The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace

to You.

If you've never contacted Grace to You, we want to send you a free booklet by John that

unpacks fifteen Greek words in Scripture that explain a stunning paradox, how a God

of perfect justice can show mercy to sinners who deserve only punishment.

Request your free booklet titled 15 Words of Hope by writing to Hope at gty.org.

This offer is good in North America and Europe through June 2023.

And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here's Grace to You, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

The will of God for the church in the world is to proclaim the gospel.

That is our calling.

Churches have been distracted to put it mildly in this current climate to get into all kinds of things

that are not the gospel, even though they want to label them as the gospel.

The gospel is the gospel.

And this is a time for us to understand it explicitly and clearly.

Last week we looked at the conversion of Matthew, tax collector, and we heard the words of Jesus,

I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

And that is the remarkable reality of the gospel that God saves sinners, that when we were enemies,

He set to save us, that those people who are self-righteous and religious are by their own self-righteousness

cut off from the hope of salvation.

We saw last week that it was the religious Pharisees who thought they knew God and were the representatives of God

who were most strongly denounced by Jesus and who were sons of hell and making their disciples more sons of hell.

...