In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing the utter need for a substitute to die in our place and a Lord to rule over our lives. He highlights how society has neglected the law of God and instead embraced lawlessness. The speaker explains that the law of God, represented by Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, is necessary to understand and appreciate the good news of God's actions in Jesus Christ. The sermon concludes with a plea for people to recognize their desperate need for Jesus and to fully commit to Him.

Now would you turn tonight to the word of 2nd Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians at chapter 2, 2nd Corinthians at chapter 2. Last evening we spoke on the severity, the terrible, terrible, almost unbelievable severity of God's holy law. We mentioned last evening that there are three truths deeply embedded in the word of God that we've sought mightily for the most part to ignore the last 60, 70 years. These truths form the basis upon which Christ can be preached acceptably to God. They are the utter ruin of men and the fall. They are the strictness of God's holy law, utterly strict, demanding absolute perfection not only of deed but of motive, and the awful severity of the penalty that men have to pay if they break God's holy law. If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do? They shall start building them back. That's our job these days. We are foolish if we do not get quickly to the job of going back to the old truths and whether people hear or not, get the blood of people off our hands by establishing once again the mighty truths of God in the consciences of people. They're not there now. An African Christian has said that America is a Bible-starred land, that American churches are Bible-starred, and I'd wondered if he didn't know a good deal about what he's talking about. Tonight I wish to speak on the truth that wherever the message of the cross in its first message is brought, God's preacher leaves a trail of life and of death. And I read from the second of 2 Corinthians, beginning at verse 14. Now thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one we are the savor of death unto death, and to the other the savor of life unto life. My, what tremendous words. To any child of God, who from the day God saved you, God called you to be a proclaimer as far as in you is, whether public or private, to join hands one with another, with all of God's people the globe around, proclaiming God's act in Christ on a cross and a resurrection. How challenging it is to think that you become an instrument of death and of life. God never set out to save everybody. If he did, he's the world's greatest savior. But he tells us in his word that he set out to save a people for the praise of his glory. Since I cannot save anybody, I'm so glad that on purpose God set out to redeem out of a world of God-haters, holiness-despisers, those whom it seemed good in his sight. God had been very plain to tell us in his blessed word, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, of the means that he purposes to use toward the accomplishment of his eternal purpose. And he uses the word as it is proclaimed, and the intercession of the saints of God. I've been saying about the same thing since I've been here the second visit, that it's long past time for us to throw away our man-made efforts, because in the pursuance of our best minds, we have not been faithful to God's means. Up until now, God has never given us but two weapons to prosecute his word. This word, let's get it out every way and every how we can, privately, by the printed page, by the radio, by the public ministration, any way on earth to disseminate God's eternal word that tells us about what he's done for me and in the Lord Jesus. That's getting the job done. But that is only one half. The other weapon is the intercessory salted tearful prayers of his people. They must go together. You'll study that carefully and not throw a book at me. You'll find that for the last 50 or 60 years, we've done about everything except these two things. I constantly call you to remember that it has been so long since we have honestly believed that only God, using the means at his disposal, can convict a sinner and bring him home safely. We have thought and in our thinking, we have treated God the Holy Ghost as almost a total stranger. And while we've given lip service to him in our plans and in our promotions, and we were serious and I think well-intentioned but ignorant by it, we have almost, almost forgotten that any gospel that can be accepted apart from the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit is not the gospel of God. And yet we've constantly tried to present a gospel, as we've said, that a little child can understand. But the wisest man that ever lived cannot begin to understand the gospel of God concerning his son. Thank God it can be bowed to and believed by faith, but it cannot be understood. When we remember that it is our task as people of God to go to a world and preach that which the natural man cannot possibly receive because it's spiritually discerned, oh God, isn't it time that knowing that and refusing