The Gospel

Immanuel - 9/25/22

Today we are not working from a single text. Today is all about the significance and the message of the gospel. For this we will draw from numerous passages. Have your Bibles ready.

Purpose

What is the significance of the gospel?

What is the message of the gospel?

Have you bowed your knee to the King of heaven and earth? Do you confess that Jesus Christ is Lord? Do you believe that your life is not your own, but that you were bought with a price?

If your answer to these is truly yes, then you are in Christ. You are redeemed, reconciled unto God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. The old way of living is to die, for you are a new creation in Christ; and you have experienced the saving power of God through the gospel.

Is this not why we gather in this building every week, to worship God who has made us new, to again remind one another of the awesome power of the gospel? Because it is the hearing of the gospel through which we have life-changing encounters with our Father in heaven, with King Jesus, with the Spirit of Power.

I do not mean that we have some physical encounter with God. I mean that through the hearing of the gospel we have come to know the reality and person that is God; and in light of Him, we have understood much about ourselves. Such an encounter, such an understanding, is utterly transformative.

This kind of encounter brings you to your knees and makes it impossible not to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. You know that the price He paid is worth far more than all your life can offer, but still you offer. This is the kind of encounter that changes you forever. This is the kind of encounter one can only experience through the gospel.

This is the power of the gospel.

As we saw two weeks ago, being in Christ does not end with some moment of salvation, that moment you become a new creation. That’s the beginning, but now there is something you are to do with the new life you have been given. Christ calls all of us to be His ambassadors, ministers of reconciliation.

Read 2 Corinthians 5:17-21

We are new creations and we are ambassadors. In other words, there is no such thing as a Christian who is not calling people to be reconciled to God. There's no such thing as a silent Christian.

Last week we also learned that everyone knows God. We are covenantal beings created in God's image. Every person truly and inescapably knows God as God truly is; yet in our sinfulness we suppress the truth of God, happy to build for ourselves worlds of lies and delusion.

But even a world of lies needs to be built on something real, something true. Every lie is in some way grounded in the truth. It would be wise for us ambassadors to understand the lie a particular person is believing, find the truth within it, and boldly, gently, apply the gospel to that place of truth. Last week I walked you through one small example of how this might work.

Remember, the gospel is what we ambassadors offer, not opinions, not politics, not self-help methods, not programs and positivity and personality. We offer the gospel of Christ crucified, risen and reigning.

Like Paul writes: When I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. -1 Corinthians 2:1-2

Paul is not saying that he abandoned dynamic language and wisdom. In fact, he employs those very things as he writes to the Corinthians. Instead, Paul is saying that he was not proclaiming the gospel in such a way that would draw people to himself. He was happy for the world to see him as a fool so long as he was faithfully speaking the gospel.

Read Romans 1:16-17

Above everything else, Paul wanted people to hear the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation! As ambassadors, it is our purpose to tell people this same gospel. It is the power we wield, the healing we offer, the news so good it is worth dying for.

And as we saw in Revelation, the gospel is the testimony of Jesus Christ, powerful enough to conquer the world and make all things new. Like Paul writes to the Corinthians, the gospel is powerful enough to reconcile the world unto God: the power of God unto salvation, our salvation and the salvation of this world.

You can hardly overstate the significance of the gospel. It is literally changing the world, just as it has changed your world.

But do you know the gospel message? Are you able to clearly articulate it? We must be able to, because it is the primary message given to all the ambassadors of Christ. If we do not know the gospel, then we cannot do what we have been called to do.

The gospel is easily broken down into 4 parts: God, Man, Christ, Response. Let’s take them one at a time.

Gospel Part 1: God

God is our Creator. He is holy and faithful and loving. Everything He does is good and just. His word is true and can be entirely trusted. And all that He does and is, is the epitome of love, is saturated in love, defines love.

And as you should expect, because God is this way, He hates everything contrary to His nature. Because He is holy, He hates wickedness. Because He is faithful, He hates faithlessness. Because He is loving, He hates hatred. God hates things contrary to His nature because anything contrary to His nature introduces pain, brokenness, chaos, and death.

