When I read my Bible and examine what
the Apostle Paul preached and compare that to
what is preached in the majority of our
churches in America today, I see little similarity.
And if old Paul was to show up
today and enter a pulpit and preach the
message that he preached in his day, he
would be quickly escorted out of the church
by the good deacons.
I submit to you that the Apostle Paul
would not be allowed to preach in the
majority of the churches in America today, and
not only that, he would be persecuted by
the church for preaching the message that he
preached in his day.
Some of you may be saying to yourself,
how can you come to that conclusion, preacher?
That's a pretty bold statement.
It's true, friends.
If old Paul came back today to the
church in America, they would persecute him and
reject his message.
Well, you might ask, what in the world
did Paul preach that would make him an
enemy of the church today?
I will tell you, friend, he preached the
unvarnished gospel of the Son of God, and
you start preaching that gospel to this generation,
to the churches in America today, and they
will surely hate you for it.
You will be considered a troublemaker, a church
divider, and a heretic.
Well, what did old Paul preach?
The best place to look is in our
Bible.
Let us first turn to 2 Corinthians chapter
4 and verse 5, for we preach not
ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.
Let's start there, because that is where Paul
began.
The apostles preached a risen Lord, Christ Jesus
the Lord, Christ on a throne, sitting at
the right hand of the Father, and he
earned that right by way of a bloody
cross, Jesus is Lord.
If you want to come to Him savingly,
you have to come to Him there, friend,
to where He is, on a throne.
He reigns there, and if you want to
be savingly converted, you had better listen to
old Paul and receive Christ as Lord.
You see, friends, the church in America parted
with the gospel about 50 years ago when
they separated Jesus from Lord.
They made two things out of one.
The church in your day and mine declares
you can have Christ as a Savior and
go to heaven, but you don't have to
submit to His claims on your life as
Lord.
You can accept Jesus as your personal Savior
and go on in your sins and reign
on the throne of your heart and go
to heaven just fine.
That's the gospel of our day, but not
in Paul's day.
No, sir, Paul preached Jesus the Lord, and
if you wanted Him, you had to approach
Him there and bow to Him in utter
surrender, because if you don't bow to Him
now, friend, He will put His foot on
your neck at a future day and make
you bow then when He makes His enemies
His footstool, because any person, any church member
or non-church member who has not submitted
to the Lordship of Christ, that salvation is
lost.
Now you start preaching that, friend, and the
good deacons will wring your neck.
They'll take the shoes off and throw them
at you, because the church in America has
told people you can have Jesus as a
Savior, but you don't need Him as a
Lord, and thousands upon thousands and millions upon
millions have walked an aisle with a grin
on their face and accepted Jesus as their
personal Savior, and they never saw themselves as
lost in a ruined estate and an enemy
of God.
They never threw down their shotgun of rebellion
and surrendered to the King of Kings, who
was Lord.
They were never convicted of their sins, nor
were they converted, because they never repented from
their sins.
They were never filled with the Holy Spirit,
and they call themselves Christians, and they run
our churches and seminaries and denominations.
And if old Paul came back today and
addressed the national convention for a major denomination,
and if he dared preach the message that
he preached while he was here in the
flesh, he would not last long at the
podium, because the heads of that denomination would
be shouting for his head.
The apostle Paul preached the Lordship of Jesus
Christ, a risen Lord, who sits on a
throne, and if you want Him savingly, you
have to do business with Him there.
Is that too hard for you?
Can't swaddle that?
Well, take it up with old Paul and
the old book.
The next thing Paul preached is found in
Ephesians chapter 2 and verses 1 through 4,
and this will really make you mad.
And you hath he quickened who were dead
in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past
ye walked according to the course of this
world, according to the prince of the power
of the air, the spirit that now worketh
in the children of disobedience, among whom also
we all had our conversation in times past
in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature the children of wrath,
even as others.
Now Paul mentions several things here that are
foreign to many in our churches today.
