The Gospel
Notes
Transcript
The Gospel
The Gospel
This morning is going to conclude our sermon series covering the 3 circles, but this is the beginning of the journey.
I want you to know that this sermon series is to set the stage for you and me to get out into the world and tell people about the good news of Jesus Christ.
To reveal to them the goodness of God's design, the reality of their brokenness, the need for repentance and belief in the gospel, and to teach them train them, and equip them to recover and pursue God's Design for themselves and the world around them.
But before we get into it, I want to take a moment to slow down and do something a little different.
I want us to take some time to pray for the lost of our community.
I want us to take some time to reflect on the names that we have written down on those prayer cards.
I want us to pray that God will draw them in and open their eyes to the beauty of the gospel.
We're going to have a moment of silence and then I will wrap us up in prayer.
Father, we come before you asking that you would save those we love.
That you would open their eyes, ears, and hearts to the good news of the gospel.
I pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would prick and prod at their consciences. That they would be made away of their sinfulness.
That they would be made aware of their brokenness.
That they would know that they need a savior. That no matter what they do they need a power outside of themselves to change and transform them.
I pray, Lord, that you would use us to help tell the good news to our friends, neighbors, and family members.
I pray that you would give us the boldness to turn everyday conversations into Gospel Conversations.
What we know not please teach us.
What we have not please give us.
What we are not please make us.
So that we can live lives that honor and glorify you.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
Before we begin looking at this morning's point I want to review what we have already learned and gone over.
Draw God's Design
2 weeks ago we looked at the fact that God designed his world and our life to be lived in a certain way.
We saw this all the way back in Genesis. God as the creator and architect of creation knew the best way for us to live and thrive in the world he created.
This design was for all of our lives from our relationships to our identity, from our work life to our spiritual life.
We were created to be in dynamic unbroken communion with God.
However, instead of living within God’s Design, our first parents, Adam and Eve, decided to give up God’s design and chase after their own design.
This is called Sin.
Draw Sin Line
Sin is when we abandon God’s good and beautiful design for our own desires.
Sin Disrupts God’s Design.
Sin puts a strain on our relationships, our identity, our work, and our spiritual life.
And since we have decided to depart from God’s design we have entered into a state of brokenness.
Draw Brokenness Line
This state of brokenness means that we can’t even see God’s true design.
Our lives are fractured.
Our lives are chaos.
We know that things aren’t as they should be so we make every attempt to fix the brokenness.
And no matter what we do to fix the brokenness, we will never be able to.
Brokenness always begets brokenness.
Sin always begets sin.
No matter how much we try, no matter what we do, we will always live in brokenness.
And though brokenness is a harsh reality, its also a true blessing.
Our brokenness reveals to us that there has to be something more.
That there must be something we are missing.
That what is missing must come from somewhere other than us.
There must be a way out of this brokenness.
And gratefully, God has provided this way out
The way out of the our brokenness isn’t by being better, trying harder, and doing more.
The way out of our brokenness is The Gospel.
Draw Gospel Circle
God provided this way out of our brokenness.
Here’s the beauty of our God, from the very beginning, from the very first departure from his design, he promised that he would make it right.
Do you get that?
From the very beginning he knew that there was nothing we could do to fix our own brokenness.
He knew that there was no way that we could ever escape the trap of our own creation.
He knew that not matter how hard we tried.
No matter how much effort.
No matter how good we behaved, it wasn’t going to get us out of our own brokenness.
But it doesn’t keep us from trying.
And everything we try ends up getting us right back to where we started. Broken.
So if there was going to be a way out he had to make it.
Where do we see this way out?
We see it on the opening pages of Genesis.
I touched on it last week, but it bears repeating.
God’s way out of our brokenness is first read in
15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
A Way Out
A Way Out
Here God is cursing the serpent the epitome of evil, deception, wickedness, and rebellion.
And part of the curse on the serpent is that there will hostility between him and the offspring of the woman.