longer to just wholly to not believe it, that our churches come back to intercessory prayer and faithfulness to the Word of God that has not marked our day, your day, and mine. Now I said that, that's on our text, that's in our text. Oh my, this Word, salted in prayer, makes those who bring it instruments of death and instruments of life. God's purpose is being served when by hearing men are sealed in their doom, or when men are delivered from the doom and brought to safety in Christ. No wonder the Apostle Paul, remembering as he just said, that we are savers of death unto death and life unto life, he'll ask the question, who is sufficient for these things? I'll tell you right now, all of us put together or not, we can summon up our best brains and our best promotional tactics and all of it, but not big enough to get one sinner to a saving relationship to God. Who is sufficient for these things? And especially in view of the fact of what he says in verse 17, for he says there's one thing we cannot do, recognizing something of the solemnity of being representatives of the most high and thrice holy God in Christ, recognizing that our ministry damns as well as bless it. Oh, he said we can't do it in our own strength for there's one thing we dead sure are not going to do, said Paul, we're not going to try to whittle down the gospel and we're not going to try to wish Jesus off on anybody that don't want him. Let's read this 17th verse, for we are not as many, even in Paul's day, we are not as many which corrupt the word of God. If that isn't a challenging thing, I'll choose up and take sides. Yeah, I am just a little old preacher, a sinner I trust saved by grace. My brain is not very good because I never won't be until I get a new body entirely recovered from the awful blow that fell on me and Adam. And I haven't got much sense. And here I am reading, trying to preach out of a book that don't make a better sense on God's earth except as a person is able to be taught by the one who wrote it. Yeah, I'm trying to preach a word. Now listen to Brother Barnes, that no unsaved person believes. It is silly for us to think that unsaved people believe the Bible. They do not believe a word of it, not one single word. And yet here we are called upon to stick to this book and not try to improve on it, or add to it, or take away from it, or whittle it down, or fool with it in any respect to fix it so that an unsaved man could understand it. We dare not do that. I'm telling you, if that you take it through, maybe some of us would believe that old Brother Barnard isn't as crazy as he's reported to be when he tells you. It's long past time since we're preaching out of a book unsaved people do not believe a word of it. They can't. The natural mind is empty, and he cannot receive it. He cannot. He doesn't understand a word of it. Well, how on earth is anybody going to get saved? Ain't nobody going to get saved unless God Almighty works a miracle and does something for that old man's mind and that man's eyes and that man's heart to enable him to see what he can't see, and to act on what he can't act, and to believe what he can't believe. We are in the realm of miracle. I'm saying because years ago we said, well, now that's a little too tough, and so we'll get our little pocket knives down, and we'll whittle down the gospel of Jesus Christ until men can accept it. I hear a lot, Brother Starr, about making the gospel acceptable to the modern mind, whatever that is. I don't know what the modern mind is, but the gospel cannot be made acceptable except as the Holy Ghost conquers a man and enables him to close with him of whom the gospel speaks. Whatever we do, Paul said, we are not as many which corrupt the word of God, but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ. Oh, you're listening to a preacher who is not just exactly a novice. Sixty-one years now, thirty-nine have been trying to be a preacher. Hear me, I deserve a hearing. Hear me, I know a little something about what I'm talking about. I have a deep conviction. I can't force it on anybody. I don't ask anybody to share it. I just preach it and proclaim it. I have a deep conviction. It's as real as I'm real and not a ghost. I wish no one would fight. I wish no one would book. I wish with every atom of your strength you'd try to enter in and be sympathetic at least with what makes me tick. So help me, God. I believe that this generation has heard a whittled-down, corrupted, perverted presentation of a part of the Christ of the Bible. My deep conviction is that the Christ that's been preached for the last many, many years doesn't have power to save anybody. What I'm trying to say is, and I dig people and I go after people and I'm dead sure not trying to entertain anybody, but I'm preaching with a view that I've got to face yet the judgment. And I know I can't do a good job, but I want to do the best I can. And I'm looking you in the face and telling you how on God's earth could people have got saved in these last few years when we've whittled Christ down and whittled him down and whittled him down and softened his claims and softened his demands. I tell you it takes a whole Christ, utterly received