They've not heard this message because it's not
preached much.
Many sermons grab their texts from unoffensive passages
of Scripture, and men preach those up because
they won't offend anybody.
After all, you can't upset your congregation.
If you do, you won't have a congregation.
We live in a day of the positive,
encouraging Word and a positive, encouraging God.
We have positive, encouraging Christian radio, positive, encouraging
pastors, and so-called Christian bookstores that sell
positive, encouraging books.
That's the day we live in, friends, a
positive, encouraging day when society's falling all apart
all around us, and people drop into hell
by the minute, and we preach nice little
positive, encouraging sermons to soothe their little minds
and calm their little hearts.
And if old Paul came back today and
preached that, that all mankind is dead in
trespasses and sins, that they serve the devil
because he is the prince of the power
of the air, that because they are lost
and ruined, they live in a kingdom of
darkness, and they are the children of disobedience
who live to fulfill the lusts and desires
of their flesh, and they drink iniquity like
it's water because they have a nature friend
that is ruined, and they are the children
of wrath.
They are objects of God's wrath.
Now, do you want to go preach that
message, brother preacher?
If you want to be like Paul, you
can, but be willing to have his scars
because he was mobbed and stoned and beaten
and whipped and run out of town for
the message he preached, which was Christ and
him crucified.
Well, let's look at the next thing old
Paul preached.
Turn over in your Bibles to the book
of Acts, chapter 17, and verse 30.
Paul was addressing the pagans in Athens, and
if old Paul came back to pagan America
today and addressed it, he would preach the
same message to it that he preached to
those pagan Greeks.
This is what he preached to them, and
in the times of this ignorance God winked
at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to
repent.
Old Paul preached man's duty of repentance, that
God commands all men, Greeks and Americans and
Chinese and Russian and African and Indonesian and
all men everywhere to repent.
You start preaching man's duty of repentance today
and you will have a mob at your
door.
They horse-whipped Mordecai Ham for preaching repentance.
They pistol-whipped him in Texas for preaching
repentance, but Mordecai Ham, although he had some
scars on his body, he was like old
Paul.
Old Ham saw over 200,000 people come
to Christ during his ministry, and one of
them was Billy Graham, but we soft-soak
the gospel today, and the problem is people
join our churches and sit Sunday after Sunday
and listen to our encouraging words for the
day, and we are not honest with men
and honest with women and honest with girls
and honest with boys.
We just don't warn them of the fact
that Jesus declared, unless you repent, ye shall
all likewise perish, and that means if you
came into a church any other way than
through repentance towards God and faith in Jesus
Christ, you are a hell-bound sinner who
needs to repent even if you are the
chairman of the deacons.
But if you preach on repentance, then you
have to mention sin, and then you have
to mention a place called hell, and then
you have to talk about a holy God
who hates sin and why that is just
not politically correct.
So the gospel of our day and the
gospel of Paul's day are two different gospels,
friend, and here is the difference.
We don't see many true conversions today with
our peanut, God-shrunk gospel, but Paul had
his because the gospel he preached is found
in Acts chapter 20 and verse 27, which
states, For I have not shunned to declare
unto you all the counsel of God.
You see, friends, old Paul preached the gospel
in its purity and proper order.
He preached the full counsel of God.
He didn't leave anything out to make it
more palatable to sinful man.
He was not ashamed of it like we
are today.
And we are so ashamed of it.
We don't want to preach all of it.
But the gospel Paul preached had something that
today's modern gospel lacks.
P-O-W-E-R.
In Romans, Paul declares, For I am not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it
is the power of God unto salvation to
everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and
also to the Greek.
But our gospel of today lacks power because
we have diluted it of all its threatenings
and terrors and warnings to sinful man.
We don't want to warn sinners to flee
from the wrath to come today.
We just want to give them some encouraging
word and smile and play church and sit
back while society crumbles all around us and
this nation turns its back on God and
the churches are too afraid to preach the
full counsel of God and be honest with
man and tell them what they are, ruined,
lost, rebels, enemies of God.