This is curious language, but here the offspring doesn’t refer to all humanity.
In fact, it’s a singular noun.
Pointing to a particular offspring.
One offspring that will be the one that the enmity or hostility is between.
There would be a man, one offspring of Eve, that will come and what did God promise he would do?
He would strike his head.
Dealing a death blow, that would defeat the enemy.
Now that deathblow to the enemy wouldn’t be all, the enemy would strike this offsprings heel dealing damage, but not final.
Gen 3.15, is considered to be the first picture and promise of the gospel message.
And you know what I find interesting.
It wasn’t spoken to Adam and Eve.
It wasn’t spoken to the transgressors, rebellious humanity, those who actually sinned against God.
Rather its spoken to the serpent, the tempter, the evil one.
It’s almost as if God is saying, you may think you’ve won.
But don’t get too comfortable.
You’re defeat is coming.
And in your defeat, I will restore humanity to it’s rightful place.
Not only that, but for the readers and hearers of the OT, they would now know to expect one who is going to deliver them.
Notice though that the serpents temptation of Adam and Eve doesn’t free them from responsibility for their Actions.
The Devil made me do it is never an appropriate response to our sin.
The gospel message was shared immediately after the sin and spiral into brokenness.
In addition, the gospel was shown in v. 21
21 The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.
The Lord sacrificed an animal to cover the sin and shame of Adam and Eve.
Blood was shed to make coverings for them.
The fig leaves they used to cover themselves up would have protected them.
They were temporary fixes, but God’s grace and generosity in sacrificing one of his creations to cover them up, showed the immense price of sin.
Shame could not be covered.
Sin could not be atoned for outside of blood being spilled.
This is the gospel in the garden.
This is God demonstrating his love, mercy, and grace on his creation.
This is God making the promise to fix what we broke.
To overcome our sin and shame.
To restore us into relationship with him.
It is only through God’s action that we are able to move out of our brokenness and into restored communion with him.
Everything that we attempt.
Every effort we make will fail.
But God will always accomplish his salvation.
God will always do enough, more than enough to mend our brokenness.
And he demonstrates this to us through the coming of the serpent’s head crusher, the redeemer, the perfect sacrifice Jesus.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
10 By this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.
11 Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins.
12 But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.
13 He is now waiting until his enemies are made his footstool.
14 For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified.
6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die.
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath.
10 For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.
11 And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
This is the good news that restores our brokenness.
Jesus came to overcome sin and death.
Jesus came to redeem us.
To purchase us back from the sin that ensnares our hearts and minds.
Jesus came to
We were God’s enemies.
We were in rebellion against the King of the Universe.
We were broken and deserved to endure the wrath of God.
We were helpless, hopeless, and damned.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us,
5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!
So this is all well and good, but what is the gospel.
We know that Jesus came to save us.
But what does that mean and more importantly how did it happen.
Paul gives us an explicit parameters of the gospel message in
1 Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand
2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
The Gospel
The Gospel
If you’ve been around for any amount of time, I know you have heard me harp on growing in your knowledge of Jesus.
Continue Develop your understanding of the Scriptures.
Read the scriptures and other good books that help us to cultivate our mind with a God centered worldview.
That is important.
It is essential to grow in our sanctification. To pursue after God.
An it is also important for us to not forsake the fundamentals of our faith.
The Gospel message is the foundation of our Faith.
And it is important for us to return to it time and time again.
We cannot and must not forget the fundamentals.
I love what Paul says in v. 1-2
1 Cor 15:1-2 “1 Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”
The Gospel is what Saved you and it is what Sustains you.
So it is vital that we know and believe it.
So what are the fundamentals?
What is the Gospel?
1 Cor 15:3-4 “3 For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,”
First, Jesus died for our sins.
This fundamentally means that Jesus was alive.
But that for the gospel to mean anything this one who was alive had to die.
I remember when I was working in the restaurant industry I had someone ask me one time why did Jesus have to die.
Why couldn’t God just forgive us of our sin?