by faith by a whole center to bring salvation to pass. My deep conviction is that for many, many years the many have corrupted the gospel. They've taken holiness out of it. They've taken the heart out of it. They've robbed my Jesus of his honor and his exalted position on the throne. We are not as many, said Paul, who corrupt the gospel. The gospel, my friends, must be preached in its purity. I'm going to try to preach on that tomorrow night, in its purity. I do not believe, now hear brother Barnett, I do not believe that a man could possibly get saved as long as Jesus Christ is preached only as a savior, while his ministry as God's prophet to bring his flesh-killing teachings directly from God to men is ignored. And I do not believe a man can get saved by accepting Jesus except as they bow to him where he now is installed there by almighty God, sitting on the throne of the universe with the very reins of your destiny in his hands. In other words, I honestly believe that this accepting Jesus as your personal savior is a corruption of the gospel of Christ. I do not see how, how we got into the trap, and yet nearly every professing Christian now, that's the only chance you ever get at him, about being obedient to him as God's teacher, they know nothing. And about utter, day by day, submission to his absolute rule in your life, they know less. And I know that Christ must be received on the job as God's teacher, as God's priest, and as God's holy king. And anything short of that is not the Christ Paul preached, is not the Christ the Bible talks about, is not the Christ who is the only begotten son of God. Oh, I want tomorrow night to preach, if I can, the gospel in its purity. But tonight I just want to say one thing. The gospel must be preached in its proper order. In its proper order. Hear me now. If a man preaches the gospel in a proper order, if he don't preach it in a proper order, it's just like pouring water off a duck's back. And we've fell fallen in this trap for many, many years. I know what I'm talking about. What is the order in which the gospel is to be preached? The proclamation and enforcing of God's holy, just, and perfect law must precede the preaching of the gospel. When the preacher says that all Bible truth is wrapped up in the cross of Christ, he's speaking the truth. For everything leads to or stems from that. But the first message of preaching the cross of Christ is the proclamation of the holy law of God. The young man said before his time, a truth, a truth. How could this generation have any conception of its utter need of a substitute to die in our stead? And a Lord to rule our every thought and daily expression since for so many years we've thrown the law out of the window. We've invented Bible teachers that have done away with it. And God help us, this lawlessness is everywhere in your home and in your church and in your school and on your streets and everywhere else. How could it be any other way? Since for so long we've neglected the truth that the law must be preached first, or a man cannot preach the good news that God has acted in Jesus Christ. What is the law? What's the message of the law? Well look at Jesus Christ hanging on a cross, that's what it is. How come is that? Because of God's holy law. God's holy law. What nailed the Son of God to that tree? God's holy law. God's sworn he'll never go back on his law. God never has admitted he made a mistake when he said thou shalt and thou shalt not. God never has admitted that he is wrong about it. One thing's dead certain, one thing's dead certain, that nobody will be interested in hearing the gospel until they are utterly slain by the holy law of God. Nobody says well we ought to preach the gospel, yes sir! But the scriptures don't say we ought to preach it first. Nowhere in Old Testament or New Testament is this principle violated. Everywhere man's utter sinfulness and God's holy requirements are first faithfully proclaimed and enforced. And that's because we are so constituted that we'll not give one hoop as I said whether God hung his son on a cross or not until we've absolutely been brought face to face with God's holy demands and find ourselves utterly unable to meet them. The gospel my friends is called good news. Good news to who? Is the gospel good news to sinners? Well they think it's silly. Yes sir! What sort of sinners? To the giddy and the unconcerned? Oh no! Well that's not good news to them. See what that fool's talking about. Is the gospel good news to them? No sir! It doesn't sound good to them. It has no music and there is a death to its charms for they don't have any sense of a need of a savior. Christ died and God raised him for sinners is the gospel but who cares? The gospel's good news to what kind of people? It's good news hear me, to those who have some sense of the holiness of God and of their vileness in his sight. That's when the gospel's good news. The gospel's good news to people who've known something of his righteous requirements and of their criminal neglect to try to meet them. The gospel's good news to those who are conscious of their deep sinfulness and their utter inability to recover themselves. The gospel's good news