In bringing you the recent series of messages on THE PERSON AND WORK OF SATAN, I have tried to show you who he is, his character and motive, and the methods he uses to beguile unstable souls out of the old paths laid down in God's eternal, verbally-inspired Word. It's a battle for the souls of men, for your soul, and we can't afford to underestimate our enemy. First, we showed you his origin, his fall, and his deadly hatred against God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Then, we showed you some of the devices he uses to keep the sinner from coming to Christ for salvation; namely, setting him in search of that which gratifies the flesh, whether it is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes or the pride of life. This includes religious pride, and self-righteousness that goes with religion without Christ. Now, those messages have been put in print and you can have the whole series, if you will just write for them.
There is nothing in the Universe that Satan hates more than he hates the Lord Jesus Christ, and the reason for it is because God has accepted Him, His Person, and His sacrificial work on the cross, and raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places far above principalities and powers and might and dominion and given Him a name that is above every name, and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, and God has made Him LORD over all things both in heaven and in earth, according to Acts 2:36. Listen,
"Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both LORD and Christ."
And He has "highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is LORD, to the glory of God the Father" I (Phil. 2:9-11). Yes, Satan knows that day he's going to have to bow both knees, as it were, and confess that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of the Father; and he hates Him because he doesn't want to bow -- BUT HE WILL! Praise God, Satan himself will bow and confess that Jesus is Lord; and you will too!
There is an interesting study that I wish you would give some time to, and that is, the Person and Work of Christ as the Son of God who became incarnate in flesh as the God-Man for one purpose: that He might satisfy God's demand to justice. Study His Person and Work in the light of the great religious movements of the last two thousand years, and you'll notice that every revival (get it now), every awakening, every reformation came as a result of one man standing out against the current of false doctrine in this central theme of the Bible -- get it! -- CHRIST, HIS PERSON AND AND WORK, which is based on His divine incarnation and virgin birth.
"And He will be called JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins," was the announcement of the angel to Joseph before the Birth of Jesus. If Christ were not virgin born, then He would not be God; and if He were not God, then He could not be the Substitute for sinners. Every individual's salvation depends on one thing: that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. To believe that fact means that at the name of Jesus every knee bows, and every tongue confesses Him Lord and God.
In the average confession of faith in Christian churches, so-called, the deity of Christ is stated; many church members make a profession of believing in His deity and in His eternal Sonship who actually deny it either in word or in practice. They make much of His incarnation, His holy life, His miracles and teachings, and even His sufferings and death; but when you examine their statements carefully you find a complete denial, or an explaining away of His vicarious atonement for our sins, which is so subtle that the average individual never detects it. Yet the Person of Christ or His Lordship is so interwoven with His work of redemption that one cannot be separated from the other.
The battle line through the ages, as we have said, is the age-old question, "WHOM DO MEN SAY THAT I THE SON OF MAN AM?" And when they gave the different opinions of others, Jesus asked the direct question, "Whom say YE that I am?" Peter answered immediately, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." One day the Pharisees were questioning the Lord Jesus, and He turned and asked them, "What think ye of Christ? whose Son is He?" And they answered, "The son of David." Then He said, "How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then called him LORD, how is he his son?" (Matt. 22:43-45). He shut their mouths because they were not honest and would not admit that Jesus was Lord. When He was on trial before the high priest, the priest put Him on oath and made Him confess that He was Christ the Son of God. Then he turned to the council and asked, "What think ye?" They answered and said, "He is guilty of death" (Matt.26:66). Your salvation, my friends, depends on one question: WHO DO YOU SAY THAT HE IS? As Spurgeon said, "What a man thinks will soon be manifest in what he is.
In Spurgeon's day the missing doctrine of the day was the SAVIOURSHIP OF CHRIST, because His Humanity was hid in His Lordship. Now I want you to get that. They had emphasized His Lordship over His Humanity. In the days before the Reformation, Martin Luther sat cloistered in the monastery trying to force himself to repent by meditating on his sins, but all he discovered was the awful sense of his sinful nature; and as he could never feel enough sorrow for sin, he could never feel himself forgiven. One day it dawned on him that the Scriptures are the only authority in the church, and in them he found Christ revealed as his Substitute. And one of the outstanding teachings of the Reformation was that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Luther came forth laying the emphasis on the Humanity of Jesus, because, as we said, His Humanity was hid in His Deity. He lived in a day when religionists made much of His Deity with little emphasis on His Humiliation and suffering as the God-Man dying for sinners. Luther saw the Humanity of Jesus as the absolute revelation of God, and faith as a laying hold upon Christ together with trust in Christ; and he came out preaching SALVATION BY GRACE through faith in Christ wholly apart from works. He stood out against the whole religious world; and the great work that the Lord wrought under his ministry was the revival and restoration of the sound doctrine in regard to the sinner's salvation. Listen. Listen! JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH IN CHRIST JESUS. Now that was what he was preaching; and he restated that great lost Doctrine of Justification.
Out of the Reformation came others; some who defended and restated the great doctrines of the Bible, others who went off at a tangent on one doctrine or another. John Calvin lived a little later, and the Lord led him to write a systematic statement of the doctrines of the Bible. In so doing, he placed emphasis on the Deity and the Lordship of Christ, along with the Sovereignty of God and the kindred doctrines of Election and Predestination. "Calvin's Institutes" have become the doctrinal basis of almost all evangelical Christian churches since his day, in some degree or other.