And I have to admit, I was stumped. I didn’t know how to really answer that question.
I don’t want you to be in the same position so I want to provide you with an answer.
As we talked about last week Sin is a big deal to God.
It is a transgression against his very character.
It is a violation of his holiness.
And b/c we have sinned against a holy God there has to be a penalty.
Romans 6.23 “23 For the wages of sin is death...”
What we have earned through our sinfulness is death.
Death is the penalty for our sin.
That is the price that is owed to God for our rebellion.
In God’s design, in the garden we had eternal life, but in rebellion we have purchased for ourselves death.
That debt is owed.
Death is deserved by everyone.
As we saw in the garden, in order for Adam and Eve’s sin and shame to be covered or atoned for, an animal had to die.
Blood had to be shed.
This is what the author of Hebrews means when he is “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.”
Now this payment is made in one of two ways.
Either you pay for it with your life.
Meaning that when you die you face the eternal wrath of God for your sin and rebellion.
Or there is a better way.
Jesus paying it for you is the better way.
Meaning that through his death on the cross he stood in your place.
He took upon himself the death and wrath of God that you deserved.
His blood was shed for the forgiveness of sin.
His life was offered up as the atonement or covering for you sin and shame.
That’s why Jesus had to die.
We have rebelled against God.
And God demands that a price be paid in blood for forgiveness.
And Jesus came to pay that price for those who will believe.
The second aspect of the Gospel Paul tells us in v. 4 that Jesus was buried.
Why would this be important to the gospel?
This would ensure that those hearing this knew that Jesus actually died.
It wasn’t a scam.
It wasn’t a hoax.
Jesus was actually buried.
He went to the grave.
The burial was to demonstrate the reality of Jesus’ death.
No one could deny his body being placed in the tomb.
He was buried as a testimony to his death.
And to prove the 3rd aspect of the Gospel.
His resurrection.
The resurrection of Jesus is the verification that all Jesus said, taught, and did was true.
He is the Son of God who came to save the world from the death brought about by sin.
This resurrection is what our hope is truly built on.
If Jesus overcame the grave.
If he truly rose from the dead, then we can believe that he was able to cover all our sins.
Without the resurrection, there would be no forgiveness of Sin.
There would be no redemption.
There would be no salvation.
The resurrection of Jesus is the hinge point of God’s Redemptive Story.
In order to believe the gospel we have to believe those things.
Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and was raised.
I love what Paul said in
Romans 1:16 “16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.”
The gospel is what saves us from our sin.
Jesus is the only one who could die to make us right with the Father.
Now people respond to the gospel in many different ways.
Some deny the gospel.
Some ignore the gospel.
Some believe the gospel.
In order for us to be saved we must believe the gospel.
And part of believing the gospel is repenting.
15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Repent and Believe
Repent and Believe
Draw Repent and Believe
These are words from Jesus’ Mouth are a calling and beckoning to something new and life changing.
When we get to the end of our rope in our brokenness, when we truly recognize that nothing that we try is going to fix us we need something different.
That something different is the gospel.
And to embrace the gospel we need to repent and believe the gospel.
What does repent mean?
Repent means that our minds are changed.
It means to turn away from our sin and our brokenness and to embrace the good news of Jesus.
This is a fundamental shift in our perception of reality.
We turn from our own brokenness and look to Jesus as the perfect Son of God who can restore us.
We turn from the idol factory of our heart and start worshipping the true God of the universe.
When one hears the gospel and recognizes through the power of the HS that he is a sinner and that the way he does things isn’t working he needs to radically change the way he’s thinking.
That’s what repentance is.
Changing your thinking.
Here’s something that people don’t like to hear.
Outside of repenting and believing the gospel you are God’s enemy.
You are not God’s child.
You are a rebel that deserves death.
One of the things that people like to say is “How can a loving God send people to hell?”
Here’s the reality, God doesn’t send people to hell.
Their own sin and rebellion condemns them to hell.
