What’s Stopping You from Coming to Christ?
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, what is stopping you from coming to Christ?
00:00:08.000 | There's a common myth that we must address in the podcast.
00:00:11.000 | Something gets in the way of the gospel.
00:00:13.000 | Often it's a moralism.
00:00:15.000 | Sinners who know that they are sinners who really want to come to Christ,
00:00:19.000 | but who assume that they must first clean themselves up
00:00:21.000 | in order to make themselves worthy of Him.
00:00:24.000 | This is a myth, and a gravely mistaken myth at that.
00:00:28.000 | This is not how the gospel works, not at all.
00:00:31.000 | As Pastor John explains in his sermon on Romans 5, verses 12-21,
00:00:35.000 | and what he says in the following clip led to the conversion of an APJ listener named Leah,
00:00:41.000 | who sent this in to us.
00:00:42.000 | I'll share with you her story in a moment, but first, here's Pastor John.
00:00:47.000 | And Paul says, "That relates to you. He did that for you."
00:00:55.000 | You see that in verse 19?
00:00:57.000 | "So by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous."
00:01:08.000 | Now I've got to pause here and stress something.
00:01:11.000 | This is the gospel.
00:01:15.000 | It's not the only way to talk about the gospel.
00:01:18.000 | It's just the way Paul's talking about it here.
00:01:20.000 | Our job as believers, among many other jobs, but ultimately,
00:01:27.000 | is to spread the gospel to everybody who doesn't know the gospel.
00:01:33.000 | All the people groups of the world.
00:01:35.000 | This is called missions if you cross cultures.
00:01:39.000 | To try to get the news to them.
00:01:41.000 | Now what's the news?
00:01:42.000 | Now the reason I'm asking this is because so many people make missions so complicated.
00:01:49.000 | Endless discussions of contextualization, and way over the top, in my judgment, on some of them.
00:01:56.000 | Now picture this way of thinking about the gospel.
00:01:59.000 | The first thing we see here is that it is universally and absolutely relevant
00:02:05.000 | for every human being on the planet, no exceptions, with barely any contextualization.
00:02:12.000 | There was an Adam, you say to somebody who doesn't know.
00:02:16.000 | What is Adam?
00:02:17.000 | He's the first human being.
00:02:19.000 | You are a descendant from him.
00:02:22.000 | He sinned, you're dead because of his sins.
00:02:26.000 | That is understandable.
00:02:28.000 | You may not agree with it, but you can say as a human, you inherited that.
00:02:32.000 | The reason you die is because he sinned, you're a sinner, you're all going to die.
00:02:36.000 | Second stage in the gospel presentation.
00:02:39.000 | The Son of God is like that Adam.
00:02:43.000 | He came to start a new humanity by rescuing people from this old humanity.
00:02:48.000 | And he came into the world and he never sinned like your and my forefathers sinned.
00:02:53.000 | Never.
00:02:54.000 | Perfect obedience.
00:02:56.000 | We will one day stand with him before an infinitely holy God to face him because we've all sinned.
00:03:02.000 | His righteousness was performed in order that you might be counted as obedient and righteous and perfect through faith in him.
00:03:15.000 | So just as you were united to Adam and died because of his sin, you may be united to Christ and live because of his obedience.
00:03:24.000 | That word must be told everywhere.
00:03:31.000 | With barely any contextualization, go learn the language man.
00:03:37.000 | Father origin.
00:03:40.000 | It'll blow their worldview out of the water, of course, just like it blows your worldview out of the water.
00:03:45.000 | We think, well, we white folks.
00:03:49.000 | Americans been here 300 years and absorb Puritanism that we got the worldview figured out our our brain set in America just fits perfectly with his book.
00:03:59.000 | It's just like a hat wrong.
00:04:02.000 | This book blows American brains and every other culture.
00:04:08.000 | And our job is to say it because every human being you meet is in Chapter five.
00:04:16.000 | Your family is in Chapter five.
00:04:18.000 | Your kids are in Chapter five.
00:04:19.000 | Your parents, your colleagues at work are in Chapter five.
00:04:22.000 | Every human you see on the street is in Chapter five and the same truth is true about every one of them.
00:04:29.000 | And the same gospel applies to every one of them.
00:04:32.000 | And it isn't complicated.
00:04:34.000 | It's just mind blowing.
00:04:36.000 | So finally, superiority number three is the rain or e.i.g. in the reign of life.
00:04:47.000 | The triumph of life, the sovereignty of life.
00:04:52.000 | Verse 21.
00:04:53.000 | So that as sin reigned in death, grace might reign through righteousness.
00:05:02.000 | So there are first two points, grace and righteousness.
00:05:05.000 | And now the third leading to eternal life, all of it through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
00:05:14.000 | Death flows from Adam, life flows from Christ.
00:05:19.000 | Death flowed because of sin, life flows because of righteousness.
00:05:23.000 | You're not righteous.
00:05:25.000 | And so you're dead.
00:05:27.000 | Unless there can become a connection, a union with perfect righteousness.
00:05:37.000 | This is called justification.
00:05:41.000 | When by faith we receive Christ as our substitute, our representative righteousness, sacrifice, treasure, all that he is.
00:05:56.000 | We in him are righteous and we'll have eternal life.
00:06:06.000 | Let me close by pointing you to verse 17 and asking you if you have received it the way this verse describes it.
00:06:14.000 | Verse 17.
00:06:16.000 | For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more, there's that superiority of Christ again.
00:06:28.000 | Much more, but now watch this carefully.
00:06:31.000 | This is a question for you.