to those whose consciences are burdened down by an intolerable load of guilt and who are terrified by the imminent danger to come. The gospel's good news to men and women who've come to know that unless the almighty redeemer saves them, they cannot save themselves. The law is the first message of the cross and the great need of this hour is for this generation and I'm not lying when I tell you they haven't heard much of it. Just won't you take Jesus and they say, why? Furry on you, what I need him for? Or they go through some of the motions but it never changes the way they live and it never changes the way they feel and the way they talk and the way they walk and that won't get the job done. Why must the law of God be preached first? That's the first message of the cross because men will not listen to your gospel, they'll not be interested in your gospel, they'll have no interest in your gospel until they're utterly slain by the holy demands of the law. Why must the law be preached first? Because man will stay ignorant of his true condition. If American pulpits keep silent forever as they've been doing for 40, 50 years about the actual truth of God's holy requirements, the schools are not going to teach it. Most of them make fun of it now. The homes are not teaching it. The family altar is a dead relic now. The newspapers are not going to teach it. They're not doing that. The funny papers don't teach it. The picture shows don't teach it. The television don't teach it. God help us to just one institution. God help us to get busy, honey. Get busy, honey! Getting back to the truth that unless the law of God is faithfully prosecuted and proclaimed, men will die ignorant of their actual condition in the sight of God. Just leave God, just let God take His hand off and let all mention of His holiness for that's what the law means. The law, those ten commandments, don't amount to anything except as He who gave them stands behind them. They are the reflection of His holy character and of His righteous demands. And there's no way on God's earth for a man to find out the truth about himself except to look in the mirror God's provided, and that mirror is God's holy law. Just left alone of the requirements of God's law, and men and women will not realize how desperate is the sickness of their souls. For spiritual health means personal holiness. To hear the law faithfully proclaimed, I don't mean everybody gets saved if they face the law, but some would. I don't mean everybody would say, I need a Savior, but some would. If we began faithfully in Sunday school classes and radio and public, everywhere in personal work, home by home and doorbell by doorbell, to preach the first message of the gospel, the holy law of God to this lawless generation, maybe somebody gets so mad they try to get them a club or a shotgun, kill God, they'd get a hold of them. I don't think they could. But others would say, oh my, I tell you, I'm in a bad shape. I'm in a bad shape. And so by the law, men can find out their need. They need a new nature, but they don't believe it except as their own nature is exposed and aroused and kindled in its hostility by God's holy law. Oh, if God tells you to do something and it arouses hostility, it's showing you for what you are. If God tells you not to do something, you say, I'll do it or die. It's revealing your character. Oh, my soul, how can a fellow walk the streets of glory unless he becomes a lover of holiness? And how can old Ralph Barney, unless God Almighty gives me a new nature and makes me a new creation, how can I love that which I naturally hate? I can't. I can't. I need, in the language of the old book, I need a new birth. I need a birth from above. I need a birth that'll take me out of one realm of darkness, put me over into the rule of God's dear son. I need a miracle to change me and make me love what I once hated and hate what I once loved. And only God can do that. And so the faithful proclamation of the holy law of God will make some people be concerned that God did hang His son on a cross. And they'll begin to inquire, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, who knows, maybe He did something on the cross for me. I'm going to see if I can find out if I can get in on the merits of the blessed son of God's life laid out in His shed blood. And, oh, as we proclaim the cross, the law, some men will find out their condition. Why? You deserve to be in hell. Why? You've broken God's law. It shows your rebellion. It shows your lack of holiness. And then, please, God, some people find out their need. Oh, let me say one more time to encourage those of you who know the Lord, the only weapons we've got are the word faithfully proclaimed in prayer. I want to see the word beating into the hearts of people. I want to see men and women stricken. I want to see men and women come down off the high horses. I want to see the whole chant changed. It may be I'll never see it, but I want to. I think in the day, Brother Cole-Iron, my soul wouldn't be terrible. We may have to go through it. It may be God Almighty will never visit America. I don't know. I haven't made you any promises since I've been here. I said it's been over