In Spurgeon's day it was shocking to hear of anyone in the pulpit who scouted the Atonement, derided the Inspiration of the Scripture, degraded the Holy Spirit into an influence and turned the punishment of sin into a fiction and the Resurrection into a myth. I'm quoting his statement concerning the Downgrade Controversy that he began fighting in the latter part of his ministry and which helped bring about his death at the early age of fifty-seven. Coming from the Puritans and Calvinists of England, he was grounded in the teachings concerning the Person and Work of Christ; and he preached Him as God incarnated in human flesh, executing His offices as Prophet, Priest, and King on behalf of God toward man and on behalf of man toward God. This is the foundation and basis of His mediatorial work in the redemption of the sinner.
The Downgrade of Spurgeon's day has continued since the turn of the century, and the religious world today is on the toboggan slide to hell just as fast as we can go. We are reaping the results today. The Lordship of Christ has been so humanized. And the religious world will go so far as to tell us only that Christ was divine like you and I are divine. Therefore, we have no Saviour, no Substitute. Yet today the world is more religious than ever in the history of mankind, but it is a religion without Christ. All the average individual has is a little tin-soldier-god, a disappointed "Jesus, " and the Holy Ghost as an influence that anyone can command at will if only you get it. It is this satanic religious imitation that I am lifting up my voice against in the dark days before out Lord comes. And I want to tell you, my friends I'm lifting my voice, over the radio, by the pen, through the press, through the tape ministry, by word of mouth everywhere I go -- that THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST IS THE LOST DOCTRINE OF THE PRESENT-DAY CHURCH!
Listen! All right, what do we mean by "the Lordship of Christ" which every sinner must acknowledge and bow to before he can ever be saved? Listen. It means that the Lord Jesus Christ holds absolute authority over the individual. It means that He is Lord and the individual is the bondslave. It means that all authority in heaven and on earth is invested in Jesus Christ. It means that He has been exalted to the highest position in the Universe and been given a name that's above every name, that at the name of "The Lord Jesus Christ" every knee shall bow. It means that He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. It means that He is Governor, and there is none else. He will have no other gods before Him. It means that He is the Despot of the soul and life of the individual.
Now, where does the individual learn that, and when does the individual learn that? He doesn't learn it just by reading the Bible, because thousands of people read the Bible and still call Him, "Jesus" all the time. That's all they see, because they are worshipping "another Jesus." You do not learn the Lordship of Christ by hearing others talk about Him, because usually it makes you mad to hear someone who knows the Lordship of Christ talk about Him, because you want to talk about your church program, your church activities, your heating program, your cloth factory, or your experience, and such like -- or, you want to talk about your stocks, your bonds, your cattle, and farms, your merchandise, or your job, your home, and what you have done. In other words, you are taken up with the physical aspect of life, which is an evidence that the church as a whole has drifted into materialism today, and we are rapidly going into rationalism, from there to infidelity, and from there to atheism. They say, and the cry is today, "Away with Jesus! Away with Jesus!" That was the cry nearly two thousand years ago.
You never talk about the Lord Jesus Christ and His dying for you, and how you came to know Him through repentance, because you don't know Him! You only come to know the Lordship of Christ when the Holy Spirit has stripped you and brought you to the feet of the crucified, buried and risen Lord, and you have come to lie in the dust of repentance as a poor, lost, undone, ruined, ungodly, condemned sinner. It is then, and only then, that you look up and say, "Lord, what will you have me do?" "Lord, Thou art mine." You know there is "no other name given under heaven among men" except the Lord Jesus Christ, who can save you. You know that your sins cannot be washed away except by the blood of the Son of God.
Yes, it's there that you come to know Him as Lord; and if you have not been there, I don't blame you for getting mad with me. No, I don't. I don't take exceptions when you folks get mad with me and want to cuss me out and say I am crazy, and many times you go to the point to say that I am not saved and don't know what I'm talking about. No, I don't blame you because, brother, if you have never been made to lie in the dust of repentance, you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ! Maybe your anger will lead you to repentance, to cry unto the Lord, "Open my wicked heart that I may see what I am." If you knew Him as Lord, you would say, "Bless the Lord," that old preacher knows the Lord, too. I'll rejoice with him." But if you don't know Him as your Lord, you don't know Him as your Saviour. Now you put that down! Therefore, the message condemns you, and because of your pride and jealousy, you rebel against the truth. Rather than acknowledge the truth so that you might be saved, you begin to call me names to try to justify yourself. You'll hit it to the broomsage like a cottontail to the brier patch, and you won't have it, because you are too proud to bend at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that I am preaching the Word of God; and it isn't me you hate, but the Word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the reason I don't take exceptions. For you to hate me, that's nothing, but for you to turn your back on the truth and upon the Lord Jesus Christ means hell for you, brother! And I know individuals right now that have hated me for years who are dying and are on the road to hell and there is not one thing in the world I can do, because they have never bowed their knees to the Lord Jesus Christ and looked up into the face of that crucified Lord and said, "My Lord and my God!"
Now, let's look at this fact. In some sections of the country much is made of baptism "in the name of Jesus only." Did you know that that is contrary to God's Word? There is no instance recorded in Scripture that teaches that the disciples baptized in the name "Jesus only." Didn't know that, did you? Are you so blind that you can't see that? in Acts 2:38, Peter said,
"Repent, and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins."
Then when Philip baptized, Acts 8:16 says, "Only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus." Then in Acts l9:5, when Paul baptized those folks, we find he also baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Listen,
"When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus."
So you see, my friends, that puts a different aspect on the whole thing. Let me give you one more instance: when Peter baptized down there in Cornelius' home, the Word says, "And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord" (Acts 10:48).