Your own selfishness, sinfulness, and rebellion against God and his design is the ticket to hell.
Listen to what John says in
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
19 This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.
20 For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed.
21 But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”
Did you get that?
You are already condemned.
People are already condemned apart from belief in Jesus.
But Jesus came to save those who would believe.
Each of our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers who have not repented have a guilty verdict hanging over their head.
If you asked someone when they die why should God let them in heaven and they answered anything other than b/c they have repented and believed the gospel.
That they are justified or made right not b/c what they did but b/c of what Jesus did.
Then they don’t understand the gospel.
It doesn’t matter how good they think they are or even how good you think they are.
If they haven’t repented from their sin and believed the gospel then they are condemned.
That’s why we need to go out and tell them the gospel.
If they think that they will get to heaven on their own merit.
On the things that they have done.
If they think that God owes them a place in heaven b/c of their good deeds then they don’t understand the gospel.
If they believe that b/c they went to church all their lives and that they tried to be a good person is what is going to merit them eternity with God then they don’t know the gospel.
I can’t stress this enough.
THERE IS NOTHING THAT YOU CAN TO DO THAT WILL COVER YOU SINFULNESS.
This isn’t a balancing scale.
Your sin on one side and your good deeds on the other.
And even if it were a scale, no matter how good you are I bet your sin would out weigh your good deeds any day of the week.
Maybe you are sitting here and you think that you’ve done enough good.
Maybe you’re sitting here and you think that God must let you into heaven b/c of your giving, church attendance, b/c your are a nice person.
Whatever?
I’m telling you, you need to repent.
You need to change your mind.
You need to know that forgiveness only occurs based on what Jesus has done.
God loves to save sinners.
But know this it’s God who saves.
Not you.
There is nothing that you can do to save yourself, repent and believe the gospel.
And after we repent and believe the gospel.
God transforms our hearts and minds.
Then we can recover and pursue God’s Design
Draw Recover and pursue Arrow
Recover and Pursue
Recover and Pursue
When we believe the gospel the work isn’t through.
There needs to be what is called sanctification.
This is the process where we become more and more like Jesus.
And this is done in tandem with God.
God takes our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.
Ezek 36:26 “26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
The HS comes to dwell in us.
and he empowers us to recover and pursue what was lost in our rebellion against God.
When we repent and believe the gospel, Jesus radically changes who we are.
Listen to what Paul says in
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!
18 Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”
21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We become new creations.
He restores us to the way we were intended to be.
And he makes us ambassadors for his kingdom.
So when you believe the gospel you aren’t supposed to keep it to yourself.
Look at v. 20 again.
2 Cor 5:20 “20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.””
As those who have been made new, as those who have been made right with Jesus.
We go and tell others.
Plead with others to be reconciled to God.
What that means is that we go into the broken world and we tell them about the good news of the gospel.
We share with them the life transforming relationship that they can have with God.
Part of recovering and pursuing God’s Design, is telling other people what they are missing out on.
Showing them the goodness of God.
I want to encourage you with this, just this week I have had 2 of our members reach out to me and share that they had had gospel conversations this week.
One happened at the work place.
One happened with a family member.
And out of those two conversations we now have a new brother in Christ.
You may never meet him.
You may never know his name, but God does.
The other conversation watered or planted a seed.
It may be harvested by the one who shared it may not be.
But this is what it means to have gospel conversations.
I want every resident of our community to have repeated opportunities to hear and respond to the gospel.
I want to train you to go and tell them.
Starting Next Sunday Evening we will be doing some training to equip you to use this model of sharing the gospel with those around you.
The training will start at 6 and go for about an hour. I beg, plead, and urge you to be here.
God has given us a mission and we want to be faithful to carry it out. Let’s choose to help God repair those who are still spiritually broken.
Let’s work together to make Jesus known in the world around us not just by what we do, but also through the words we proclaim.
Let’s do what we were saved and created to do.
Let’s tell people about Jesus!