a hundred years since He has. And I don't know whether He ever will or not. All I know is I want Him to. I don't know whether He will or not. But I'll tell you right now, honey, if He don't, this lawlessness, it's everywhere now. It's going to be worse tomorrow. And it's going to be worse the next day. And we won't have to read the newspapers about what's going on in the cities. It will be happening in this town and everywhere else. It's spreading like wildfire and all hell is popping. My soul, what is it? It's just men and women thumbing their nose at the holy character and requirements of God. That's what it is. That's exactly what it is. What's the remedy? Well, God's word. What's His word? The holy requirements of Almighty God. And so in the last word tonight, the holy law of God, God's put it in there to prepare the way for the preaching of the gospel and reception of it. Let me mention quickly five things about how the law of God is used of God to prepare hearts, to be glad to hear that the Lord Jesus died on the cross. I pause and see with utter shame that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on a cruel tree is now taken for granted. How hard-hearted we are. God help us, we just take it for granted. That's terrible, but I'm afraid so. We just take it for granted. As if it's something we deserve. And it's sort of something brothers start to argue about instead of to weep over and then having wealth to rejoice in. Oh, do you know anything? Between eternities it's heartbreaking as the way people just do not care if the Son of God was stretched out on a tree. Isn't that something to break your heart? Oh, I long to do my little bit to encourage everybody I can to encourage my own heart. God help us, folks. God give us another chance to take God's holy truth to this generation. Maybe somebody would say, oh my, isn't it wonderful that God so loved the world that He actually gave His only begotten Son on the cross. How does the law prepare somebody to be glad to hear the good news of what Christ has done? Well, it does it in five ways. The law requires inward as well as outward obedience. How about it? You say, well, I don't do anything very bad. How about the motives of the good things you do? Inward as well as outward obedience. Now, there's just two things to do with a statement like that. That's throw it out the window or look at it. And if you look at it, it'll crush you. You can't get the job done. That condemns every human being that's ever lived. That inward obedience. Inward obedience. From the inside. It'll enable a man, and nobody's yet been able to do it perfectly except Christ, to be able to say, I delight in the inward man. In the law of God. Ladies and gentlemen, we are as sinful or as sinless as we conform or fail to conform to God's holy law. Now, my standard's not worth much, but God's standard is utterly high and terribly straight. Compared to one another, I could maybe think fairly well of myself. I'd say, boy, look how holy Brother Barnard is. But when I compare myself with God's standard, I can only say, depart from me. I'm a sinful man. You see, my friends, there's a lot of fool talk going all over the country by a lot of fool preachers about the ability of men to save themselves. And there's a lot of fool talk on about this hyper-Calvinism, I believe what they call me. They say I'm a hard shell, and they say I don't believe anybody can get saved even if they want to. And they don't know a thing on God's earth about the Bible. And I get sick and tired of the little old peanut ignoramus that's going around spouting off something that no one knows anything about and speaking evil things of great truths of God's Word. But you listen to Ralph Barnard tonight. The only reason on God's earth a fellow wouldn't be anxious to close with Jesus Christ in the gospel is that he willfully, nobody keeps him from it, he willfully refuses to face the condition he's in in God's sight as revealed in terms of the law. And if he goes to hell, he'll have nobody on God's earth to blame but himself, and he'll split it wide open because he willfully would not look at himself in God's mirror. If you'd do it, brother, you'd come down off your high horse, and you wouldn't be satisfied with somebody deciding you as a Christian. You'd hang and rattle and seek and crave, pray and cry until the Lord spoke peace to your soul, and you wouldn't let anybody but Him do it. In the second place, the law demands perfect obedience. So as we see ourselves in God's mirror, if we look at God's law as it reveals our awful disobedience, I just want two things to do about that. Just throw it out the window, as we've done for years, or look at it. You say, well, old sinner, he can't save himself. No, sir. Can you read? No, I can't read. Can you get somebody to read for you? Yes, sir. I know somebody who can read. Well, for God's sake, go get him and have him open the book and start reading to you about how in the Word of God, the One who created this earth and owns your lock, stock and barrel, demands perfect obedience. And just look at it. And that'll crush everybody that's ever lived. And they'll have to say, I can't make it. My obedience is