling, yeah, yeah, but that neighbor of mine or that colleague in the office, he sins and I sin. Except that he'll have to face the consequences of sin, but lucky old me, I'm not going to have to do that. Loved ones, that's not true. God's desire in Jesus and in Jesus' death is to free our lives from our sins. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us. You've got to let it go. You've got to let it go. You can't keep on holding on to the sins that weight us down when we must be pressing on. For we must run this race with all our might. Take up our cross, deny our lives to win the prize of eternal life. We must press and strive to do what's right by His grace. We must run. And let us look on to Yeshua, the author and the finisher. For the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame. You've got to let it go. You've got to let it go. You can't keep on holding on to the sins that weight us down when we must keep pressing on. For we must love Yahweh with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind. To be accepted in His sight, we must offer up our lives as a sacrifice. So let us run. But loved ones, if you're sitting there with that complacent, lackadaisical attitude that says, Oh, well, I may not have all the sins out of my life, but I know that I believe Jesus died for me, so I believe I'm okay anyway. I'll do my best. Loved ones, that's a perversion of the gospel. The gospel is not believe that Jesus is going to die instead of you and do your best to please God. No. It's not believe and try. The gospel is be willing to die with Jesus, to run in your own life, and come alive in the power of His Spirit to living like Him. Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us. The times of ignorance God overlooked. Now, not only the ignorance of the pagans, who didn't know anything about God, but even the ignorance of the Jews, who did not know the truth of the Lamb being sent from the foundation of the world and all of us being destroyed with Him with all our self-centeredness and our self-will. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all men everywhere to repent. That's why, loved ones, you're under a different situation now in dispensation than the Jews. You can't sit there and hear me preach this stuff Sunday after Sunday and say, well, well, I don't want to go that far. I just want to be a good Jew. Because the times of ignorance God overlooked, and He would overlook that kind of thing in those days when they knew no better. Now you know, and I know, that we, with all our right to ourselves and our right to our own way, because these are all the things that bring sin in our lives, and all our pride and all our preoccupation with people treating us the right way and resenting people who criticize us wrongly or treat us unjustly, all that was crucified with Jesus. And if we're willing to die with Him and identify ourselves completely with Him, we know we can be freed from that and from all the sin that stems from it. Even a baby Christian has the power that is stated clearly in 1 John 3 and 9. No one born of God commits sin. In other words, when Paul says, I do what I do not want, he's saying, I'm not a Christian. Because a Christian never does what he doesn't want to do. And that's what that verse says. No one born of God does sin. That is, even a little child Christian, even a little one who has just begun to know Jesus, has enough power of Jesus' Spirit in his life to hold down what is wrong. At least he can rise to the level of the noble pagans. That's it. That's what that verse says. I know, loved ones, all of us have been taught, oh, brother, you can't say that. That sinless perfection is nowhere near, isn't it? It's nowhere near perfection at all. It's just that outwardly, you're able to conform your life to what you know is true and right. That Plato could do, that Socrates could do, that Confucius could do. You read their lives. Their lives that are flawless outwardly. Now, loved ones, even a little baby Christian who has really dealt with Jesus and seen that God's purpose in including him in Jesus' death and Calvary was to destroy his life, to destroy his right to his life, his right to his own way, his right to plan his future. Those are all the rights that we defend that actually produce sin in us eventually. Loved ones, those are what make us gods of our own lives. I know we all like to think, oh, that's what a good red-blooded American has a right to, you know, the right to his own decision, the right to his own future. No, that's only the right of a person who is running his own life, who is trying to be his own god. But on Calvary and Jesus, you and I were included in his death and those rights were destroyed. And the moment we agree to that, and that's what it means to become a Christian, the moment we agree to that, that moment we're freed from all the resentments that come from not getting our own way, from having other people treat us unfairly. Now, loved ones, that's what it means to be a Christian. You don't do sin. I think a lot of us have taken the current thinking of our society and we've used it as an excuse to say, well, you know what, I'm not through to the fullness of the Spirit or some other phrase that we use as an excuse. And that's why, Tom, I'm so hard to live with. That's why, Jean, I lose my temper every week. Oh, you know, I'm not through to those heights of Christian sanctity that we're meant to get to. Loved ones, there are no heights there. An ordinary little Christian will not commit sin. He has the power, she has the power to live in conformity outwardly to what they know to be true and right. The first step in Christianity is not believing that Jesus died instead of you, because the Bible doesn't say that anywhere. Jesus has died for you. But it means so that you could die with him, to yourself and to all the powers within you. That makes you do what you don't want to do. And if you're willing to identify yourself with Jesus, he, through his Spirit, can give you enough power and enough grace to live like him. If you want to be a Christian, you identify yourself totally with Jesus. You say, Lord Jesus, I'm willing to die as you did to all the things that we human beings think we should have. To reputation, to position, to our friends and our peers praising us, to security and finances and material things, to fame, to being well known, to being looked up to, to getting our own way. Lord Jesus, if you had nowhere to lay your head, I'm willing to identify with you. And loved ones, that's what becoming a Christian is. It's identifying yourself completely with Jesus, because as you do that, the power of his miraculous death on Calvary begins to destroy sin in your life and begins to free you from your sins. He will save his people from their sins. That's what God has promised to do for us in Jesus.