God hates sin and one day everyone will have to give account to Him.

Paul captures all these elements of God in His address to the Athenians. Also, remember last week’s message. Paul is picking out the truth in a world of lies, and applying the gospel to it.

Read Acts 17:22-31

All 4 parts of the gospel are present in this proclamation. But Paul begins with his incredibly high view of God. Before getting to anything else, Paul wants to make it clear who He is talking about, and why it matters.

He says that God is Creator, Lord of heaven and earth, Holy and set apart from mankind, yet He lovingly sustains our lives. And perhaps more than any other reason, this matters because God will judge the world in righteousness. He will judge the lives of each person - every thought and action - to see if they meet His standard of righteousness, or not.

Part 1 of the gospel is the reality of God’s existence. God is your holy and loving Creator, and one day He will judge you.

Gospel Part 2: Man

As we explored last week, God made man in His image. He created us to perfectly represent Him on earth. He made us personal and relational with morality and reason, and God inlaid those image-bearing elements in beauty and righteousness. God created man and woman to be powerful expressions of His glory in the physical world.

And God’s glorious image in us would forever remain beautiful and righteous so long as we lived in right relationship to Him. Because God also created us to be covenantal beings: made for relationship with Him.

But into our paradise slithered a lie, and our first parents chose to believe the lie instead of God. They willingly sinned, rebelling against God and rebelling against His created order. Perfection and paradise were lost. Now, every human ever born is a sinner by birth and a sinner by choice.

To be a sinner is to come under the wrath of God and be condemned to eternal, conscious, death - forever separated from Him.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. -Romans 3:23

The wages of sin is death. -Romans 6:23

God will judge every person according to what they have done. One lie, one arrogant thought, one lustful glance, one hateful urge, just one, proves that you are not holy, not faithful, not perfectly loving, and not bearing His image as He created you to do. Broken mirrors are thrown away. Unrighteous image bearers are condemned to hell, and hell is a place where the ungodly will experience the eternal condemnation of God.

There are so many who shrink back from this part of the gospel. The gospel is the good news, but what I have just reviewed is anything but good news. This is horrible, judgmental, difficult news. This news means we are all condemned and headed to hell.

But we cannot skip, or even minimize, this painful truth. If we minimize the news about judgment and condemnation, we castrate the gospel. It is precisely because of how terrible is the news of hell that the good news - the gospel - becomes so transformatively precious.

For God has created a way for broken and sinful image bearers to be remade righteous, restored, and reconciled unto God! God has exerted His unimaginably gracious power to save sinners from the fires of condemnation.

I read the most famous part of Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death”; but do you know what the rest of the verse says?

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. -Romans 6:23

Gospel Part 3: Christ

Where sin brought condemnation and death, Christ brought righteousness and life! God the Son took on human form in the man of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus lived a sinless and perfectly righteous life. He perfectly imaged the Father and perfectly fulfilled all the terms of covenant with God.

Then, in the greatest act of love and righteousness, Jesus died on a criminal’s cross, offering His life in place of sinners. He took the death we deserve. Now, through His death, we can have forgiveness and life.

God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

-Romans 5:8

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. -Romans 5:18

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

-Romans 8:1

Jesus died for sinners! But death was a feeble foe for the Son of God! For three days later Jesus burst from the grave, conquering death, vindicating the truth, and securing eternal life for all who would believe. Hallelujah!

There is no news that is greater than this gift freely given to mankind: that God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all (Romans 8:32). This news is the power of God unto salvation! This news is so powerful that through it Christ is reconciling the world unto God! The gospel is absolutely the most transformative truth and the greatest news that will ever circulate the globe.

But, if you stop here, the gospel is incomplete. What comes next may be uncomfortable, but it is imperative. The gospel demands a response. You must include how God expects people to respond to this news!

Gospel Part 4: Response

Remember what we earlier read from Acts. There, Paul said:

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. -Acts 17:30

God commands all people to repent. And from the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus has issued this same command.

Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

-Mark 1:14-15

Repentance and belief are two sides of the same coin; the coin called faith. We believe God is our Creator, that we are sinners who fall short, that Jesus died on the cross so we could be forgiven, and that He rose from the grave to defeat death. We believe!

And that belief drives us to repent. For if we truly believe that Jesus was shamed and brutalized for our sins, then why would we want to pile more sins upon His bloodied shoulders? Our belief drives us to forsake sin; to no longer walk in unbelief and rebellion, but to pursue a life of godliness and faith.

No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps sinning has either seen Him or known Him. -1 John 3:6

Daily forsaking sin and yearning to be more like Christ is repentance.

You can’t have repentance without belief. You can’t have belief without repentance. If we call people to believe without also calling them to repent, we will make false converts. They will never see Jesus in their lives nor know Him in their hearts. Repent and believe: that is what it means to have saving faith.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. -Romans 10:9

God calls all people everywhere to repent, repent and believe in the gospel. But response to the gospel does not end at the initial moment of salvation. It means we surrender every part of our life for Christ to govern, rather than indulging in our selfish sins. Rather than believing in lies, we must surrender to Christ with every day, in every moment.

And part of the way we allow Christ to govern our lives is by taking every opportunity God gives us to share the gospel. For indeed, we are not just new creations in Christ, we are also Christ’s ambassadors. So we boldly share the gospel, calling people to respond.

I took a lot of time as I laid out the 4 parts of the gospel. When you are sharing the gospel with a friend, or a co-worker, it will likely not be appropriate to preach a sermon to them, as you have been listening to me do.

See if you can identify the 4 parts as you hear me give a much more condensed version of the gospel (God, Man, Christ, Response).

Your Creator is holy and righteous. Though He created you in His image, you are a rebellious sinner that has broken that image; and such rebellion earns His just and eternal condemnation. But God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die for our sins and provide a path to forgiveness. Then He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. All you must do is receive the free gift of faith - turn away from your sins and trust Jesus with every aspect of your life - and you will be saved, reconciled unto God.

That is a more condensed version of the gospel. Certainly you can condense it even further. And the gospel presentations I just gave, both the extended and condensed versions, were not personalized at all.

As we considered last week, it is important for you to carefully listen to the person you are talking to, ask lots of questions, seek to truly understand them and the lie they are believing. Then, with the lie discovered, discern the truth embedded within that lie. Gently and boldly begin applying the gospel shaped around the truth they believe. Again, I showed you an example of that last week.

This is how we can cater the gospel to an individual without compromising any of the four gospel elements. Because God has made the gospel to fit with the needs of every human heart.

When Jesus called the disciples, He told them that He would make them fishers of men. In our day, when we think of fishing, we think of recreation, something we do in our spare time. And that’s just how far too many Christians treat the Great Commission. But fishing was not this way when Jesus walked the shores of Galilee. Fishing was a full time job. It was demanding. It took expertise.

Therefore, if we are to be fishers of men, we need training, we need to practice, we can’t be afraid to be out all day and catch nothing, we can’t be afraid of rejection. We should be afraid of not being faithful to the calling bestowed on us by Christ, the King of heaven and earth!

We are fishers of men. We are ambassadors.

We need to make it our business to learn how to speak the gospel in a way appropriate to the context around us. We need to learn how to do this in a winsome way, a way that draws people in. And we need to both know how to boldly proclaim all the parts of the gospel and to proclaim with gentle love.

As ambassadors, we all should be working to become experts at sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, certain people will be more gifted than others in this area, but it would be sinful for you to feel so inadequate or ashamed that you stay silent.

Jesus said:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it…For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” -Mark 8:34-35,38

Therefore, like Paul writes, let us never be ashamed of the message of the gospel! It is the power of God unto salvation and through the gospel Jesus is reconciling the world unto God. What wonder that God has ordained to send us out as His ambassadors, that He is transforming the world through the message which we are all to herald.