00:06:34.000 | Much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
00:06:52.000 | So my question on God's behalf, have you received this grace, this obedience, this life?
00:07:05.000 | It's free grace.
00:07:07.000 | It's free obedience performed by another offered to you for the having.
00:07:13.000 | And free life.
00:07:16.000 | I close with a warning.
00:07:19.000 | In my experience of talking with unbelievers and reading about those who do talk with unbelievers,
00:07:26.000 | it appears that one of the greatest obstacles for people to actually become full-blooded Christians,
00:07:33.000 | to move from death to life and unbelief to belief, from non-Christian to Christian, is the thought, I can never do it.
00:07:44.000 | I could never do it.
00:07:47.000 | I can't measure up.
00:07:49.000 | I can't.
00:07:50.000 | I've read enough of the Bible to know you're supposed to love your enemies and you're supposed to put to death the deeds of the body, like lust.
00:07:59.000 | And I can't.
00:08:01.000 | And that keeps millions of people from being saved.
00:08:05.000 | And here's the reason that's a satanic lie.
00:08:11.000 | The gospel is set up in a way by God to remove that objection.
00:08:17.000 | God has come into the world and set up a gospel that says, you don't get yourself ready at all for salvation.
00:08:30.000 | Anybody that thinks I've got to clean up my act, you don't know what I did last night.
00:08:36.000 | God does.
00:08:39.000 | And it's irrelevant.
00:08:41.000 | We are saved by an alien obedience performed by Christ, counted as ours, by receiving it.
00:08:54.000 | And receiving, that's another word for faith, receiving is saying, I can't and I'm wicked and I'm dirty and if you touch me, Jesus, you're going to get dirty.
00:09:05.000 | And faith says, but if you're coming with grace and with obedience and with life, I want it.
00:09:16.000 | I receive it.
00:09:17.000 | I'll bank on it.
00:09:18.000 | I'll rest in it.
00:09:21.000 | At that point, you are saved.
00:09:26.000 | You are counted righteous.
00:09:28.000 | You are a child of God forever.
00:09:32.000 | And because you're righteous in Christ, the wrath of God is removed.
00:09:38.000 | And when the wrath of God is removed, guess what happens?
00:09:42.000 | He is totally for you and will move into your life by the Holy Spirit and begin to help you conquer some of that junk you thought you had to get rid of before you believed.
00:09:58.000 | I hope you heard that because if you get it backwards, you'll never be saved.
00:10:04.000 | You'll become a fake legalistic Christian or you'll stay an unbeliever.
00:10:10.000 | But if you turn it around and get it right, grace, obedience and life were wrought for you in Jesus.
00:10:18.000 | You don't work it.
00:10:20.000 | He did it.
00:10:21.000 | And then you receive him and that union by faith alone.
00:10:25.000 | Faith alone, the great reformation herald, faith alone makes you one with him.
00:10:34.000 | His obedience is yours.
00:10:36.000 | His grace is yours.
00:10:37.000 | His life is yours.
00:10:39.000 | And now his spirit will be yours.
00:10:42.000 | And little by little, we stumble toward heaven together.
00:10:46.000 | Amen.
00:10:47.000 | We are saved by an alien obedience performed by Christ, counted as ours.
00:10:53.000 | That is so good.
00:10:54.000 | This clip is from John Pepper's sermon on Romans 5, verses 12 to 21, "The Fatal Disobedience of Adam and the Triumphant Obedience of Christ."
00:11:03.000 | The sermon preached on August 26, 2007.
00:11:05.000 | The whole sermon, of course, is at DesiringGod.org.
00:11:08.000 | It was sent in to us by Leah.
00:11:10.000 | Here's her story.
00:11:12.000 | "In June 2019, my husband and I packed everything and moved to Germany for his new assignment with the army," she writes.
00:11:19.000 | "I was struggling to adjust, having left my family, my career, my friends, and all that was familiar."
00:11:27.000 | "So I started listening to the sermon of the day and Ask Pastor John podcasts at the recommendation of my sister."
00:11:33.000 | "On August 26, 2019, God used this sermon, specifically this clip, to change my heart and open my eyes to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
00:11:42.000 | "Up to that day, I had lived legalistically.
00:11:44.000 | When that failed, I abandoned legalism for the prosperity gospel."
00:11:48.000 | "But on that day, God used this part of Pastor John's sermon to bring me to true faith in Jesus Christ and the gospel."
00:11:55.000 | "The only gospel."
00:11:57.000 | "I repented of my sin for the first time, and my life has never been the same since."
00:12:01.000 | "Thank you, Pastor John and DG, for teaching and leading me to faith in Christ from afar."
00:12:07.000 | What an amazing story and testimony.
00:12:10.000 | And so powerful, Leah.
00:12:11.000 | Thank you for sharing with us this clip.
00:12:13.000 | Well, all of our Wednesday clips are now crowdsourced.
00:12:16.000 | You can tell us what bits of Piper's sermons changed your life.
00:12:20.000 | And we share that clip with the ABJ audience.
00:12:23.000 | If you have one, email me, give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, and the timestamp of when the clip happens in the audio.
00:12:30.000 | And of course, tell us how the clip changed you.
00:12:32.000 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:12:38.000 | That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:12:42.000 | Well, why are lifespans so short today compared to the first chapters of Genesis when folks lived to be 300, 400, even 900 years old?
00:12:54.000 | I'll ask Pastor John why and the significance of why next time.
00:12:57.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:59.000 | We'll see you back here on Friday.
00:13:01.000 | Thanks for listening.
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