not perfect. I'm a goner. How does the law prepare the way for the gospel to be preached and received? Because it's spiritual and strict. Imagination, according to Jesus, is adultery. Imagination is adultery. According to Jesus, you do not have to commit the act of adultery to be an adulterer. Just the imagination. The state of undress of this ungodly lawless generation. This nation's a nation of adulterers. A decent man dare not go to a grocery store now. The parade of naked flesh is so awful that it makes a decent man ashamed that the women of this country are so far gone. We ought to remember, ladies and gentlemen, especially you ladies, for it falls on you more than anybody else, that there is now in the making before Congress a bill to legalize homosexuality. Did you know that? They're going to make it now where it won't be against the law to practice homosexual prostitution. We ought further to realize that the dressmakers of the world are homosexuals. The dressmaking industry is controlled like stock and barrel by female or male homosexuals. Now that's something to think about. How come the women are dressing or undressing as ugly and vulgarly as they can? I'll tell you exactly why. The dressmakers planned it that way. Why? They wish to make men utterly, utterly, utterly done with women. And they're doing a good job. Why do the girls now try their dead level best to look as shabby as they can? The dressmakers have made it that way. What's behind it? Well, brother, when you open the word of God, brother, wait. You'll find that homosexuality, that's sodomy. And when we get there, that's the bottom, brother. That's the bottom, and we're nearly there. When I tell you that one out of every ten people in New York City is a female or a male homosexual, I'm telling you the truth. When I tell you that there are 70,000 homosexual male, homosexual streetwalkers, prostitutes on the streets of New York City, I'm telling you something that ought to wake this generation that's been summoning its nose against holy living long enough. If we don't wake up, we all ought to go to hell. It's getting serious. What you talking about? Imagination is adultery. Imagination is adultery. The parade of flesh has made America a nation of adultery. Not altogether in the act, but in the thought. It couldn't be any other way. My soul! How much deeper in hell are we church members going to go trying to better life of the godless world? Causeless anger against a fellow creature is murder. You ever been angry at somebody without a cause? You're a murderer. This is how spiritual and how strict the holy law of God is. Oh, my friends, if a man had faced it, all he could say is, I'm a sinful man. I'm a sinful man. How does the law prepare to receive the gospel? The law thunders its awful curse. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The wages of sin is death. Cursed is every man that hangeth on a tree. He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. How does the law prepare for the hearing of the gospel of Christ? Well, the whole law itself just has one ultimate purpose. To show you your need of somebody to take your place and grapple with God's holy law in your stead. And meet its awful requirements and endure its awful penalty in your stead. Ladies and gentlemen, here's one man that's not anxious to have to deal with God's holy law. I don't believe I got a chance. If I come to the judgment, and every man that comes there is going to be brought face to face, not with Christ, but with God's holy law. And I can't handle it. It'll destroy me. Its awful severity will be brought out on me. And God almighty will plunge me into eternal hell. Because I can't deal with God's holy law. It'll kill me. Oh, if I speak to somebody tonight who doesn't share my deep conviction, you I know wouldn't make fun of me. And I know you think your heart will break. You know if you're a Christian, how desperate is man's need of the Lord Jesus Christ to pay the penalty of sin in their stead. You know it. You talk to people and they don't know it. They're not interested. This heart breaks for them. Oh, how you wish you could act for them. How you wish you could shut them up, not let them get out. And if you had the power, make them fall prostrate before the Lord Jesus Christ. Because ladies and gentlemen, there's one truth between the eternities. It is that sinful man, there's no way of escape from God's eternal wrath. Unless you're able to close with the Lord Jesus Christ. Unless it can come to pass that you can say and say truthfully, he's mine. Thank God I'm here. There isn't any escape. God knows I wish people could see it and believe it and act upon it. While God holds back the lash of his eternal judgment. While it's time. Our Father, the message is done. Now I'll have to meet it at the judgment. The way the people have heard it, that's in the books. Now it's time for invitation. We tremble, we don't know how to press it. We commit this thing to you now. And ask you, oh thou merciful God. Deal with people even now. Concerning that desperate need to flee to the Lord Jesus Christ and wholly abandon an utter commitment. We beg it for souls sake and for our Lord's sake.