We paint God all wrong, too, and say
He's just a God of love, when in
reality He is also a God of wrath
and who declares God is angry with the
wicked every day.
If He turned not, He will wet His
sword.
He hath bent His bow and made it
ready.
We don't tell men that God is ready
to cut them down any moment because of
sin.
That's the only prayer God ever hears of
an unsaved person.
And that's this, God be merciful to me,
a sinner.
No, the God of today is only a
God of the encouraging word.
Why, the God of today just wouldn't punish
sin.
He wouldn't send anybody to hell.
But old Paul knew better.
He warned men.
He called a spade a spade.
He didn't soft soak the gospel and shrink
God down to man's level like many of
us have done today.
Well, what else did Paul preach?
If you're not mad yet, you will be
after you hear what he preached next.
Turn to Ephesians chapter one and verses four
and five.
According as he hath chosen us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we
should be holy and without blame before him
in love, having predestined us unto the adoption
of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will.
This speaks of election, that God is the
God of salvation and not man.
For by grace are you saved through faith
and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man boast.
Oh, Paul would surely be thrown out of
many of our churches today for preaching that
message.
And if he kept it off by saying
that we were saved to be holy, why
that would drain the blood out of the
good deacon's faces.
You start saying that without holiness, no one
shall see the Lord and they will scream.
We will not have this man rule over
us.
And if you really want to make some
church church folks mad, tell them that the
Christian life is a crucified life where self
is dethroned and another is enthroned there.
Oh, Paul preached on the crucified life.
I am crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me and the life which I
now live in the flesh.
I live by the faith of the son
of God who loved me and gave himself
for me.
Oh, Paul preached that when we come to
Christ, we have a new master.
Our life is not our own for we
are bought with a price.
Our body is not our own.
Our time is not our own.
Our money is not our own.
Jesus is Lord and his Christians.
We live crucified lives as we follow a
crucified savior.
Paul said in Colossians 2, 6, As ye
have therefore received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so
walk ye in him.
Oh, Paul would be in bad shape if
he came back today and tried to evangelize
the American church.
Vance Havner used to say, I could have
led a few more people to the Lord
had they not already joined the church.
Yes, sir.
You start preaching up election and holiness and
repentance and start calling man a rebel.
Why, you just might as well wear a
football helmet when you preach, for the rocks
will surely come.
But old Paul knew that because in his
day, man was as wicked as he is
in our day.
And in Paul's day, he had his share
of rocks thrown at him.
When I sit in big congregations and listen
to big dogs preach, I often hear a
big round of applause when they are done
with their message.
Boy, the crowd just loves them.
Do you want to hear the kind of
applause old Paul received?
I will close with Paul's laundry list for
preaching the gospel of the Son of God,
as it is found in 2 Corinthians chapter
11.
In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure,
in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft, of
the Jews five times, received I forty stripes,
saved one.
Thrice I was beaten with rods, once was
I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, night and
day I have been in the deep, in
journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils
of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen,
in perils by the heathen, in perils in
the city, in perils in the wilderness, in
perils in the sea, in perils among false
brethren, in weariness, in painfulness, in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in
cold and nakedness.
Besides these things that are without, that which
cometh upon me daily, the care of all
the churches, and you know what care that
is, brother pastor, it's a mighty care indeed.
Well, old Paul didn't have a 401k and
health insurance and a standing ovation when he
left the pulpit and finished his ministry because
he preached a different gospel that is preached
in many of our churches today.
I remember Leonard Ravenhill saying this, when we
get to heaven, Jesus won't be looking for
medals pinned on us, but scars, it is
my prayer that a sovereign almighty will raise
up a new generation of preachers who are
willing to be scarred for preaching the gospel
of the Son of God in its purity
and proper order, and they won't be men
who fear men, but that they will be
men who walk humbly in the fear of
the Lord.